Within the ESRC core area of the 'Dynamics of Inequalities', this proposed multidisciplinary GCRF Research Network will focus its efforts on women's labour force participation and gender inequality in eight countries in three world regions: Iran and Turkey in the Middle East; Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa; and Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka in South Asia. In doing so, it also plans to draw on the related experience and expertise of researchers who have examined the same topic in Greece, Italy and Spain in Southern Europe. This Network will concentrate its efforts in two areas: 1) the interplay of economic structures, policies and institutions in determining women's access to employment and 2) the patterns of women's economic participation as key determinants of gender inequality and social inequality in general. Of central concern in the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region) is the apparent contradiction that while the educational gaps between women and men have narrowed and women have experienced rapid declines in their fertility rates, female labour force participation (FLFP) rates remain the lowest of any region in the world. In the countries of South Asia, despite variations between countries, average rates are the third lowest in the world, after the Middle East and North Africa. Hence, one of the central concerns of this Network will be to help develop a research agenda that could contribute to explaining why female labour force participation rates are relatively low in these three regions despite their structural differences, and to leverage this contribution to help account for income inequality across households as well as across women themselves. The Southern European countries, particularly the three countries of Greece, Italy and Spain, are very interesting because they have a history of similar problems of social and gender inequalities and there is a rich literature upon which the researchers in this proposed Network could draw to help explain the nature of the historical trends in MENA and South Asia. The exploratory work of this proposed Network in the above eleven countries will concentrate on four major research-related questions. (1) What are the impediments to women's access to jobs? (2) What are the effects on the household-level well-being of women's lack of employment and income? (3) What is the relationship between gender inequality and labour-market segmentation and what is the effect of gender inequality on broader forms of social inequality and income inequality? (4) What are the data requirements for addressing such research issues and what information gaps need to be filled? In pursuing this agenda, our proposed Network will include researchers from academic and non-academic institutions (including NGOs) with vital and extensive experience in our area of focus. Included in these efforts will be PhD students as well as early career researchers. The Network members will constitute a multidisciplinary group, spanning the areas of economics, development studies, sociology, anthropology, demography, statistics and law. These researchers will come together in three workshops, two in London and one in Cairo (the latter in collaboration with the ERF), in order to collectively and intensively discuss the relevant issues and explore potential areas of research on women's labour force participation and gender inequality. As a result of these discussions, the network researchers will be organised into thematic working groups whose members will maintain contact with one another between workshops and will contribute inputs into the Research Briefs and Final Report produced by the Network as a whole. Additional activities of this network will include organising panels at various international conferences and the active dissemination of the network's outputs to other interested researchers, NGOs and international institutions such as the World Bank, ILO & UN Women.