# **1 Introduction**

Women are the bedrock of the economy and of society in Liberia. As of 2016, women comprise 50 percent of the Liberian labor force (Johanssen da Silva, 2021), supplying 76 percent of labor for cash crop production and 93 percent of the labor for food crop production (GoL 2009). About 80 percent of women own small enterprises, compared to 57 percent of men (Johanssen da Silva, 2021). In addition, women in Liberia are responsible for overseeing household activities, particularly in rural communities where they engage in household food security and are responsible for caregiving of children and other household members.

Despite their contributions to economic production, women are systematically excluded from fully contributing since they are clustered in lower productivity and lower earning sectors of the labor market. Approximately 86 percent of women are employed in petty trade or in the agriculture sector, which will remain a low productivity sector until broader market reforms are implemented (Johanssen da Silva, 2021). About 94 percent of women are informally employed compared to 79 percent of men (Liberia Institute for Statistics and Geo-Information Services, 2015). Among the non-farm self-employed, 55 percent of enterprises are owned by women, though their enterprises are smaller and less well established than those of men, and less than 5 percent of women hold formal sector jobs (Johanssen da Silva, 2021). In Liberia, women earn about 14 percent less than male counterparts with similar skills and engaged in similar work.

Liberian women’s limited economic contributions are due to a range of disadvantages. Women lag behind men in human capital accumulation, which is marked by significant disparities in educational attainment despite recent progress in increasing girls’ schooling. The median years of schooling is 3.4 years for women compared to 6.5 years for men. The threat of violence likewise impedes the movement of women for economic, educational and civic activities (Gaussman et al, forthcoming). Fertility in Liberia is relatively high at 4.2 births per woman of reproductive age, and 30 percent of Liberian women have their first child before the age of 18 (Cunningham, et al 2022). Women receive less financial credit and own fewer physical assets and land. The challenges that women face to resource ownership, schooling, and better health are compounded by a weak infrastructure, restrictive social norms, and poor institutions. Despite electing the first female Head of State in Africa, women in Liberia remain significantly restricted in terms of their relative capacity for decision-making and sociopolitical autonomy; for example, only 16 percent of women who are married or in a union make their own choices over their contraceptive use and health care (Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), 2014), and women only hold 12 percent of national parliamentary seats in Liberia (World Bank, 2022).

Women’s severe disadvantage in Liberia begs the question as to where Liberia would be in terms of development if women were to have similar political, social, and economic opportunities as men. The realization of economic potential through increased investments in women and girls, also known as the “gender dividend,” emphasizes that societies could be more productive and equitable if gender gaps, particularly in the labor market, were closed. Global estimates of the gender dividend have indicated that hundreds of trillions of dollars have been lost as a result of persisting social, political, and economic gender gaps (Wodon et al., 2020).

Indeed, the Government of Liberia, civil society, and Liberian citizens recognize the contributions that women have made, and can make, to society, but the decision-makers are yet to allocate public resources and efforts to substantially address the gender gaps that are holding Liberia back. Its Vision 2030 document identifies “a society of gender equity... and opportunities for all.” The development plan for 2018-2023 also recognized the need to address gender gaps as a means to reduce poverty and create 2