Women’s share of the labor market ranges from roughly one in five workers to near parity depending on the country. Women approach near-parity in Europe and North America, making up roughly 47% to 48% of the total workforce. They also constitute nearly half of all workers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, in South and West Asia, as well as North Africa, women constitute only one in five participants in the formal workforce. Culture, infrastructure, policy, and social norms all shape who gets to work. The rise of gig work in the past decade has given women more opportunities to enter the workforce, particularly in countries where societal norms largely limit their participation.
Freelancing offers flexibility and autonomy. Women can set their own schedules, choose which clients to work with, and often work from home without face-to-face interactions. But as we showed in our earlier analysis of the gender wage gap in US gig work, a gender gap in pay persists even when workers set their own prices. On the freelancing Country Freelance Gender Work
