Key Evidence

Structural barriers limit women’s access to formal job opportunities.

Women’s concentration in informal employment reflects limited and unequal access to formal job opportunities. Structural constraints - including labor market segmentation, hiring bias, and restricted access to networks and higher-paying sectors - reduce women’s likelihood of entering formal employment, even when they seek it.

• There are large gender differences, favoring men, in the proportion of people who want a job but don’t have one. Survey data from India shows that 73% of women expressed a preference for “regular, part-time” work, but only 10% of employed women actually worked in such a job. (VoxDev, 2024)
• The scale of women’s informal work underscores the structural nature of limited access to formal employment and labor protections: 83% of women are in informal employment in South Asia; 74% in Sub-Saharan Africa; and 54% in Latin America. (UN Women, 2023)

Discriminatory hiring and structural biases restrict women’s access to formal jobs.

Employer bias and structural discrimination limit women’s access to formal jobs, even when qualifications are comparable.

• In urban Pakistan, employers were 11.5 percentage points less likely to prefer CVs with a female name in a hypothetical CV-rating exercise, and in the same labor market, the authors found that gender differences in employment outcomes are far larger than gender gaps in indicators of search behavior (VoxDev, 2024).
• Many employers advertising on prominent job portals in both China and India have been shown to have gendered preferences which, when conveyed either explicitly or implicitly to jobseekers, attract an applicant pool skewed towards those preferences (VoxDev, 2024)

Care responsibilities and social norms not only shape women’s labor supply, but also influence employer perceptions and hiring decisions, further limiting women’s access to formal jobs. 

Women’s access to formal employment is shaped by structural constraints outside the labor market, including unpaid care responsibilities, mobility limitations, and restricted access to professional networks.

• A MicroSave study found that 59% of respondents lacked dependable and affordable daycare infrastructure, and 98% were unaware of any local or government childcare support for informal workers. High costs, limited availability, and low trust in childcare services push many women toward flexible informal work rather than stable formal employment. (MicroSave, 2024). 
• Latin America: Women perform approximately three-fourths of unpaid care work in Latin America, with this labor valued at roughly 21% of GDP. The disproportionate unpaid care burden limits women’s ability to enter and remain in formal labor markets, particularly where childcare costs are high and service availability is limited (Milken Institute, 2024).

Limited access to formal employment constrains financial inclusion.

The nature of informal work directly constrains women’s ability to access and use formal financial services. Without stable, documented income or employer-linked benefits, women remain financially “invisible” to formal financial systems.

• 1.6 billion people remain outside of the formal financial system. With thin or nonexistent credit histories and documented assets, informal workers remain statistically invisible, limiting exposure to formal financial services and constraining asset-building and economic stability (Accion, 2025; Accion, 2026)
• Limited access to formal credit can reinforce women’s concentration in low-paying informal work. Evidence from Turkey shows that access to formal credit - particularly when paired with training and networking support - enabled women to transition from informal employment into more stable positions in retail and services sectors, illustrating the role of financial access in expanding formal employment pathways. (CGAP, 2025)

Emerging evidence on solutions and pathways

Addressing barriers to women’s access to formal employment requires coordinated interventions across labor markets, social policy, and employer practices. Emerging evidence highlights the importance of gender-intentional policies and programs that reduce structural constraints, improve access to jobs, and create more inclusive workplaces.