More women now cushioning families from financial hardships

Women are contributing more in households due to increased exposure to economic empowerment, cushioning their families from financial hardships.

The findings, in the latest report by a UN agency, indicates women globally are increasingly gaining access to resources earned through income, social protection and asset ownership.

The report by UN Women dubbed Progress of the World’s Women 2019-2020 says this has triggered some shifts in the balance of power in homes, giving women greater economic security and weight in decision-making processes.

The report says the increased economic might by women is also helping them cushion their families from financial hardship.

However, the report observes that despite this progress, married women still contribute less in support of family duties.

“Even in developed countries where women’s gains have been more sweeping and sustained, those who live with a male partner still generally contribute less than half of the family income and accumulate an even smaller share of its wealth,” reads the report.

‘Motherhood penalties’ in the form of reduced employment rates and a pay-gap between women with and without children are a persistent problem.

Further, single mothers who lack income protection from a second earner, for example, face a much higher risk of poverty compared to two-parent families.

The report, however, also recognises that while overall women’s access to economic resources has improved, the distribution of unpaid care work remains largely unequal.

Compared to men, women do three times as much unpaid care and domestic work within families, with particularly stark inequalities in developing-country contexts, where access to time-saving infrastructure and public services is more limited.

On family size, the report notes that more women are voicing their concerns in reproductive matters such as childbearing.

“Women are exercising greater agency and voice in decisions regarding whether and when to have children, and how many. In practical terms, smaller families can be less costly to maintain, and women’s care and domestic work burden within them may be smaller.”

The findings reveal that in some regions couples may be limiting the number of children they have in response to economic conditions that make childrearing financially challenging or because in the absence of quality long-term care services, they also have older parents to care for.

Women, the report says, may also be choosing to have fewer children because men still do not do their fair share of unpaid care and domestic work.

All over the world, birth rates are declining, the report notes, although the pace of change varies across regions.

In the past three decades, significant changes have occurred in whether, when and with whom women and men form intimate partnerships.

Delaying marriage, the report observes, has enabled women to complete their education, gain a stronger foothold in the labour market and support themselves financially.

Cohabitation has also been on the rise with some regions registering an increasing number of women opting out of marriage altogether.

“These decisions can arise out of necessity as much as choice when the cost of setting up a family for some couples is too high. It can also reflect women’s growing reluctance to enter into partnerships in which they are expected to take on a subordinate role,” the report says.

Rising divorce rates, the report notes, has been one of the most visible features of family change in most regions since the 1980s. The liberalisation of divorce laws in some developed countries has led to lower rates of suicide by women, a lower incidence of reported domestic violence and fewer instances of women being murdered by their spouses.