Making tax work for women's rights
By ActionAid.
Tax and women’s rights are entwined.
How tax is spent and raised matters more for women than men. And there is lots of potential for tax to bring about positive change in women’s lives – at the moment, developing countries give away massive unnecessary corporate tax breaks while services that women need struggle for funding, while at the same time tax could be raised more progressively.
Women are disadvantaged in comparison to men, according to virtually every global measure: women do the vast majority of unpaid care work, are overrepresented in poorly-paid and precarious work, and one in three women will experience violence in their lifetimes.
Governments have the responsibility to ensure that women can access and realise their rights, and one key step to ending gender inequality is to provide more and better-quality public services. This will reduce women’s unpaid care burden: for example, providing piped water to households eliminates the need for women to make long and often hazardous journeys to water-points.
