I was recently in Tbilisi to participate in a conference that took stock of what we know about the challenges of job creation in the South Caucasus and Western CIS.

While researching gender inequalities in the labour markets of these countries, I searched for evidence on how the challenge of job creation can be overcome without perpetuating gender inequalities in the region, and preferably, by reducing them.

I quickly discovered that there was no simple answer to this question. Nevertheless, I came away with a couple of key insights.

One was that expanding women-owned businesses could be a way to create more and better jobs.

Female-owned businesses not only tend to operate in labour-intensive sectors but – and more surprisingly – they have greater scale economies than male-owned businesses, which means that their performance benefits more from expansion.

Importantly, they tend to hire proportionately more women.

For example, in 2009 in Georgia, almost 60 percent of full-time workers in firms where women were among the owners were female, compared to 31 percent in firms without women owners.

This suggests that if we push for more female-owned businesses, we can create better jobs. It also suggests that private-sector development policies would be more effective if they had stronger gender components.

For example: Would tax breaks for start-ups with their own daycare facilities increase business formation rates?

Secondly, my research further convinced me of the need to tackle the issue of care work, a burden borne mostly by women.

Childcare burdens are a major factor preventing women-owned businesses from expanding and generating wage employment, which we know makes a dramatic difference in empowering them.

Childcare burdens also prevent women from seeking wage employment. Therefore, alleviating childcare constraints can carry us a long way towards expanding women’s economic opportunities.

It helps that, as independent new research finds, the expansion of the childcare sector directly creates more and better jobs for women – as well as for unemployed men. It is heartening that UN organizations are supporting such work.

Most certainly, a comprehensive approach will be needed to tackle the challenge of achieving inclusive job growth in the region and beyond.

Nevertheless, all this tells us that taking a gender lens to employment creation is an important part of the solution.

(cross-posted at UNDP’s Voices from Eurasia)