This International Women’s Day, we highlight the role of fiscal policy in advancing gender equality and the research that helps make it possible.
At the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), gender has always been a central pillar of our work. And this work is becoming much more urgent.
Women globally still earn on average 20% less than men, a gap further exacerbated in low-income countries where women are disproportionately found in informal and vulnerable employment. At the same time, women shoulder a bigger share of unpaid care and domestic work and gender gaps in access to social protection remain significant. These inequalities are not separate from tax policy but are deeply connected to how governments raise and redistribute revenue.
From informality and social protection to fiscal politics and religious redistribution, we’ve selected five essential ICTD reads that explore the intersection between gender and tax:
1. Zakat as Non-State Social Welfare Provision: Distributional Dynamics and Gender Equity in Pakistan
This study explores how zakat — an annual mandatory payment on productive wealth and one of the five pillars of Islam — functions as a parallel system of redistribution in Pakistan. It examines how much is paid, how funds are allocated, and who benefits — revealing surprising insights about the role of gender and ethnicity in wealth redistribution.
The research reveals that women — particularly widows — make up an overwhelming majority of zakat recipients. It highlights how religiously mandated redistribution can shape women’s economic security, particularly in contexts where formal social protection systems are limited.
2. Tax and Gender: Why Informality Matters
Women are disproportionately represented in the informal economy, yet this sector is often overlooked in tax policy debates. This policy brief argues that ignoring informality means overlooking a central dimension of the gendered impacts of taxation.
The authors show how informal workers are the subject of several taxes from simplified tax regimes, to local levies (such as market tax), and informal taxes (to access public goods and services). By challenging policymakers to consider the gendered realities of taxation in the informal sector, the brief proposes shifting attention away from informal sector taxation towards more progressive tax systems and the taxation of wealth.
3. Furthering a Feminist Fiscal Agenda: Engendering Tax and Development
What would it mean to build a truly feminist fiscal agenda to strengthen gender equity?
This journal article moves beyond narrow analyses of tax bias to understand how taxation affects men and women differently and relates to gender equity in lower-income countries. Through the review of research and development practice, the authors identify channels through which taxation can lead to gendered outcomes.
Recognising that tax reforms may not always be the most appropriate way to address underlying gender inequities and the resulting implicit tax biases, it calls for integrating gender equality into the heart of fiscal policy agenda.
4. Towards Gender Equality in Tax and Fiscal Systems: Moving Beyond the Implicit–Explicit Bias Framework
Much of the early gender-and-tax literature focused on whether tax provisions explicitly or implicitly discriminate against women. This policy brief argues that, as explicit biases has become increasingly rare, this framework is now insufficient.
Instead, the authors propose a broader approach that considers structural inequalities, fiscal policy and progressive tax policy (progressive income taxes, reducing exemptions and tax expenditures, improving enforcement of existing taxes on wealth). By shifting the lens from narrow tax provisions to entire fiscal systems, the brief provides a roadmap for more transformative reform.
5. ICTD Contributions to the Brookings Institution Compendium on Gender and Tax
ICTD contributed to two chapters in the Brookings Center for Sustainable Development compendium “Innovations in public finance: A new fiscal paradigm for gender equality, climate adaptation, and care”:
- Fiscal Politics: The Missing Link Between Fiscal Policy and Gender Equality
- Tax, Informality and Gender Equity in Lower-Income Countries
Together, these chapters explore how innovations in domestic resource mobilisation (DRM) and climate adaptation finance can advance equality, with a particular focus on gender equality.
Moving the gender and tax conversation forward
As debates about domestic resource mobilisation, digitalisation, and fiscal reform intensify, gender cannot remain peripheral. Tax systems are not gender-neutral: they shape incentives, opportunities, and access to resources in ways that affect women and men differently.
This International Women’s Day, we invite you to explore these publications and join us in advancing a more inclusive and equitable fiscal agenda — one where tax policy contributes meaningfully to gender equality rather than reinforcing existing divides.
To explore more ICTD work on gender and tax.
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