The rapid rise of East Asia lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and economic catch up was relatively equal and inclusive — initially even for women as it drew women out of households and agriculture, into the paid workforce. The take-off point for many countries in their path to modernisation and industrialisation was associated with opening up to trade and investment and specialising in their comparative advantage: industries that used lots of low-skilled labour. Women filled factories, starting from Japan to fuel its post war growth, and many countries in East Asia emulated its growth model. Bangladesh is among the latest.

Women may have laid some of the foundations for industrialisation and urbanisation in East Asia, but they have not shared equally in all its benefits as industrialisation has progressed. Gender-wage gaps remain significant and the burdens of household care still largely fall upon women. The consequences are many. Fertility has declined dramatically, for example, as women opt out of marriage for unencumbered participation in the workforce.

Investing in women is both morally the right thing to do to fix this inequality and is a policy choice critical for delivering more inclusive economic growth and sustainable development. It’s a challenge that Southeast Asian economies share with advanced market economies, despite the region’s impressive achievement of above-average growth rates in a global context.

As in other parts of the world, gender gaps in education are closing and the pool of female talent is growing, yet women face significant barriers to participating in the economy, particularly in carrying the double burden of work and care. Women in Southeast Asia are over-represented in vulnerable, informal and insecure work, restricting them and their communities from the opportunities and benefits of decent work.

In Northeast Asia and the more advanced economies in the region, female labour force participation rates and fertility rates are low compared to countries with similar levels of income elsewhere in the world. Women make the choice between work and having children and a larger proportion choose work and opt out of marriage and having children. Nor do men get the support in the workplace necessary to take on some of the child raising load.

This week we launch the latest issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly on the economic and social questions that affect gender equality and economic growth in East Asia.

With rising expectations for change, the gender moment is here. High-level political commitments, scandals and media interest across the world and the region are spurring action, with governments, business and communities searching for social and economic solutions that benefit women and men. But this momentum needs to be harnessed for interventions that work.

The essays in EAFQ suggests research and evidence-based solutions such as the expansion of child care programs, changes that make it easier for men to share in household care and institutional changes that facilitate women’s participation at all levels in the work place.

There will also be consequences for reproduction rates, since without different expectations of both sexes in the workplace, and more equal contributions by men and women at home, it is likely that fertility rates in East Asia will remain very low.

As Mary Brinton explains in this week’s lead essay, ‘Japan was the first in the region to experience birth rates below population-replacement level, dipping below two children per woman in the late 1970s’.

South Korea now has the lowest fertility rate in the OECD at only 1.32 children per woman. Singapore and Taiwan have even lower fertility rates. China’s fertility rate at around 1.6 is low for a country that is yet to reach incomes comparable to its high-income Asian neighbours, and the birth rate dropped significantly last year — even after the relaxing of the one-child policy.

A low fertility rate means a shrinking population without large-scale immigration, something to which few Asian countries have committed. A shrinking population isn’t a problem in itself but ageing societies present major social, economic and political challenges. Japan’s working age population peaked in the late 1990s and its total population peaked roughly 10 years ago. The share of the old age population is increasingly rapidly in Japan. China’s working age population has peaked and its total population is projected to start to shrink in a decade’s time. Japan, South Korea and others at least face the challenges of an ageing society when they’re already rich.

Brinton explains that Japan and South Korea’s ‘demographic crises have brought into sharp relief the difficulties that married women face in trying to manage responsibilities in the workplace and at home. Gender inequality is extremely high in both of these spheres in the two countries.’ Societies where there is more gender equality in the workplace and in the household tend to have higher fertility rates and female labour force participation. Japanese or Korean married women on average do 80 to 90 per cent of housework and childcare. Flexible work arrangements for women help but real change won’t occur until it becomes the social norm for men to share equally in the housework and childcare.

Fertility rates in many countries remain lower than replacement. But with fewer workers supporting the growing population of elderly, it makes little sense economically, socially or morally to keep barriers in place that constrain the equal participation of women in the workforce.

The solutions to the issue of gender equality that might work require urgent but patient and comprehensive economic, institutional and social change based on evidence and a growing body of research that supports it. The effect of success will be profound: on fairness and on sustaining prosperity.

The Asian Review essays in the EAFQ includes an analysis of India’s upcoming elections and a thought-provoking essay on the fracture that digital technologies have opened in the governance of global commerce.

The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.