Women at Work: Toward Inclusion in the Global Workforce

Can you remember the last time you couldn’t make it to work? Maybe your nanny canceled, and you were left without childcare. Or maybe your car battery died, and you didn’t have a safe way to get to the office.

These are the kinds of barriers that women around the world face every day—except without the safety nets many of us take for granted. It likely comes as no surprise that, across the globe, women’s participation in the workforce remains lower than men’s.

Last week, I learned that new U.S. tariffs are disproportionately hurting women who produce goods for export—another hit on the burden women carry globally. I was troubled, but not surprised. Around the world, women shoulder much of the world’s work, both seen and unseen. They keep families fed, communities stable, and local economies alive. Yet too often, they’re the first to lose income when global systems shift.

A new report from VoxDev—an international platform where leading economists share research on global development—underscores how deeply these challenges run. Economist Dr. Rachel Heath highlights policies that consistently help women enter and stay in the workforce: affordable childcare, household decision-making power, safe and flexible workplaces, and support for export industries that tend to hire women.

And yet, despite decades of progress, women’s participation in the workforce has actually declined over the last 30 years. Barriers like harassment on public transportation, lack of family support, and the high cost of childcare remain pervasive. The Covid-19 pandemic pushed many women out of work—and now, global trade disruptions are compounding the strain.

At One Day’s Wages, we take seriously every opportunity to walk alongside women in low-income communities who are creating dignified ways to earn income for their families.

In Kenya’s Kibera settlement, Garden of Hope supports women to launch or expand small businesses near their homes, where they can keep an eye on their little ones while earning needed income.

In Liberia, Camp for Peace launched a free, on-site childcare program while their mothers learned sewing and weaving skills as a means of generating income.

And in Cameroon, Survivors’ Network coupled entrepreneurship training with awareness and education about human trafficking to protect vulnerable women from exploitation.

Progress may be slow, but it is steady—and it is transformative. Each new skill learned, each business launched, each barrier lowered creates ripples of change that extend far beyond one woman or one family.

Because when women rise, communities rise with them.

Learn more about ODW’s focus on Social Inclusion here.