At least since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, the global community has recognized that greater equality between men and women is an essential component of advancing social and economic development and slowing population growth. Where women are free to determine when and whether they will have children, fertility rates fall. Research also shows that the more education a woman receives, the fewer children she has and the healthier and better educated those children are. Other studies suggest that if women have the right and ability to manage childbearing, they can manage other areas of their lives more effectively too, including available resources. And a recent World Bank report found that the lack of gender equality stymies the ability of developing- country governments to promote economic growth and reduce poverty.

Throughout the developing world, in particular, gender plays a strong role in how resources are used, controlled, and developed and in how people respond to environmental challenges. These connections are particularly strong in rural areas, where people depend directly on resources on a daily basis, but there is evidence that they persist in urban settings and in wealthy nations as well. For the most part, though, men still decide how the world's natural resources are used through, for example, mining, livestock grazing, logging, and land tenure. By some estimates, women around the world hold title to less than 2 percent of the land that is owned.

Progress towards achieving equality between the sexes is one of the most dramatic social changes of this century. The achievement of this equality is a world-wide goal, set in 1975 and reaffirmed in 1985 at the end of the United Nations Decade for Women. The Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women foresee the achievement of full equality during the first quarter of the 21st century. Although this ambitious target has strong implications for the future global economy and society, projecting its consequences requires particular care. The effect of a progressive elimination of inequalities, on which many social and economic relations are still based, may not be fully visible until well into the next century.

Between 1985 and the year 2000, the number of women in the world increased by some 635 million, from 2.4 billion to just over 3 billion, with almost 80 per cent of them living in the developing regions. The proportion of women in the total population fell slightly, from 49.7 per cent to 49.6 per cent, reflecting faster growth in population in the developing regions. With the exception of Africa, these regions will continue to have more men than women, especially in Latin America and South and East Asia, although the trend is towards parity. In South Asia, the projected ratio is 104.9 men to every 100 women in the early part of the century. This contrasts with the developed regions, where the ratio of men to women was 94.2 in 1983 and is projected to rise slightly to 95.6.

A likely effect of increased life expectancy for women in developing countries will be more women entering the formal labour force after their child-bearing years. How the economies of these countries will adjust to the large numbers of women wishing to enter the labour market will be a major issue. If current trends are not modified, projections indicate that the participation of women in the officially measured economically active population will decline. Throughout the world women make an important contribution to the economy, however, even though many of their productive activities are not formally recognized. In addition to their presence in formal employment, women contribute significantly to work on family farms and enterprises and in the informal sector, by providing "free" services that maintain and support current and future workers, services that would otherwise need to be provided by the State, or bought in the market. Increased productivity in all such activities can be a major source of increased well-being and economic growth. The entry of more women into formal and more skilled employment could improve their productivity and thereby national incomes.

An increase in the relative number of female workers is unlikely to influence male unemployment adversely. There is no evidence that greater female participation has in the past been at the expense of male employment; employment trends for both sexes have tended to move in the same direction. In the coming years, when the informal sector is expected to increase in importance, women are likely to be hired in jobs that men do not want, based on current preferences, because working hours are limited, or because the job offers a less secure link to the employing enterprise.

At the micro-economic and micro-social levels, women's participation in the economy is often the only way to protect the family in times of difficult economic conditions. Women's employment and the income derived from it maintains, and sometimes ensures by itself, the standard of living of the family.

The number of women who are their family's main economic earners has been increasing in recent years, and this evolution is likely to continue. The trend whereby women work in order to compensate for an otherwise declining standard of living can be expected to continue in the 1990s, especially in those developing countries where no significant increase in per capita income is anticipated. Women's participation is necessary for the economic survival of the family in the early stages of a country's development; in economies characterized by family- based employment, women have higher rates of participation than in economies based on wage labour. Thus, as the development process modifies the structure of employment, women's participation appears as an important adjustment factor within the economy and the family. Even in developed economies, the role of women as secondary wage earners may be essential for the family, and this characteristic is likely to increase. In some countries, such as the United States, studies indicate that women's participation may be inversely related to husbands' wages. Thus, the wife takes a job in order to compensate for an insufficient or declining family income. Studies in other countries suggest that wives of men earning either very low or very high incomes had higher participation rates than wives of men earning middle incomes. These two interpretations of the relationship between female economic participation and the family's, or the husband's income indicate that, in cases of economic difficulties, women are likely to increase their participation in the economy.

The participation of women in the economy is affected by relationships between education, health, and fertility, all of which influence the incentive for a firm to hire a female worker and her strategy in the labour market. These relationships are usually part of a vicious cycle contributing to the exclusion of women from the formal economy. But a policy that targets each aspect of these relationships may generate a virtuous circle promoting better use of women's talents and energies. Specific policies are necessary to promote equal access by women to education, since current trends indicate  that  full equality in  access  to education will not  be achieved by the year 2000. Policies to promote equal access to education are to be complemented by training policies targeting older age groups. (The need to supplement formal education with training for women, not just men, is also evident). Women who have received little or no schooling should benefit from special training programmes to enable them to function effectively in a modern economy.

Women's reproductive role should not be an obstacle to full economic participation. The development of better support systems in the 1990s could influence the environment in which women determine their strategy in the labour market and the terms on which women reconcile their responsibilities in the household as parents and as workers. In most of the world, women work within family enterprises, where social support and economic roles can be combined. Urbanization has reduced the significance of this type of socio-economic structure in many countries, as the work-force in the formal sector increases. This trend can be expected to continue, and is one of the factors underlying the projected reduction in women's share in the global work-force. In order to overcome this effect in economic sectors where family enterprises do not exist, efforts can be made to create an environment in which parental and work responsibilities can be combined, by providing such services as day-care and parental leave. The incentives for an employer to hire a woman should not be lowered by measures that, though intended to favour women workers, may raise the costs they represent for a firm. Thus, parental leave is to be preferred to maternal leave, for example. The question of reconciling parental and work responsibilities can be addressed most easily in the context of more flexible attitudes to career patterns, which make allowances for further study, as well as family responsibilities, for both spouses.

To overcome past conditions, special programmes need to be organized to ensure that women who are in low-skill jobs, unemployed, or who stopped work in order to have children can get special training. Women returnees, in particular, can be an asset to an employer, as they have acquired maturity and certain skills. Their previous education represents an important investment by the society and needs to be used. If a woman decides to go back to work, support should therefore be available to her.

Policies in these areas will have a major bearing on the nature of the contribution that women will make to the economy and its overall impact in the future.