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INTRODUCTIONAdvances in substantive equality for women canbe achieved through establishing core socialprotections and improving the quantity and qualityof paid employment, as previous chapters of thisReport have argued. Macroeconomic policiesshape the overall economic environment forrealizing women’s economic and social rightsthrough their impact on employment creation andfiscal space in particular. How macroeconomicpolicies are designed and implemented will thushave a direct impact on the likelihood that genderequality is achieved. Two broad categories ofmacroeconomic policies are fiscal policy andmonetary policy. Fiscal policy involves the useof government expenditures, taxes and publicborrowing to achieve economic and social goals.Monetary policy operates through financialmarkets and institutions to influence the moneysupply, interest rates, credit availability andexchange rates.Despite its importance to a range of economic andsocial outcomes, macroeconomic managementtypically focuses on a narrow set of goals such asincreasing gross domestic product (GDP) growthrates or reducing inflation to extremely low levels.Questions of inequality and distribution are absentor poorly addressed. 1 It is often assumed thateconomic growth will provide solutions to persistentproblems such as gender inequality, yet evidenceshows that faster growth in itself will not achievethis. 2 If economic and social policies are to supportthe realization of substantive equality, a rethinkingof macroeconomic policies is essential.Why does macroeconomic policy matter forgender equality?Macroeconomic policies deal with economicaggregates, typically without any reference togender equality. For example, macroeconomicpolicy targets, such as interest rates, do notconsider distinct interest rates for women and men.Because of this, such policies are often said to begender-neutral. However, broad-based economicpolicies do have gender-specific effects becausethese policies interact with structural features ofthe economy, such as the distribution of unpaidwork and the segregation of women and men intodifferent types of employment, to produce distinctlygendered outcomes.Box 4.1 provides an example of how apparentlygender-neutral fiscal policy in the UnitedKingdom in response to the 2008 crisis haddifferentiated impacts for women and men.Macroeconomic policies can limit or broaden thepossibilities for redressing women’s socio-economicdisadvantage through several channels, directlyand indirectly.First, macroeconomic policies have a directimpact on both the quantity and quality ofemployment opportunities available to womenand men. Moreover, because of widespreadoccupational segregation in the labour market,described in detail in Chapter 2, economicpolicies that have distinct effects on particularsectors, such as the service sector, will affectwomen and men’s employment differently.Second, macroeconomic policies affect theburden of unpaid care and domestic work viatheir impacts on employment, household incomesand living standards. Demands on unpaid workmay intensify during times of economic stress,increasing the burden on women.Third, macroeconomic policies have distributiveconsequences—for example, through taxation—that affect women and men differently and caneither reinforce the extent of women’s socioeconomicdisadvantage or, potentially, promote aredistribution of resources towards women.