This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. flexibility of working hours and location associated with online gig work uniquely positions it as an avenue to boost female labor force participation, especially in regions with limited local job opportunities. This short note takes a deep dive into gender-based disparities in access to these new forms of work, especially asking whether there is a gender gap in hourly rates that online gig workers ask for and earn from online tasks. The analysis uses data from over 19,000 profiles on one of the largest English-language freelancing platforms. Data from one of the largest global freelancing platforms shows that women quote approximately 10 percent lower hourly rates than men, likely reflecting a difference in confidence.

This short report summarizes a Creative Economy Alliance (CEA) webinar hosted by the Cultural and Creative Industries global project (implemented by GIZ and the Goethe-Institut on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the World Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Project. The webinar focused on using international cooperation to drive gender equality within the creative economy.

To better address gender inequalities and promote an inclusive environment, the supra-regional project, Cultural and Creative Industries, commissioned a gender analysis. It highlights gender-based differences in terms of the relative distribution of resources, opportunities, constraints and power in the Creative and Cultural Industries.

This report details the first Australian exploratory study with students and young people to understand their perceptions and use of Generative AI. The study includes insight from 576 young people aged 14 to 26 across High Schools, Universities, TAFE, Colleges, and in work.

The Jigeen Ñi Academie Musique (JAM) is a ground-breaking project in Senegal dedicated to the professional development of women. Along with practical music skills, the academy provides training in leadership and cultural entrepreneurship to enhance income and employment opportunities for women in the music industry.

This toolkit highlights World Bank Group (WBG) commitments relevant to women and girls with disabilities, examples of law and policy reform, and key barriers and solutions across several World Bank sectors, and it includes a checklist for Task Team Leaders (TTLs) to use throughout the project cycle. TTLs will benefit from the toolkit’s key questions and suggested indicators aimed to increase inclusion of women and girls with disabilities across WBG projects and a set of resources for additional support. It addresses measures to promote the socioeconomic inclusion of women with disabilities across several critical sectors for World Bank operations: education; employment and entrepreneurship; social protection; gender based violence; health; digital development; water and sanitation; transportation and urban planning; fragility, conflict, violence; and disaster risk management. It seeks to support WBG task teams in inclusive approaches to the design, implementation, and evaluation of all projects to better support women and girls with disabilities and address their intersectional needs.

This S4YE note examines women's participation in online gig work, contrasting their motivations with those of their male counterparts and outlining the typical profiles of male and female gig workers regarding age, education, working hours, and involvement in freelancing communities. It delves into how these workers identify themselves in relation to the platform or their clients and highlights the key benefits they seek from online gig platforms. The note also identifies critical skills crucial for success in this domain, suggesting potential areas for performance improvement. Finally, it summarizes the aspirations of both male and female online gig workers, offering insights into the industry's future trajectory.

This report estimates the size of the South African care economy through an analysis of the number of existing and potential future job opportunities in the sector. It also outlines the potential impact of investment into the care economy including economic impact, impact on beneficiaries, and impact on the young people who could access the job opportunities together with the broader societal impacts.

This World Bank report draws on data from the most recent Nigeria General Household Survey to makes five critical contributions towards improving gender inclusion in Nigeria: (1) highlighting the gender gaps in labor force participation; (2) documenting the magnitude and drivers of the gender gaps in key economic sectors; (3) diving deep into three contextual constraints: land, livestock, and occupational segregation; (4) measuring the costs of the gender gaps; and (5) offering policy and programming recommendations of innovative options to close the gender gaps.

The study draws on youth and employer survey results to document the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people in Jordan and Palestine, with an emphasis on vulnerable youth including refugees in Jordan, youth in Gaza, and young women. Key topics include:

• Youth employment trajectories during the pandemic
• Youth interest in virtual freelancing jobs
• Employer hiring projections and demand for skills
• Promising sectors for youth employment during the COVID-19 recovery

This report outlines the great potential for feminist digital activism to catalyze transformative shifts in thinking and behavior. It analyzes how hashtag campaigns, organized groups and individual activists post-feminist content online to change attitudes, behavior, and influence policies and laws. Finally, the report considers how online and offline activism can bolster one another.

This S4YE Knowledge Brief presents emerging evidence of the scale of online gender-based violence in low- and middle-income countries and their impact on the participation of young women in digital sectors. It then outlines suggested policy responses and interventions.

To shed light on the opportunities and challenges facing women platform workers, as well as to better understand their financial profile and need for financial services, CGAP conducted primary research with women platform workers and sellers.

This report provides an overview of the laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. It presents eight indicators structured around women’s interactions with the law as they progress through their lives and careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. Finally, the report identifies the barriers to women’s economic participation and encourages the reform of discriminatory laws.

The report offers initial findings and recommendations to development organizations, policymakers, and other private and public stakeholders seeking to address barriers to employment and to promote opportunities for refugee women in the digital workforce in Jordan and Lebanon.

Buildher aims to equip women in Kenya with accredited construction skills, which are expected to allow beneficiaries to have greater financial independence and prosperity, to change male attitudes and to promote gender equality within the construction industry.

This report explores how a well-being approach can help build back better and identifies common well-being priorities for recovery. The proposed solutions include the need to: increase job and financial security of households, particularly of those most affected by the crisis; promote equality of opportunity and mitigate the scarring effects of the crisis on the most vulnerable individuals and workers, with a focus on youth, women and the low-skilled; lift the burden of poor physical and mental health; take decisive action on climate change and environmental degradation, and reinforce trust in others and public institutions as the basis for greater social cohesion in the future.

This report presents a first diagnostic of Africa’s gender gap in financing early-stage ventures in the digital economy (start-ups). The report’s findings indicate that since 2013, only 3 percent of total funding for Africa’s tech start-ups went to all-female founding teams, compared with 76 percent of funding for all-male teams. The report’s analysis shows that female founders are underrepresented in the sectors that attract the most financing; however, even those all-female teams that are working in sectors with high investor interest remain less likely to receive financing than all-male teams, and they receive smaller amounts if they do. Male and female entrepreneurs in the report’s sample also followed different financing paths: female founders were less likely to pitch for equity investments; conversely, they were more likely to apply for bank loans, or to prefer growth from retained earnings.

The transition to a green economy will create many new jobs around the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa. But will women share in these new jobs, and will the economic transformation help them move into higher-paid, more stable jobs that require more education and skills?  This brief presents some insights into the green job opportunities available for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides policy recommendations to establish appropriate and enabling policies and programmes to ensure that women get an equitable share of green jobs.

This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm-level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. It goes beyond looking at contextual, endowment and household restrictions in isolation, and, through deep-dive analysis, uncovers new evidence on how social norms, networks and household-level decision making contribute to business performance. It analyzes how they are linked to each other and to women’s strategic business decisions.