ICTD research on gender and tax aims to accelerate the shift in international policy debates in this area. On International Women’s Day 2025, we are launching a new blog series to celebrate the work of women researchers or highlight insights from gender focused research. We kick off this series with a blogpost by Sripriya Srivatsa, our Thematic Focal Point for gender and tax.
Mainstreaming gender in research is not just about studying ‘women and tax’—it’s about embedding gender analysis across all areas of tax research and policy. UN women defines gender mainstreaming as a specific set of strategies, technical and institutional processes undertaken to advance the goal of gender equality both in public and private organisations. Implementing this approach within our institution has given us the opportunity to highlight the gendered dimensions of various tax issues and effectively challenge persistent misconceptions about taxation and gender in lower-income countries. In fact, over the last two-odd years, I have been working on identifying points of intersection between gender and topics such as property taxation, tax administration and compliance, digitisation and the like.
The impact of our research for gender has been significant: we are able to influence global discourse on gender and tax, and with our specific expertise working in lower income countries, particularly in Africa, we have been able to draw connections across otherwise separately studied fields such as parliamentary debates and gender and taxation, macroeconomic re-framing of concepts such as ‘biases’ in the tax system, and gender and tax administrations.
Why does this matter for tax research?
Through our work, we have learnt that integrating a gender lens—rather than treating gender as a separate, standalone issue — doesn’t merely add nuance, it fundamentally reshapes how we think about women’s experience of taxation and fiscal equity. Gender mainstreaming in ICTD’s tax research advocates for going beyond identification of biases in tax policy. Our efforts emphasise ascertaining the deeper systemic ways in which tax structures reinforce existing inequalities.
If we focus solely on making revenue collection ‘fairer’ or gender-equitable but leave expenditure policy unchanged, we’re only solving a small section of the wider gender inequality problem. Likewise, running taxpayer education programmes without ensuring that the increased revenues contribute to tangible improvements—like expanding access to higher education for girls—limits their long-term, broader population impact.
What happens when gender considerations are missing from policies
Despite growing recognition of gender in public finance, many institutions continue to treat gender analysis as a topical addition rather than a fundamental component of policy design. Below are some of the negative outcomes of public institutions failing to integrate gender perspectives into their core functions:
- Inequitable service delivery: Public services that do not account for gender-specific requirements may fail to meet the diverse needs of the population. Healthcare systems lacking maternal health services or education policies that do not address gender disparities can deepen social inequities. For example, our analysis of data from Eswatini shows that women are significantly less satisfied to find that registering their businesses will bring them any benefits (Mascagni and Iyengar Srivatsa, forthcoming). We have also found, consistently across many studies including in another upcoming paper, that women receive lesser knowledge about the tax system than men, unless specific programmes target taxpayer education for groups of women businessowners.
- Inequitable governance strategies: ICTD research has shown that tax policy debates in parliaments rarely integrate gender perspectives, meaning that fiscal policies are often designed without a full understanding of their impact on different segments of society. The lack of representation of women in decision-making roles within tax administrations further compounds this issue. Ultimately, treating gender as an afterthought in public institutions weakens the effectiveness of governance, deepens economic disparities, and limits the potential for inclusive and sustainable development.
- Staff inequality: Institutions that neglect gender considerations within their organisational structures may perpetuate discriminatory practices, setting an example for the broader public that such practices are acceptable. Such oversights result in unequal opportunities for advancement, wage gaps, and a lack of representation of women in leadership positions.
- Erosion of public trust: When public institutions simply ‘tick-the-box’ to show the importance of gender equality without walking the talk, they risk losing credibility and trust among the communities they service, of which women compose a significant portion. This can hinder effective governance and social cohesion of women into the public both as citizens and potential political representatives.
While gender has become an increasingly recognised theme in public finance, institutional barriers remain. Many institutions still treat gender analysis as an add-on, especially with how they collect and manage data. There is a lot to be gained for progressive policy in treating gender and gender-disaggregated data as a necessary building block for designing and evaluating development plans. Gender-acknowledging policymaking acts as a nod to demonstrate that policies have considered gender but does little to reducing disparities, which is something we have committed to changing through our approach to researching gender and taxation.
Gender-Responsive Governance: practical steps are needed
Gender and tax research has reached a point where we can begin to identify long-term avenues for the improvement of fiscal equity in both lower and high-income settings. It is now time to reflect on the shifts we are already seeing in policymakers’ approach to gender equity in various public institutions and examine whether the political will to integrate gender into tangible policy changes that benefit women and girls is acted upon. Gender-responsive tax and other public systems are not limited to the reconfiguration of technical design—they require practical steps for embedding gender in policymaking including mandatory gender impact assessments, gender sensitive budgeting, and accountability at the leadership level.
ICTD’s strategy for integrating gender into tax research, from launching a new Community of Practice on Gender and Tax to publishing research, and engaging policymakers in high-level discussions, is but one example in a wider call for policymakers, institutions and citizens to actively seek gender-responsive governance. As we launch our blog series demonstrating our mainstreaming efforts and promoting our women tax researchers, we encourage readers to engage with our work on gender and tax, and push for more inclusive policies in their own spheres of work.
