it argues that increasing womens participation in the labour force a general trend in most developing countries in recent years is not a straightforward pathway either to faster or to more inclusive growth and development as is too often implied rather the potential for w omens increasing participation in paid work including selfemployment to substantively enhance both women s economic empowerment and gender equality is determined by prevailing sociocultural conditions moreover its wider distributional impact is fundamentally dependent on the prevailing processes of technological and structural change those processes in turn are affected by the global and macroeconomic conditions and policies which influence the level and structure of aggregate demand