Women's financial participation and working conditions mean opportunities for women to make strategic life choices by having equal access to and control of vital economic resources, the same opportunities in the labour market and shared responsibility for paid and unpaid work. It is crucial to increase female involvement in agriculture, female entrepreneurship and implement the International Labour Organization's (ILO) Decent Work Agenda. It is also about highlighting and redistributing the unpaid work performed by women and girls in order to give them time for education, participation in decision-making processes and productive work. One significant part is removing legislation and cultural barriers to women's ownership, their access to natural resources and equal rights to divorce and inheritance.
Legislation is lagging behind
In general, one can say that in many countries it is more difficult for women to start up and run their own businesses. Women's participation in the labour market is lower than men's and women normally earn less than men and they own/co-own only one-third of all businesses. In recent years many countries have changed legislation in order to facilitate entrepreneurship and job creation, but have kept the legislation treating men and women differently thus affecting women’s opportunities for work and entrepreneurship. Turkey, the Sudan, the occupied Palestinian Territories and Mali are examples of countries where women’s participation in the labour market is very low compared to men's. Negative development has taken place in Zimbabwe, Turkey, Tanzania and Kyrgyzstan while over the past ten years the participation of women in the labour market in relation to men has risen dramatically in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Bolivia and Burkina Faso.
