Endangering the Investment Climate

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require high levels of productive private and public sector investment, which in turn requires a suitable investment climate. This paper provides a gender analysis of the investment climate that uses capability theory to understand the economic dimensions of unpaid care work and how these can improve or constrain the investment climate, demonstrating that gender relations and the distribution of unpaid care work affect and are affected by the investment climate. The paper makes the point that, in terms of policy, it can be argued that reducing gender-based violence, facilitating female human capital formation, investing in technological and physical infrastructure and improving female financial inclusion can improve the investment climate in ways that also facilitate improvements in gender equality.