Taxation, Gender Equality and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda

Despite economic growth, income distribution in many countries has become more unequal over the past 40 years. This issue is even more delicate when considering the existing gender inequality, despite the notable growth in women'sparticipation in the labor market. The universal struggle to promote gender equality has advanced significantly in recent decades, with the adoption of more defensive legal frameworks. However, the wage gap persists, meaning that the road to achieve real equality is still long and faces substantial obstacles. Different salaries, vertical inequality in the workplace and the concentration of women in informal jobs, often without access to benefits and decent working conditions, intensify this gender inequality. In this regard, tax policies, which are not neutral, cause distinct impacts for women and men, being generally more harmful to women. However, how tax systems are built is controllable, and so governments can adopt policies to reduce inequality. Nations across the globe renewed, through the 2030 Agenda, the commitment to gender equality and human rights, to make viable Sustainable Development. Is important to mention SDG 10 that includes the tax issues in target 10.4 about the Adoption of policies and social protection policies, to achieve greater equality, as well as SDG 5 - Gender Equality. In this context, this investigation aims to verify how tax reform and public policies aimed at women can promote growth and gender equality. The research is exploratory in nature and is instrumentalized through a bibliographic research and document analysis. The present study can contribute to the theoretical discussions regarding taxation and gender equality and to the formalization of fiscal public policies aimed at fiscal equality and morality.