Efforts to achieve gender equality will not only help sub-Saharan Africa revive its inclusive growth engine but also will ensure progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and help address the main disruptive challenges of this century. This book explores the progress made in gender equality in the region, highlighting both the challenges and successes in areas such as legal reforms; education; health; gender-based violence; harmful practices, such as child marriage; and financial inclusion. It takes stock of initiatives towards integrating gender into core macroeconomic and structural reforms, such as through implementing gender budgeting and examines the role that fiscal and other policies can play in closing gender gaps when they are mindful of distributional impacts. Drawing from extensive research across different institutions, the book underscores the macroeconomic significance of gender equality, emphasizing its potential to drive GDP growth, enhance economic stability, reduce income inequality, and foster sustainable development. It lays out how gender gaps interact with emerging challenges, such as digitalization, and explores the impact of global megatrends, such as climate change, on gender inequality, offering strategies for inclusive policy responses—including in a context where women and girls are still carrying a disproportionate care burden that is often not captured in economic measurement. The book aims to serve as a roadmap for policymakers, stakeholders, and advocates seeking to harness the untapped potential of gender equality—for its own sake and for the region's inclusive, sustainable, and green development. It calls for concerted efforts to dismantle structural barriers, transform social norms, and prioritize gender-responsive policies to unlock the full economic potential of sub-Saharan Africa.

This Element highlights the idea that men and the society at large will benefit with women owning land. Land ownership by women improves their bargaining power and enhances their ability to survive outside unproductive power structure or gender relationships.

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that inequality—income or gender related—can impede economic growth. Using dynamic panel regressions and new time series data, this paper finds that both income and gender inequalities, including from legal gender-based restrictions, are jointly negatively associated with per capita GDP growth. Examining the relationship for countries at different stages of development, we find that this effect prevails mainly in lower income countries. In particular, per capita income growth in sub-Saharan Africa could be higher by as much as 0.9 percentage points on average if inequality was reduced to the levels observed in the fastgrowing emerging Asian countries. High levels of income inequality in sub-Saharan Africa appear partly driven by structural features. However, the paper’s findings show that policies that influence the opportunities of low-income households and women to participate in economic activities also matter and, therefore, if well-designed and targeted, could play a role in alleviating inequalities.

This book provides compelling evidence from 42 Sub-Saharan African countries that gender gaps in legal capacity and property rights need to be addressed in terms of substance, enforcement, awareness, and access if economic opportunities for women in Sub-Saharan Africa are to continue to expand.

This book adds significantly to the discourse surrounding the progress made in empowering women in Africa over the last decade, providing strong research evidence on diverse and timely gender issues in varied African countries. Topics covered include climate change and environmental degradation, agriculture and land rights, access to – and quality of – education, maternal and reproductive health, unpaid care and women’s labor market participation, financial inclusion and women’s political participation. Cross cutting issues such as migration, masculinities and social norms are also addressed in this volume, which is aimed at policy makers, academics, and indeed anyone else interested in the UN Sustainable Development Goal of the empowerment of women and girls.

Kevane explores gender issues in Africa in the context of the continent's poor economic performance.