Beyond Equality on Paper: Women's Access to Jobs in Armenia

Women's economic participation is not only about equal opportunity. It is also closely linked to stronger households, more resilient communities, and sustainable economic growth. When women can work, build businesses, access finance, and advance into leadership roles, economies better use their human capital, and businesses benefit from a broader pool of skills and ideas.

For the Women Empowerment Program, run by Arev Society and the Armenian Fund for Sustainable Development, this discussion matters because women's empowerment doesn't end with formal rights. It also depends on whether women have real opportunities to earn an income, develop skills, build sustainable livelihoods, and participate fully in economic life.

Looking at Armenia through the lens of Women, Business and the Law (World Bank, 2026) therefore raises an important question: how can legislative progress translate into meaningful economic opportunities in women's everyday lives?

The economic case is significant. The World Bank estimates that closing gender gaps in employment and entrepreneurship could increase global GDP by around 20 percent. Its Women, Business and the Law 2026 framework assesses 190 economies across three dimensions: legal frameworks, supportive frameworks and enforcement perceptions. The WB report highlights a persistent global gap between rights written into law and the institutions needed to make those rights effective.

Women in Armenia's Labor Market

Armenia already has an important foundation for women's economic participation. According to Women, Business and the Law 2026, Armenia scores 75 out of 100 for its legal frameworks, compared with a global average of 66.97. The country performs particularly strongly in several areas, including mobility, marriage, assets and pensions. Yet its score for supportive frameworks is 44.83, while enforcement perceptions stand at 60.16. The difference is important: the existence of legal rights does not automatically ensure that those rights work equally well in practice.

Women already make up a substantial part of Armenia's labor force, but participation does not always translate into equal economic outcomes. In 2025, the International Labour Organization reported that women in Armenia earn around 25–30 percent less than men for work of equal value. Differences in working hours, occupation, sector, and experience explain part of the gap, but the ILO notes that much remains unexplained and may also reflect social norms and possible discrimination.

Care responsibilities are another important part of the picture. According to the UN Women Data Hub, women and girls aged 15 and over in Armenia spend 21.7 percent of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared with 4.4 percent for men.

This difference matters economically. Time spent on unpaid care can influence whether a woman can accept full-time employment, remain continuously in the labor market, invest in additional training or pursue career advancement. For organizations working directly with women and communities, these figures are therefore more than labor-market indicators: they reflect the practical choices available to women in everyday life.

Many women also work in the informal economy, in agriculture, home-based production, or small-scale trade, where they often lack contracts, social protection, and access to legal remedies, widening the gap between formal rights and real opportunities.

These challenges are even sharper for women from displaced and war-affected families. According to UNHCR Armenia, following the events of 2023, Armenia received more than 115,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, many of them women who must rebuild their livelihoods while often carrying the main responsibility for their families. For these women, as for unemployed women and those working in the informal economy, access to skills, income, and support networks is not a long-term aspiration but an immediate need.

Entrepreneurship and Economic Independence

Entrepreneurship can be an important path toward economic independence, particularly when traditional employment opportunities are limited. Yet women's participation in business also shows that access to opportunity remains uneven.

The EBRD's 2024 Armenia Diagnostic estimates that only around one in five small and medium-sized enterprises has a woman owner. Women are co-owners in approximately 34 percent of firms, while only 24 percent of firms have a woman in a top management position. The EBRD also identifies women's disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work as one of the factors limiting economic engagement.

These figures highlight an important distinction: starting a business and growing one are not the same. Sustainable entrepreneurship requires more than registration or initial training. It depends on access to finance, markets, networks, business knowledge, equipment, and opportunities to scale.

Women's economic empowerment becomes meaningful when women not only have the opportunity to participate, but also the resources and support to build stable income sources. Skills development, mentoring, market access, and practical business support can therefore be as important as legal reform itself.

From Legal Rights to Real Opportunities

The Armenian case shows clearly why laws and institutions need to progress together.

For example, Armenia scores strongly on the WBL legal framework for Work, but considerably lower on supportive measures. The WBL assessment points to gaps in areas such as specialized complaint mechanisms, awareness measures related to fair recruitment, and guidance on flexible working arrangements. Similar differences appear in areas such as pay, parenthood, and childcare.

Childcare matters because care infrastructure can directly affect employment decisions. If reliable, affordable childcare is hard to access, the legal right to work may still be hard to exercise in practice.

The same logic applies to equal pay. Armenia has legal provisions supporting equal remuneration, but the ILO has highlighted the need for stronger pay-transparency measures and enforcement mechanisms.

Social norms also matter. OECD research on Eurasia shows that formal legislation alone cannot remove all barriers when traditional expectations continue to assign women primary responsibility for caregiving or discourage their participation in paid work and business. The OECD therefore argues that effective change requires a combination of legal reform, supportive policies, accountability, and shifts in social attitudes.

Why Strong Institutions Matter

This is where the link between women's rights and inclusive growth becomes clearest.

Legal protections create the foundation. Institutions determine how usable those protections are. Anti-discrimination rules work better when workers know their rights and can access effective complaint mechanisms. Parenthood policies have greater impact when childcare services are available. Entrepreneurship programs work better when women can also access finance, networks, and markets.

For Armenia, this is not only a gender-equality agenda. It is also an economic-development agenda. Businesses report difficulty finding skilled workers, and the EBRD argues that Armenia's growth potential depends partly on better using available skills, especially in more productive, technology-intensive sectors. Expanding women's opportunities can therefore boost productivity, create jobs, and strengthen local economies.

The Women Empowerment Program: Turning Rights into Opportunities

This is the gap the Women Empowerment Program, run by Arev Society and the Armenian Fund for Sustainable Development, works to close. It focuses on the women most often left behind: refugee and forcibly displaced women, women from war-affected families, unemployed women, and women in the informal economy. For them, the distance between legal rights and real opportunities is widest. That is also where targeted support has the greatest effect.

Complementing public policy, the program turns formal rights into practical pathways to economic autonomy, from income-generating activities and vocational training to career support, AI and digital skills, and workplace English. Its ambition goes beyond employment: to give women the autonomy to make their own economic choices, provide for their families, and take on leadership roles in their communities.

Conclusion

Armenia's legal foundations for women's economic participation are stronger than the global average. The challenge now is implementation. The pay gap, the unequal share of unpaid care, widespread informal work, and women's under-representation in business ownership show that legal rights alone do not produce equal outcomes.

Closing this gap depends on institutions, services and social norms evolving alongside the law. Government, business, international partners, and civil society share this responsibility. The most urgent priority is reaching women who cannot wait for reforms to take full effect: those who have lost their homes, livelihoods or place in the labor market.

Investing in women is not only a question of fairness but of economic efficiency. An economy that fully uses women's skills and ideas is more productive, more resilient and better prepared for growth. Equality on paper is only the beginning; progress will be measured by the opportunities women can seize in their everyday lives.

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