Engendering Growth Diagnostics: Examining Constraints to Private Investment and Entrepreneurship

The growth constraints diagnostic is a framework that seeks to help countries identify ‘binding’ constraints to private investment and entrepreneurship. Curiously absent from the diagnoses of the 31 countries to which this framework has been applied is any mention of gender gaps. This is surprising given the substantial literature providing evidence that gender gaps in education, income, employment, resource control and access affect economic growth and well‐being. This article ‘engenders’ the standard growth diagnostic process through disaggregating key variables by sex, reinterpreting nodes in the decision tree to reflect how they are intrinsically gendered, and adding new branches and nodes. It provides a theoretical framework for applying the gender growth diagnostic to help practitioners adopt it in country studies.