It argues that increasing women''s 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 omen's increasing participation in paid work, including self-employment, to substantively enhance both women’s economic empowerment and gender equality is determined by prevailing socio-cultural 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.