While there is significant variation in women's economic participation rates across cultures and situations in Third World countries, the common features in work patterns of poor women are striking. Segmented labor markets predominate throughout the developing world and restrict the demand for female labor to subsistence activities or to jobs in sectors of the market economy with low pay and status, limited tenure, and few chances for upward mobility. Low income women are most often engaged in household and market work, which is time consuming, inefficient, and intermittent; and their activities use few modern tools and skills and entail little or no capital investment. Poor working women, more than men, lack the benefits of productive resources, which increase productivity and economic returns to labor. This occurs because of women's place in the structure of technology and credit use--women are not in a position to have access to these productive resources in their modern forms. Women do not demand modern technology and credit because of several factors: lack of information concerning the availability of credit or technology; limited opportunity for profitable investments; cultural constraints that restrict women in interacting with male bank officials or extension agents; and lastly, women's lack of control over other economic resources, such as land or other property, which realistically prevents them from demanding their resources. Policy changes need to be made to improve women's access to technology and credit in the Third World--both through general development of resources and through specific strategies to help women. (Such strategies are suggested in this report.) (KC)