Women’s economic empowerment - Navigating enablers and constraints

Men are more than twice as likely to be in formal full-time employment as women in 17 countries with poor records on gender equality. New analysis of Gallup World Poll data reveals that in 17 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa surveyed in 2009, on average, about 90% of women and men reported that having a good quality job is ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ to them – yet only one in seven women (14%) in these countries was engaged in formal full-time employment compared with one in three men (33%).