The tax system's blind eye to women

This is part of a series: "Tax Justice Through a Feminist Lens". The series builds on my previous articles, "Do You Pay Your Taxes?" and "Taxation and the Redistribution of Power". Those articles asked honest questions. Where does our money go? Why does the system feel rigged? Why do women bear the heaviest burden? Who decides what you pay? Who holds the power to design tax systems?

This series provides the answers, one layer at a time. Each piece examines a different dimension of tax justice through a feminist political economy lens. Together, they reveal the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. And they show what it takes to change it. Some examples reappear across pieces. This is deliberate. Certain mechanisms—presumptive tax, the taxation of necessities, the unpaid care economy—are so foundational that they deserve to be seen from multiple angles. Each time we return to them, we see another layer of how they operate.

From a feminist political economy perspective, tax systems are embedded in patriarchal and neoliberal economic structures. They were designed in worlds where men were breadwinners, women were dependents, formal employment was the norm, and unpaid care work was invisible. Those assumptions are baked into the rules, the rates, the exemptions, and the enforcement.

Your labour is not worth it

Joint taxation provides a clear example. Some countries require married couples to file together. The tax rate applies to combined income. This creates a disincentive for the lower-earning spouse to work, because their income pushes the household into a higher bracket. The lower-earning spouse is usually the woman. The tax system tells her: your labour is not worth it.

Tax allowances and deductions tell a similar story. Many systems offer benefits for dependents, but the benefit defaults to the husband. He is head of household, primary taxpayer, the one who supports others. The woman, even if she earns, is secondary. Her contribution is supplementary, not foundational.

What the tax system does not see

Informal work dominates women's economic lives across Africa. They trade in markets, run small shops, offer services from their homes. Tax systems designed for formal employment struggle to reach them. When they do, it is often through presumptive taxes that are blunt instruments.

In the previous article, we met Amina, the produce trader in an upscale neighbourhood. She rose before dawn, travelled poor roads, paid for transport and storage and assistants. Her goods spoiled. Her margins were thin. She paid the same presumptive tax as the electronics dealer with minimal costs and fat profits. Same turnover, same tax, three times more of her actual income.

Now meet another woman. In Kampala's Owino market, she sells second-hand clothes. She pays the same presumptive tax whether she sells ten garments a day or a hundred. The tax collector does not ask about her profit. He counts her stall and applies the rate. If she has a week of low sales, if she is feeding sick children, if her goods were damaged in the rain, the tax remains the same. The system does not see her reality.

Two women. Different cities, different goods, different circumstances. The same mechanism extracts from both. Presumptive tax, repeated across contexts, reveals a pattern. It is not an accident that women in low-margin, high-volume sectors bear its weight. It is structural.

Who benefits from what is not taxed?

Now consider what is not taxed. Wealth, property, capital gains, corporate profits hidden in tax havens. These are lightly taxed or not taxed at all. The people who own these assets are disproportionately men. The tax system protects their accumulation while extracting from women's daily struggle.

In country after country, the wealthiest individuals pay a smaller share of their income in tax than the poorest. This is not a failure of design. It is design itself. The systems that demand presumptive tax from a market trader before she knows whether she will make a profit are the same systems that allow multinational corporations to shift profits offshore and pay nothing.

The tax on being female

Consider what is taxed. Necessities. Cooking fuel, kerosene, charcoal. Sanitary products. Basic food items. These are consumed by everyone, but the burden falls most heavily on those who manage household survival.

We saw this in the previous article. VAT on cooking fuel is a tax on the woman who cooks. VAT on sanitary pads is a tax on being female. These are not neutral policies. They are gendered by design, even if unintentionally.

The woman in Owino market pays VAT on the food she buys for her children. She pays VAT on the charcoal she uses to cook it. She pays VAT on the sanitary pads she needs each month. Every transaction carries a tax. Every tax lands on her.

The invisible economy that holds everything up

The unpaid care economy magnifies every impact. Women do more than three-quarters of the world's unpaid care work. Cooking, cleaning, childcare, elder care, fetching water, collecting firewood. This work has no tax implications because it has no monetary value. But when governments underfund public services, women's unpaid care work increases.

When a clinic closes, a woman cares for the sick at home. When water infrastructure fails, a woman walks further to fetch it. When schools charge fees, a girl stays home and a woman teaches her. Every cut to public services is a transfer of work from the paid economy to the unpaid economy. Every transfer lands on women.

The tax system does not see this work. It does not count it. It does not compensate it. But it shapes it. Every decision about tax policy is a decision about how much unpaid care work women will do.

What would change if you were seen?

A feminist analysis demands we see these connections. Ask not only who pays, but who benefits. Not only what is taxed, but what is ignored. Not only what the law says, but how it operates on the ground.

When a woman in Kampala says, "I have never accessed free healthcare," she describes the outcome of a tax system that underfunds services while overburdening those who need them most. When she says, "I pay for everything myself," she names the invisibility of her unpaid labour in the national accounts.

Tax justice requires making the invisible visible. Design systems that see women's work, value women's contribution, and invest in the services that reduce women's burdens. This is structural correction. It is long overdue.

In the next piece, we examine how tax systems shape women's relationship to the economy and the state—what it means to be an economic citizen, and who gets to count.