Taking advantage of the gender dividend to accelerate economic growth in ECOWAS

This project aims to analyze the gender dividend in West Africa. The gender dividend is the increase in national production per head attributable to more equality between women and men in the labour market.

Declining birth rates can alter gender relations and the distribution of roles within the household, leading to increased female labour force participation. However, in a context of hierarchical social relations unfavourable to women, and in the absence of supportive public policies, the process of women's increased participation in the labour market can lead to their over-representation in informal and/or low-paying jobs.

The analysis of female labour force participation will therefore be supplemented with an analysis of fiscal policies in the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to determine whether those policies contain specific provisions aimed at facilitating women's integration into the labour market. The evidence generated will inform policy recommendations to national and regional policymakers seeking to maximize the gender dividend by fully harnessing women's economic potential.

This project will be implemented with the collaboration of the École nationale supérieur de statistique et d’économie appliqué located in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.