UN Women Discussion Papers

This publication examines government policies toward the crucial nexus of work-family reconciliation, focusing on employment-based leaves and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. It...

This publication examines policies for the support of families with children, in particular child-related financial transfers and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. The analysis is...

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a goal to achieve gender equality for all women and girls and a re-commitment to governments’ human rights obligations. At the same time...

By the end of 2016, an estimated 6.5 million Syrian citizens were internally displaced, and more than 4.8 million Syrians had fled to neighbouring countries. While roughly half of all displaced and...

Few programmes for economically empowering rural women in India have focused seriously on farming—the one occupation in which the women have most experience. Hence, two state-level initiatives in the...

This work develops a set of regimes that link structures of economic growth with those of social reproduction. These regimes are then linked to groups of countries organized by economic structure and...

The United States has never assured the human right to health, including the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and access to all medical services. While there is...

This publication identifies a series of macro-level tools to create a supportive environment and generate the resources to promote Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to gender equality. A...

Using micro data from two recent labour force surveys collected in Cameroon and Mali, this paper explores gender differentials in labour market outcomes covering key areas such as occupational...

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the gendered implications of rural land dispossession. It does so through a comparative analysis of five cases of dispossession that were driven by...

There is a strong commitment to equality between women and men in international human rights law. The various actors within the treaty system who are tasked with elaborating on the meaning of human...

This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to...

The challenges of building pathways to sustainability and enhancing gender equality are both urgent. This work explores why they must be addressed together, and how this might be done. It puts forward...

The division of care and responsibility for children, including financial care, is usually determined by the family law of the State. This study identifies some of the most prevalent custody and child...

This discussion paper makes the case for investing in free universal childcare services of high quality in order to reduce gender inequality in earnings and employment. It estimates the employment...

This work develops an agenda for investing in sustainable development, with particular emphasis on local priorities, poverty alleviation and gender equality. Sustainable development can take many...

This paper investigates how women’s right to live free from violence operates in the context of insecure immigration status. It is based on qualitative research addressing intimate partner violence...

Circular labour migration is frequently portrayed as a gender-neutral phenomenon. Despite the growing literature on the feminization of migration, scholarly and policy literature is often gender-blind...

Migration reconfigures care relationships as people adapt to employment, entitlements and care practices in a new context. While a rich genre of analysis of “global care chains” draws attention to how...

Cash transfers are often considered a gender-sensitive development tool because women have traditionally been the target for large social cash transfer programs. However, targeting women does not...