The World Inequality Report 2026 was published this June by the World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics. The UN report ‘Counting What Counts’ was released this May. The first focuses on inequality head on. The second does so in part. Both pay some attention to gender inequality. But how? By focusing entirely on women’s unequal position in the labour market. Dare we ask: What about wealth inequality? Neither report mentions women and wealth, although the WIR spends many ungendered chapters on household wealth inequality. So, what are these reports implying? That wealth is only for men while women are merely labour?
The vast body of academic research on women’s economic status over the decades has focused mainly on one thing: Women’s situation in the labour market. This persistent mismeasurement of women’s economic status by ignoring gender inequality in wealth and assets in numerous papers, reports and policy briefs makes the main source of gendered economic inequality in much of the world, invisible and ignored in policy. Work by feminist economists does not entirely escape this bias.
Why is measuring gendered inequality in wealth so important? Not just to correct serious conceptual flaws in measuring gender inequality, but also because wealth/asset ownership (a) affects women’s and children’s well-being in ways that employment alone does not; (b) impacts productivity and economic growth; and (c) is key to most sources of decent work and earnings. Consider each.
First, a vast body of global empirical evidence over three decades (1994-2024), starting from that cited in my 1994 book, A Field of One’s Own, till today, shows that in the Global South if the mother owns assets, child survival, health and education outcomes are likely to be significantly better than if only the father owns assets. Gender matters beyond class. Owning immovable assets also hugely reduces women’s risk of domestic violence and of poverty in case of marital breakdown.
Second, several studies, including those collated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation show that if women have access to a productive asset like farmland and related inputs it can greatly increase farm productivity and a country’s agricultural growth rates. Third, for vast numbers of women, especially in the Global South, owning productive assets is essential for viable livelihoods since women are employed largely in the informal sector and especially in agriculture.
In India, for instance, in the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, two aspects stand out. One, some 86 per cent of all women workers (rural and urban) and 91 per cent of rural women workers are informally employed. About 77 per cent of the latter work in agriculture. Two, 73 per cent of rural women workers are “self-employed”, mostly as unpaid workers on family farms or in small business enterprises, including street-vending. Hence, barely a quarter of rural women workers (and a third of all women workers) are in wage employment (regular or casual). For the rest, who are self-employed, asset ownership is key to viable earnings: For example, land for farming; carts or stalls for street vending, and so on.
However, as diverse data sources (NFHS, ICRISAT, IHDS) consistently show, Indian women own land in only 12-16 per cent of rural landowning households, even though many are de-facto farmers as mainly men out-migrate to non-farm jobs. For these women farmers, owning land, farm tools, and other assets is complementary to their ability to work and earn. The same argument applies to small businesses.
Yet, both the WIR and UN Reports use average hourly earnings as the primary measure of women’s economic status, ignoring their wealth/asset status and hence greatly undercount economic gender inequalities. Also, by conflating women’s “unpaid” work with domestic work hours they fail to capture women’s unpaid productive work on family farms and businesses.
Third, using the ratio of female to male hourly earnings as a measure of gender inequality, as done by both reports, is itself problematic. Most people don’t earn by the “hour”. Returns from self-employment, in particular, cannot be converted easily into “hourly” earnings. How would you measure, say, the hourly earnings of a farmer, shopkeeper, or vegetable vendor who rarely record hours worked? At the very least the measure should be female/male annual earnings.
Fourth, the WIR attributes women’s lower (than male) employment rates globally to inadequate access to affordable childcare, transport, family leave, and hiring discrimination, again ignoring asset ownership. The impact of lower pay for women on their wealth accumulation is mentioned in passing, but as the Paris Lab has itself established, the main contributor to wealth inequality is inheritance, not earnings.
A common excuse for not measuring gender inequality in wealth is lack of data. This elides the issue. First, there is existing data on some indicators: For instance, in the Global North, pension-wealth data are available by gender in many countries, as is gender information on the richest 1 per cent. In the Global South, gendered data on land owned are available for a growing number of countries (FAO and World Bank). Second, the World Inequality Lab (Paris) actively mines data and has successfully persuaded many governments to collect/share wealth data. Even with incomplete data, some gender estimates are possible. Equally important is acknowledging that labour market analysis barely touches the surface of economic inequality by gender.
Moreover, for reducing global wealth inequality, policies to tackle gender wealth inequality are as essential as policies to tackle household wealth inequality. But the two sets of policies cannot be identical, since the former also need to grapple with intra-household inequalities.
Ignoring gender gaps in wealth and focusing only on women’s labour implies that the authors of the two reports, all progressive thinkers, are fine with a world where only men yield capital while women sell their labour. Even Marx (despite his limited gender analysis) would feel uncomfortable with that scenario in the twenty-first century.
The writer is professor of Development Economics and Environment, GDI, University of Manchester; and former director, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
For women farmers, owning land, farm tools, and other assets is complementary to their ability to work and earn. The same argument applies to small businesses 
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