UN--HABITAT 2010 'Gender and Economic Development, Global Urban Economic Dialogue Series, HS--033--11E, UN Human Settlements Programme (93 Pp.)

7/28/2019 UN--HABITAT 2010 'Gender and Economic Development, Global Urban Economic Dialogue Series, HS--033--11E, U

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Te Global Urban Economic Dialogue SeriesGender and Economic Development

First published in Nairobi in 2010 by UN-HABIA.Copyright United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2010

All rights reservedUnited Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABIA)P. O. Box 30030, 00100 Nairobi GPO KENYAel: 254-020-7623120 (Central Oce)

www.unhabitat.org

HS/033/11EISBN(Series): 978-92-1-132027-5

ISBN(Volume): 978-92-1-132335-1

Disclaimer

Te designations employed and the presentation o the material in this publication donot imply the expression o any opinion whatsoever on the part o the Secretariat othe United Nations concerning the legal status o any country, territory, city or areaor o its authorities, or concerning the delimitation o its rontiers o boundaries.

Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reect those o the UnitedNations Human Settlements Programme, the United Nations, or its Member States.

Excerpts may be reproduced without authorization, on condition that the source is indicated

Cover photo World Bank

Acknowledgements:

Director: Oyebanji OyeyinkaChie Editor and Manager: Xing Quan Zhang

Principal Author: Elissa BrausteinEnglish Editor: Eric OrinaDesign and Layout: Andrew OndooSuppport: Lucia Kiwala, Everngelista Mutandi


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U r b a n i z a t i o n

is one o themost powerul,irreversible orcesin the world. Itis estimated that93 percent othe uture urbanpopulation growth

will occur in thecities o Asia and

Arica, and to a lesser extent, Latin Americaand the Caribbean.

We live in a new urban era with most ohumanity now living in towns and cities.

Global poverty is moving into cities, mostlyin developing countries, in a process we callthe urbanisation o poverty.

Te worlds slums are growing and growingas are the global urban populations. Indeed,this is one o the greatest challenges we ace inthe new millennium.

Te persistent problems o poverty andslums are in large part due to weak urbaneconomies. Urban economic development isundamental to UN-HABIAs mandate.Cities act as engines o national economicdevelopment. Strong urban economies

are essential or poverty reduction and theprovision o adequate housing, inrastructure,education, health, saety, and basic services.

Te Global Urban Economic Dialogue series

presented here is a platorm or all sectorso the society to address urban economicdevelopment and particularly its contributionto addressing housing issues. Tis work carriesmany new ideas, solutions and innovativebest practices rom some o the worldsleading urban thinkers and practitionersrom international organisations, nationalgovernments, local authorities, the privatesector, and civil society.

Tis series also gives us an interestinginsight and deeper understanding o the widerange o urban economic development andhuman settlements development issues. It willserve UN member States well in their questor better policies and strategies to addressincreasing global challenges in these areas

Joan ClosUnder-Secretary-General, United Nations

Executive Director, UN-HABIA

FOREWORD


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GENDER aND EcONOmic DEvElOPmENt


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Contents

tablE OF cONtENtS

FoReWoRD iii

AbbReviAtions vii

List oF FiguRes AnD tAbLes viii

cHaPtER ONE: intRoDuCtoRy oveRvieW 1

cHaPtER tWO:A HistoRy oF genDeR AnD eConomiCDeveLopment tHougHt AnD poLiCyAppRoACHes 2

2.1 From Women in Development to Gender and Development 2

2.2 Gender and Development in the Institutional Mainstream 6

2.3 Mainstreaming Gender 8

cHaPtER tHREE: stAtistiCAL oveRvieW 10

3.1 Employment Indicators 11

3.2 Millennium Development Goals Indicators 17

3.3 Composite Indices 19

3.4 Summary 283.4.1 By Indicator 28

3.4.2 By Region 31

cHaPtER FOUR: An AnALytiCAL FRAmeWoRk FoRgenDeR AnD eConomiC DeveLopment:micRO-mESO-macRO 34

4.1 Bargaining and Autonomy in the Household 34

4.1.1 Choices and Constraints 34

4.1.2 An Intra-Household Bargaining Model 35

4.1.3 Intra-Household Bargaining and Gender Equality 38

4.1.4 Autonomy and Empowerment 39

4.2 A Gender-Aware View o the Macroeconomy 40

cHaPtER FivE: gLobALizAtion, LibeRALizAtion,AnD Womens empoWeRment 44

5.1 Globalization and Womens Employment 44

5.2 Supply and Demand o Social Protection and Womens Empowerment 45

5.3 Making Globalization Work or Womens Empowerment 49

5.3.1 Labor Market Norms and Human Capital 50

5.3.2 Localizing Firms and Increasing Womens Entrepreneurship 50


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5.3.3 Social Protections 51

5.4.4 International and Macroeconomic Policies 51

cHaPtER Six: tHe genDeReD teRRAin oF CentRALbAnk poLiCy 53

6.1 Gender Dierences in Employment andUnemployment in Developing Countries 53

6.2 The Gendered Political Economy o Central Bank Policy 56

6.3 Gender-Sensitive Employment Targeting 58

cHaPtER SEvEN: genDeR equALity AnD eConomiC gRoWtH 59

7.1 Gender and Growth Theory 60

7.2 Direct Eects 62

7.2.1 Macroeconomic Studies 62

7.2.2 Microeconomic Studies 62

7.3 Eternalities 63

7.3.1 Fertility 64

7.3.2 Good Mothers 64

7.3.3 Corruption 65

7.4 When Inequality Contributes to Growth 65

cHaPtER EiGHt: A mACRoeConomiC peRspeCtive onDeveLopment AnD CARe 67

8.1 Estimates o Unpaid Care Work in Developing Countries 68

8.2 Economic Development and Unpaid Care Work 73

8.3 Gender Inequality and the Macroeconomic Relevance o Care 74

cHaPtER NiNE: ConCLuDing RemARks 77

9.1 Gender Dierences in Economic Development 77

9.2 Causal Mechanisms 78

9.3 On the Importance o Promoting Gender Equality 79

ReFeRenCes 80

AppenDix A 92


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AbbReviAtions

AbbReviAtions

DaW Uned Nons Dson or he adneen o Woen

E E

Eclac Eono cosson or ln aer nd he cren

FaO Food nd agruure Orgnzon o he Uned Nons

G lee o Gozon

GaD Gender nd Deeopen

GDi Gender Deeopen inde

GDP Gross Does Produ

GEi So Wh Gender Equy inde

GEm Gender Epoweren mesureGEP Gender-spef Enronen Preer

GGG Go Gender Gp inde

HDi Hun Deeopen inde

HiPc Hey indeed Poor counres

Hiv/aiDS Hun iunodefeny vrus/aqured iunodefeny Syndroe

imF inernon monery Fund

ilO inernon lour Orgnzon

K Phys cp

l lor

mDG mennu Deeopen Go

mDG3 mennu Deeopen Go 3

mENa mdde Es nd Norh ar

OEcD Orgnson or Eono cooperon nd Deeopen

P Popuon

Pc Prosonng cpy

UN Uned Nons

UNDESa Uned Nons Depren o Eono nd So arsUNDP Uned Nons Deeopen Progre

UNEca Uned Nons Eono osson or ar

UNiFEm Uned Nons Deeopen Fund or Woen

UNRiSD Uned Nons Reserh insue or So Deeopen

SaP Sruur adjusen Progr

SiGE Sndrdzed inde o Gender Equy

SNa Syse o Non aouns

WaD Woen nd Deeopen

WEF Word Eono Foru

WiD Woen n Deeopen

WtO Word trde Orgnson


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List oF FiguRes AnD tAbLes

Tables

TABLE 1: A Taonomy o Approaches to Women and Economic Development Thought 3TABLE 2: Regional GDI as a proportion o HDI, 2007 24

TABLE 3: Work Time in SNA and Unpaid Care in Various Countries by Gender 70

Figures

FIGURE 1: Adult employment-to-population ratios, by se and region, 1998 and 2008 (percent) 12

FIGURE 2: Unemployment Rate by Se & Region, 1998 & 2006 14

FIGURE 3: Vulnerable Employment Share by Se and Region, 2007 (percent) 16

FIGURE 4: Percentage Gender Gap in Median Earnings o Full-Time Employees in

OECD Countries, 2006 or latest year available 18FIGURE 5: Sectoral Distribution o Employment by Se and Region, 1998 & 2008 20

FIGURE 6: Ratios o girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education (girls per 100 boys) 21

FIGURE 7: Share o women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector (percent) 24

FIGURE 8: Proportion o seats held by women in national parliament 25

FIGURE 9: HDI, GDI and GEM by region, 2007 26

FIGURE 10: The Global Gender Gap Inde by region, 2009 28

FIGURE 11: Components o the Global Gender Gap Inde by Region, 2009 29

FIGURE 12: An Intra-Household Bargaining Model 37

FIGURE 13: The Circular Flow o the Macroeconomy 40

FIGURE 14: An Alternative Circular Flow 41

FIGURE 15: Demand and Supply o Social Protection 47

FIGURE 16: The Eects o Liberalization on Social Protections 48

FIGURE 17: How Economists Look at Economic Growth 60

FIGURE 18: The value o unpaid care work as a percentage o GDP 72

FIGURE 19: The value o unpaid care work as a percentage o paid care work 73

APPENDIx A: Regional Groupings or Figures 8 & 9 92


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1

cHaPtER ONE intRoDuCtoRy oveRvieW

Chapter 1intRoDuCtoRy oveRvieW

Tis report reviews research and policyin the eld o gender and economicdevelopment, with particular emphasis oneconomic literature and practice. Genderis a social construct, and reers to the socialmeaning o and expectations assigned to beingbiologically male or emale, the relationships

between women and men, and the nature othe social and economic hierarchies that theserelationships produce. Gender as meaning,expectations, relationships and hierarchiesvary by nation, race/ethnicity, class, stage othe lie cycle, level o economic developmentand structure o production. In the contexto economic development, we will use theterm gender to reer to how sex structuresthe division o work, rights, responsibilities,

and resources, and how these divisions are inturn reected in economic institutions anddynamics.

Te rst two sections provide context orthe remainder o the report. Te rst sectionbegins with a short history o gender andeconomic development thought, tracing thetransition rom women in development inthe 1970s to the gender and development

approach that dominates developmentthought today. It then contrasts how genderand development has been applied at the

World Bank versus the UN as an example othe range o institutional approaches to genderand development, and discusses the outcomeso recent eforts to mainstream gender indevelopment institutions more generally. Tesecond section provides a statistical overviewo women and men in developing countries,

covering data on employment, the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, and composite indices ogender equality.

Te ourth section sets out an analyticalramework or applying gender and economicdevelopment concepts to policy by outliningmodels o production relations in thehousehold and the macroeconomy. In thehousehold model we emphasize how genderstructures the conditions o provisioning, and

the consequences or womens empowermentand human capabilities. We contrast standardeconomic approaches to the macroeconomy

with one that reects how meso-levelinstitutions like markets or the public sectorare themselves bearers o gender, explicitlyincorporating the production o humancapabilities in the domestic sector.

Te nal our sections survey a sample o

current gender and economic developmentissues, using the analytical rameworkdeveloped in the prior section to bothevaluate current practices and policies andto consider how gender and developmentconcepts can be used to improve upon them.

We emphasize the macroeconomic aspectso gender and economic development,though the microeconomic constraints andconditions drawn out in the household

model are continually reerenced to measureempowerment and well-being. Both directionso micro-meso-macro pathways are covered.Section 5 on globalization, liberalization and

womens empowerment and section 6 on thegendered terrain o central bank policy ocuson the efects o macroeconomic conditionsand policy on women and communities, whilesection 7 on gender inequality and economicgrowth and section 8 on the macroeconomics

o development and care discuss how genderrelations at the micro- and meso-levels afectthe aggregate economy. Section 9 concludes.


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Chapter 2 A HistoRy oF genDeR AnDeConomiC DeveLopment tHougHtAnD poLiCy AppRoACHes

2.1 Fom Womn n Dvopmnt tognd nd Dvopmnt

In this section, we give a brie overview ohow the theory and practice o gender andeconomic development have evolved sincethe 1970s. Most reviews o this type begin

by identiying three distinctive schools othought: women in development, womenand development, and nally gender anddevelopment. Each o these approaches isbased on diferent understandings o andassumptions about the development process,the role o women and men in this process,and thus how to conduct policy in relationto these linkages. Tough they are roughlychronological in their genesis, rom women

in development to women and developmentto gender and development, there is overlapamong them, as well as contemporaneousversions in research and policy today.able1 gives a summary outline o the threeapproaches, indicating their origins, keyarguments, implications or public policy,and a list o some o the main criticisms thathave been directed at each. (Note that some othe critiques o women in development and

gender and development will be discussedmore at length in the next two sections onmainstreaming gender.)

Te place to begin is with the wider stageo development thought, as it is here that thenotions o women and gender as distinctiveand important categories or development

were either: (1) conspicuously missing, or (2)identied as simply inaccurate and potentially

damaging to women themselves and thedevelopment process generally. Developmentthought in the 1950s and 1960s was dominated

by modernization theory the belie that alldeveloping countries would pass through aset o pre-determined and identical stages oeconomic growth and development propelledlargely by physical capital accumulation(odaro and Smith 2006). According to thisview, development would bring with it the

benets o industrialization: higher livingstandards, wages and education levels, andbetter health (Rathgeber 1990).With theemphasis on capital accumulation in thecontext o aggregate models o growth, earlydevelopment research and practice predictablygave little to no consideration to women as adistinctive group (Ibid.).

Tis is the context in which economist Ester

Boserup published her now amous bookWomans Role in Economic Development in1970. Up to that point, development theory

was an almost exclusively male enterprise(Elson 1999), and it was the rst time that aneconomist claimed that economic developmenttreated women diferently rom men (Benera2001a). Boserup argued that women had beenmarginalized in the modernization process, andthat extant practices o growth, development,

and development policy threatened to actuallymake women worse of (Ibid: xi).

Inuenced by Boserups work, a network oWashington, D.C.-based emale developmentproessionals originated the term womenin development (WID) in the early 1970s(Moser 1993). Tese and other early WIDadvocates promoted policies and programsthat drew women into modernization, or

example by increasing emale labor orceparticipation in industrializing sectors viatargeted education and training (Benera


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2001a). WID proponents also adopted anexplicit equality argument, particularly asit applied to enabling women to participateequally in modern production (Kabeer 1994).In keeping with the goals o modernization

theory and policy, the WID approachrationalized equality between women and menon eciency grounds, arguing that women

were an untapped resource whose inclusion inthe modern economy would ultimately benetgrowth and development (Moser 1993).

Tese arguments or equality were cast ona shiting stage o development thought andpractice, however. By the 1970s development

researchers and practitioners were turningtowards rameworks and policies that moredirectly addressed poverty and basic needs,partly because o the ailure o modernizationapproaches to deliver signicant improvementsin the welare o the worlds poor (Elson1997). Tis new welare-oriented approachto development incorporated WID insightsby acknowledging that womens roles werediferent rom mens in ways important to

development and policy efectiveness. Tebasic needs ramework o the 1970s tendedto subordinate and stereotype womens roles,however; development institutions treated

women primarily as housewives and mothers,and men as household heads and productiveagents (Kabeer 1994). Te result was that menmaintained their positions as the main targetso development policy, with women becomingpassive recipients o welare assistance or

merely conduits to ullling their amiliesbasic needs (Kabeer 1994; Rathberger 1990).Kabeer (1994) urther argues that the (largelymale-stafed) development agencies o thetime saw WIDs early equality principle as tooextreme in terms o the political and economiccosts that the required redistribution and equalopportunity measures would entail. So it wasnot just the shit rom modernization theoryto welare and basic needs in development

thought that stalled WID calls or equality,it was also the diculty o efecting

institutional and social change. Granted, thewelarist approaches o the 1970s did includedevelopment projects or womens incomegeneration, but womens problems [weredened] in terms o the amilys basic needs

rather than their unequal access to income anddid little to undamentally challenge unequalsocial and economic relations between womenand men (Kabeer 1994: 7).

Modernization theory also met withmounting criticism rom developing countryintellectuals and Marxists in the 1970s, givingrise to a variety o dependency-oriented schoolso thought that argued that existing structures o

international inequality served to maintain theadvantage o the developed world (odaro andSmith 2006). Drawing rom these dependencytheories as well as explicitly Marxist andsocialist critiques o capitalist development,

women and development (WAD) proponentscritiqued Boserup and WID as ignoring how

womens economic marginalization was linkedto the development model itsel (Benera2001a). Te problem was not that women

were marginalized rom development, butrather the unequal terms under which they

were incorporated (Elson 1999). Womenhave always been a part o the developmentprocess, according to WAD, but in a mannerthat supports existing structures o inequalityinternationally (Ratheberger 1990). In twoclassic articles detailing the WAD perspective,Benera and Sen (1981, 1982) argued that thekey concept should be subordination in the

context o new capitalist orms o insecure andhierarchical job structures, not marginalizationas WID approaches emphasized.

Wider political, economic and intellectualevents soon reshaped these discussions aseconomic stagnation and crises in boththe developed and developing worldscreated the conditions or a neoclassicalcounterrevolution in economic theory and

policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Basedon a undamental belie in the supremacy oree markets, small and non-interventionist


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5

cHaPtER tWO A HistoRy oF genDeR AnD eConomiC DeveLopment

tHougHt AnD poLiCy AppRoACHes

government, and ree global ows o trade andnance, the neoclassical approach constituteda stark departure rom the post-World WarII Keynesian condence in activist economicpolicies. Te new neoclassical terrain o the

1980s afected development in a coupleo ways: development economics becamedominated by neoclassical economists whosaw the major obstacles to development aspolicy-induced price distortions and imperectmarkets, and the twin goals o liberalization andprivatization replaced traditional developmentplanning (Elson 1999). Te WID eciencyargument or equality dovetailed nicely withneoclassical economic theory. Discrimination

against women in labor, credit and landmarkets were cast as market imperections;gender inequalities in health and educationas inecient obstacles to enabling womento live up to their ull economic potential.Te neoclassical counterrevolution solidied

WIDs eciency argument or equalitybetween women and men, an emphasis thatcontinues into today.

It was in this context that the notion ogender the socially constructed roleso women and men that dictate how sexdetermines ones role in production andreproduction made its way into developmentthought (Benera 2001a). Many critics o

WID argued that it ailed to sucientlyaddress the diferential power relationsbetween women and men, and tended to over-emphasize womens productive (as opposed to

reproductive) roles (Kabeer 1994; Rathgeber1990; Razavi and Miller 1995). rue, early

welare-based development programs at timesprovided assistance like help with hygiene orchildcare, but these mostly assumed that justgiving women another income-generatingactivity would be sucient to alleviate

womens reproductive constraints (Rathgeber1990). Furthermore, WID implicitlypresumed that womens marginalization

rom the development process was largelythe result o cultural bias and stereotypes, so

better data, education and ormal rules orequality were put orth as key to transormingthese processes in development planning(Kabeer 1994). Indeed, in keeping with theneoclassical perspective, discrimination against

women could be viewed as more o a marketimperection than the intentional exercise opower. Since women and men are rationaleconomic actors, planners need only get theprices/rules/inormation right to bring aboutequalityandeconomic eciency.

By contrast, drawing rom insightsdeveloped in psychology, sociology, andcritical studies, gender and development

(GAD) theorists shited rom understandingwomens problems as based on their sex (i.e.their biological diferences rom men) tounderstanding them as based on gender thesocial relations between women and men,their social construction, and how womenhave been systematically subordinated in thisrelationship (Moser 1993). At their mostundamental, GAD perspectives link thesocial relations o production with the social

relations o reproduction exploring why andhow women and men are assigned to diferentroles and responsibilities in society, how thesedynamics are reected in social, economic, andpolitical theories and institutions, and howthese relationships afect development policyefectiveness. Women are cast not as passiverecipients o development aid, but ratheractive agents o change whose empowermentshould be a central goal o development policy

(Grown 2008a; Moser 1993; Rathgeber 1990).One could argue that GAD grew out o WAD,combining a gender perspective and a concernor equality and social justice with a criticalapproach to the condence in ree marketsolutions profered by neoclassical theory. Indirect contrast to WID, GAD theorists aimedor social transormation, both in terms o therelations between women and men, and thedenition and goals o the development model

itsel (Grown 2008a; Jackson and Pearson1998; Moser 1993).


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An early example o the GAD approachis the gender and structural adjustmentliterature, which critiqued economic models oadjustment as having unintended consequencesbecause o being gender-blind (Collier 1994;

Elson 1991; Palmer 1992). In implementingthe economic management techniques dictatedby neoclassical economic theory, internationalnancial institutions like the World Bank andthe International Monetary Fund respondedto low growth and balance o payments crisesin the developing world in the 1980s with apolicy agenda that included liberalization,privatization, and a shit o labor romnontradable to tradable sectors (Elson 1999).

Elson (1991) argued that the economic modelsunderlying SAP logic, by completely ignoringthe reproductive sector, essentially treated alllabor as a non-produced means o productionand assumed unlimited supplies o emalelabor. Tese models implicitly presumedthat women would maintain their traditionalroles o providing care in the household andcommunity regardless o external economicconditions, thereby making up or the SAP-

induced cuts in public spending, increases inthe costs o living, and general and severe boutso economic contraction. Te unintendedconsequence was a type o social dislocationand disinvestment in human beings thatultimately detracted rom the economic goalso the SAPs themselves, Elson and othersargued.

2.2 gnd nd Dvopmnt n thinttton Mntm

Te changes in development thought thathave characterized the modern era rom thepeople-centered development approaches othe 1990s to the Millennium DevelopmentGoals in the 2000s were accompaniedby an incorporation o GAD insights intothe institutional mainstream, with all sorts

o development institutions adopting thelanguage o gender and ostensibly promoting

womens empowerment. But both WIDs

eciency-based instrumentalism (i.e. thatgender equality should be promoted becauseit is good or growth and development), andits tendency to ocus on women in isolationrather than the gendered components o

social and economic transormation moreholistically, are still salient eatures o womenand economic development thought andpolicy today. Part o this is probably due to

what Razavi and Miller call WIDs strategyo relevance: conorming to the demandso challenging established institutionaldynamics and making gender equality a keypart o the development dialogue (Razavi andMiller 1995:2). Another persistent eature

that is associated with WID is the extent ocondence in market-based solutions and thesoundness o neoclassical theory. A good wayto view these overlaps and contradictions is byexploring how they maniest in two diverseinternational development institutions,the World Bank and UN, and how efortsto incorporate gender concerns in theinternational development community moregenerally via mainstreaming have ared.

Te World Banks ocial position ongender and economic development issquarely in the eciency argument camp(e.g. World Bank 2001; 2006). Genderequality is smart economics, as the WorldBanks current Gender Action Plan is titled,is a clear expression o this view (World Bank2006). Tat said, the notion o engenderingdevelopment at the World Bank is more

extensive than simply using gender equalityto raise rates o economic growth. Te Bankdenes gender equality in the context odevelopment in terms o rights (legal equality),resources (equality o opportunity), and voice(equality in the ability to shape and contributeto the development process) (World Bank2001). Tis denition is reminiscent o someearly WID concerns, such as legal equality andensuring womens access to the modern sector.

While gender equality is lauded as important inits own right, there is repeated (and practical?)


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emphasis on the contributions that it willultimately make to growth and development.

And as tends to be the case when emphasizingeconomic eciency, World Bank approachesregularly espouse an unwavering condence

in the market mechanism to promote genderequality.

Equality o opportunity, a cornerstone othe World Banks wider approach to equityand development, reers to economist JohnRoemers theory o equal opportunity. Tebasic philosophical idea is that social welarecannot be maximized i individual outcomesdifer because o diferences in individual

circumstances (i.e. actors that individualsdo not control, like how much their parentsinvest in their education). By contrast,inequalities that result rom diferent levelso efort or individual choice should not bea moral or an economic concern (Roemer2006). For gender inequality in opportunities,examples o gender-determined diferences inindividual circumstances are many, rangingrom the gender-based wage gap to gender-

based violence to nutritional gender bias(Buvinic and Morrison 2008).In a ascinatingreview o the World Banks 2006 WorldDevelopment Report: Equity and Development,Roemer criticizes the Bank or going too arin casting equity as a means to development:[o] claim improving equity is the best wayto maximize prosperity or GDP per capita issurelyalse. Te easiest way to see this is tonote that, except in singular situations, one

cannot simultaneously maximize two objectiveunctions (Roemer 2006: 238). Te same cansurely be said about the eciency argumentor gender equality.

By contrast, the UN and its manydevelopment-oriented agencies, have beenmore riendly to heterodox (non-neoclassical)approaches to economics and development,as well as GAD practitioners more concerned

with targeting womens well-being andempowerment than economic growth per se.Tis stance is in line with the UNs adoption

o Amartya Sens capability approach tohuman development as the centerpiece o itsdevelopment philosophy. Capabilities reer towhat people can or cannot do, e.g. whetherthey can live long, escape avoidable morbidity,

be well nourished, be able to read and writeand communicate, take part in literary andscientic pursuits, and so orth (Sen 1984:497). Sen argued that the ocus cannotbe on just commodities (or, by extension,economic growth), because the conversion ocommodities into human capabilities difersalong a number o parameters such as sex,health, and class background (Ibid: 511).

In 1995, the same year as the UNs FourthWorld Conerence on Women in Beijing,the Human Development Report (publishedannually by the UNDP since 1990) wasdevoted to the issue o gender equality. Inline with the human development ocus onenlarging peoples choices, the notion ogender equality advocated in this early report,and reected in much o the UNs work ongender since, combines advocating or equality

o rights and opportunities between womenand men with treating women as agents ochange. Enhancing womens capabilities andempowerment is valued both as an end in and oitsel, and as a means to enhance developmentand growth: Human development, i notengendered, is endangered (UN 1995:14). While not as closely anchored to aneciency argument as the WID or WorldBank approaches to gender and economic

development, the UNs capability approach togender equality is explicitly cognizant o thecomplementarities between human capabilitiesand more standard notions o developmentas economic growth and industrialization.But there is some danger here o diluting thehuman development message. Diane Elsonnotes that international aid agencies havetaken the notion o human developmentprimarily as a push to ocus on investing in

human as well as physical capital, so labor isstill viewed primarily as a actor o production


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rather than as an aspect o the ultimate targeto development, human capacity (Elson 1999:105). In terms o gender, one can see how thistendency could transorm policy statementson the importance o womens capabilities and

empowerment to policy implementations thatmerely invest in women or the sake o raisingincomes or rates o economic growth.

2.3 Mntmn gnd

Addressing this possibility, and keepingthe goal o gender equality squarely at thecenter o institutional development work,or both the UN and other internationalagencies, is what drove the adoption o theprinciple o gender mainstreaming in the1995 Beijing Platorm or Action (Grown2008a). Gender mainstreaming is a strategyor institutional transormation, one thatseeks to rmly embed the goals o genderequality and womens empowerment in allaspects o development analysis, planning,and implementation. It has three elements:

(1) Assessment o the implications or womenand men o any legislation, policy or program;(2) Institutionalizing gender concerns inorganizations themselves, or instance throughstang or organizational culture; and (3)Empowering women to ensure that they havea voice in agenda setting and policy decisions(Moser and Moser 2005; UN 1997).

Since its adoption, gender mainstreaminghas become a near universal practice amonginternational development agencies, at least interms o adopting the terminology o genderequality and gender mainstreaming. Butevaluations o gender mainstreaming have beenuniversally critical o the apparent disconnectbetween having an ocial policy and ollowingthrough via actual interventions (Grown2008a; Moser and Moser 2005; Standing2007). Some identiy this as an institutionalproblem, arguing that there is no analysis ocomplex institutional dynamics in gendermainstreaming. For instance, development

institutions are largely male-dominated andthe organizational culture oten male-biased, somainstreaming sometimes meets with resistanceamong staf, rom senior management to eldstaf (Moser and Moser 2005). Tere is little

accountability, monitoring, and evaluation,and responsibility or gender mainstreamingis oten vested in the commitment and skillso just a ew individuals in the organization(Ibid.). Others are not surprised at theseproblems, as implementing gender equalityis a undamentally political process aimed atsocial transormation, somewhat ar aeldrom the largely technical process o gendermainstreaming in the context o a bureaucracy

(Grown 2008a).

Certainly part o the problem is therelative absence o men in GAD work, bothas practitioners and targets o analysis. Eventhough GADs ocus on gender relations,rather than women alone, is more inclusiveo men, incorporating men presents bothpractical diculties (o the sort that plaguesgender mainstreaming), and political anxiety

over shiting any ocus away rom women toinclude men (Chant 2000). But excludingmen is ultimately detrimental or women andthe promise o GAD, not least because womenare tasked as the sole agents o social change, aheavy burden that would certainly be lightenedi men are actively and intentionally engagedin changing gender relations as well. Exampleso eforts like these are multiplying within boththe UN system and the NGO community, as

changing gender relations around issues likethe distribution o care responsibilities orstopping violence against women must clearlyinvolve men to be successul.1

1 See, or instance, the discussion and background papers or

the Fity-third Session o the Commission on the Status oWomen, which ocused on the Equal Sharing o Responsibilitiesbetween Women and Men, including Caregiving in thecontext o HIV/AIDS (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/53sesspriorityhtm.htm).


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9



Tere is less activity around what SylviaChant calls deeminization o genderplanning, or eforts to pull gender out oghettoized departments and really transorminstitutional culture to bring gender into the

mainstream (Chant 2000: 12). We wouldadd that in addition to pulling more men(and male perspectives) into GAD work,gender specialists should also specialize inand be incorporated into other areas odevelopment policy and planning, serving orinstance as economists, bankers, public healthadministrators and agricultural extensionagents. As long as gender is a sort o add-onor reaction to economic development theory,

planning, or practice, it will never be treatedas the structural oundation o economicdevelopment that it really is.


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10


In this section we provide a statisticaldescription o the worlds women and menin the context o economic development,presented primarily by population-weightedregional averages. Our coverage is notexhaustive in the sense o including everyavailable measure o gender and economic

development, but rather representative,intended to give readers a sense o the statisticsavailable and what these indicate about thestate o gender equality and the well-being o

women and men.

When dealing with gender-aware statistics,one must choose what we variously termperspective, dimension and methodology.Perspective reers to whether one is measuring

absolute achievements or gender equality.Statistics on absolute achievements involvelooking at how economic development hasafected womens and mens absolute levels o

well-being. Some urther qualiy achievementsby diferentiating between capabilities, astate o well-being, and opportunities, whichconstitute chances to enhance ones ownor others well-being. Conversely, equalitymeasures capture womens versus mens

relative achievements, regardless o absolutewell-being or level o development (e.g. acountry could have complete gender equalityin literacy but literacy levels could be low).2Some gender statistics mix absolute withequality measurements, such as the UNsGender and Development Index, discussedmore ully below.

2 Note that we have not used the term empowerment ineither the absolute or relative dynamic description, as the termis (sometimes conusingly) used to reer to both absolute andrelative achievements.

Dimension reers to the topical content othe statistic, such as the human capability o lieexpectancy versus the economic opportunityo paid labor orce participation. Te mostchallenging dimension issue is limited datacoverage. While scholars and practitionersmay conclude that using measures o the

gender-based wage gap, time use or physicalsecurity are essential to portraying genderdynamics, there just is not the country or timeseries coverage to include these components inmost developing country-level studies, muchless studies that are global in scope.

Te last issue is methodology, and while thelist o statistical challenges and choices is longand somewhat esoteric or the non-statistician,

we diferentiate here only between usingindicators versus indices. Indicators measureonly one dimension, such as percent oparliament seats or employment to populationratio. Indices combine a number o indicatorsto construct a composite measure. We coverboth indicators and indices below.

Te overview is subdivided into threesections. Te rst section on employment

indicators covers work and the labor market,with some discussion o the economicexplanations or these gender diferences. Tesecond section presents the data used to trackMillennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3),to promote gender equality and empower

women, as the MDGs (and their associatedtargets and indicators) are such a central eatureo contemporary development dialogues.

Chapter 3 stAtistiCAL oveRvieW


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11

cHaPtER tHREE stAtistiCAL oveRvieW

Te third section gives an overview ogendered indices, ocusing primarily on theUNs Gender Development Index (GDI) andGender Empowerment Measure (GEM), butincluding a number o others or comparison

as well.

3.1 empoymnt indcto

Figure 1 illustrates adult employment-to-population ratios by sex and region in 1998and 2006 based on International LabourOrganization (ILO) estimates. Tese ratiosexclude youth (aged 15-24) to control orthe efects o regional and longitudinaldiferences in youth education on labor orceparticipation. Tese gures are also intendedto capture inormal workers and unpaid amily

workers, though these categories o workers areundoubtedly undercounted in labor orce andcensus surveys, and because women constitutea higher proportion o these categories thanmen around the world, they are more likelyto be undercounted than men. We present

employment-to-population ratios rather thanlabor orce participation rates to capture theproportion o the population that is actuallyemployed. Figure 2 presents unemploymentrates by sex and region or the same timeperiod to give readers a sense o labor orceparticipants that are actively looking or butcannot nd work.

Looking at gure 1, we see that womensemployment is lower than mens across allregions and levels o development, thoughthere is a lot o variation in the genderedemployment gap. Te biggest gaps are inthe Middle East and North Arica, ollowedby South Asia; the smallest in East Asia,ollowed by Central and South EasternEurope, the Developed Economies and theEuropean Union. At the macroeconomic level,economists explain gender diferences in labororce participation primarily by controllingor income per capita, ertility, whether theeconomy is primarily agricultural, and region

(see Clark, York and Anker (2003) or anexample). Te conventional wisdom, borneout by a number o empirical studies, is thatemale labor orce participation tends to ollowa U-shaped pattern as development proceeds

and incomes increase: high in the earlystages o development and industrialization

when womens roles in traditional modeso production are signicant, declining inthe middle stages o industrialization ashousehold incomes rise and new industrialsectors displace womens roles in traditionalproduction, and rising once again in the laterstages o industrialization as service sectorsexpand along with the demand or womens

market labor (and the rising opportunitycost o not working or pay). Independent oincome, economies dominated by traditionalagriculture also tend to have higher emalelabor orce participation all else equal hencethe high emale employment rates in Sub-Saharan Arica despite low income per capita.Fertility is used as a proxy or the extent to

which the demands o amily constrain emalelabor orce participation, though the efect can

also run the other way: better opportunitiesin the labor market draw women out o thehome and lower ertility. Controlling orregional diferences independent o percapita income, size o the agricultural sector,and ertility is variously used as a controlor the gender culture, preerences, or anyother actor common within a region that isnot explicitly measured in the study. So, orinstance, emale labor orce participation rates

in the Middle East and North Arica are lowerthan predicted by their per capita income,ertility, and agricultural sectors, an outcomethat many attribute to a gender culturethat discourages market work or women.Conversely, East Asia has higher emale labororce participation rates than the empiricalmodel would predict, a result not attributedto the gender culture but rather the emalelabor-intensive export-oriented developmentmodel adopted by many East Asian countries(Standing 1989).


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12


DevelopedEconomies

&EuropeanUnion

Central&South

EasternEurope

(non-EU)&CIS

EastAsia

South-EastAsia&

thePacifc

SouthAsia

LatinAmerica

&theCarribean

MiddleEast

NorthArica

Sub-SaharanArica

48.

3

49.

0

48.

0

59.

9

36.

7

44.

2

20.

5

22.

6

60.

8

50.

3

50.

0

48.

0

58.

4

37.

7

51.

9

24.

0

26.

3

62.

2

69.

8

68.

7

84.

4

88.

6

89.

1

82.

0

82.

2

81.

0

86.

2

68.

7

69.7

83.

2

87.

4

86.

7

82.

3

81.

6

81.

7

85.

3

Female1998

Female2006

Male1998

Male2006

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10 0

Percent

FiGURE1:Adlly--

lara,byxadr

,

1998ad2008(rc)

Source:ILO

.2009.

GlobalEmploymentTrendsforWomen.

Geneva:ILO,

TableA5.

Notes:Figu

resexcludeyouthsaged15-24.

FiguresestimatedbytheILOusingitsGlobalEmplo

ymentTrendsModel,whichemploysecon

ometricmethodstoproduceregionalestimatesoflabor

marketind

icatorswhencountrydataisunavailable.


22/103

13


Still, there are some commonalities acrossregions. urning back to gure 1, we seethat womens and mens employment-to-population ratios are converging around the

world, with the exception o South-East Asia

and the Pacic (where employment rateshave diverged a little over 0.3 percentagepoints between 1998 and 2006). Te largestconvergence by ar is in Latin America and theCaribbean, where womens employment-to-population ratio increased by 7.7 percentagepoints, compared to a 0.3 percentage pointincrease in mens ratio. In most cases, exceptor Central and South Eastern Europe, Latin

America and the Caribbean, and North

Arica, convergence between womens andmens employment rates is both the result oincreases in womens employment and declinesin mens employment.3

Since these gures illustrate employmentrather than labor orce participation, it couldbe that mens employment is declining inmost regions because o increased dicultyin nding work relative to women, or because

o non-labor market actors, such as earlierretirement or higher rates o disability (recallthat gure 1 illustrates adult employment, sospending more time in ormal education willnot afect the gures very much). We turn togure 2 to indicate whether this is indeed thecase. Womens unemployment rates are higherthan mens in all regions in both 1998 and2006, with the notable exception o East Asiain both 1998 and 2006, and Central and South

Eastern Europe in 2006 only. Te gender gapin unemployment (with women having higherunemployment rates than men), and absolutelevel o unemployment, is most pronouncedin Latin America and the Caribbean and theMiddle East and North Arica, while thegender gap is most narrow among developedeconomies.

3 O course, it could also be that the labor market surveys andcensus data used by the ILO to generate these estimates are

getting better at recording womens market work, though thestatistical techniques used by the ILO, which include time seriesinormation, should minimize this eect.

For the most part, then, these gures do notsuggest that women are making employmentgains at the expense o mens employment,though a more disaggregated and country-specic analysis is necessary to assert this claim

more strongly.4

What about the 2008 nancial crisis andthe consequent global recession in 2008/09?

Advanced economies were hit harder than thedeveloping world in terms o aggregate GDPgrowth. Advanced economy output grewby 0.5 percent in 2008 and declined by 3.2percent in 2009; the gures or emerging anddeveloping countries are increases o 6.1 and

2.1 percent in 2008 and 2009 respectively(IMF 2010). While we do not have regionalunemployment estimates or this period, wecan make some preliminary observations basedon individual reporting rom national labourorce surveys. Some countries in the developed

world have experienced much wider dispersionin sex-specic unemployment rates than priorto the recession, with mens unemploymentincreasing much aster than womens in the

United Kingdom, Iceland, Ireland, and theUnited States and Canada.5Tis is a result othe act that some o the hardest hit industriesin these countries, such as banking, nance,and construction, are male-dominatedindustries.

urning to the emerging and developingeconomies, based on the data available, thereis no marked divergence rom the gendered

unemployment patterns in the developingworld relative to beore the recession,and indeed, there seems to be much lessrecession-induced unemployment relative tothe advanced economies, as the gures oneconomic growth suggest.6

4 The latest year in gures 1 and 2 is 2006, although estimatesare available rom the ILO up through 2008. It is this authorsopinion that the ILO model probably underestimates the impacto the global recession on employment, and so we do not report

these later estimates.5 This conclusion is based on unemployment rates reported to the

ILO and published as part o their global statistics on the labourmarket series: http://www.ilo.org/pls/apex/?p=109:1:0.

6 See ootnote 4 or source.


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14


DevelopedEconomies

&EuropeanUnion

Central&South

EasternEurope

(non-EU)&CIS

EastAsia

South-EastAsia&

thePacifc

SouthAsia

LatinAmerica

&theCarribean

MiddleEast

NorthArica

Sub-SaharanArica

7.

8

12.

3

3.

6

5.

2

4.

1

10.

8

16.

1

18.

3

7.

3

6.

6

8.

9

3.

0

6.

8

6.

0

9.

4

14.

0

15.

9

8.

6

6.

6

11.

9

4.

9

4.

5

3.

6

6.

7

9.

8

11.

3

7.

3

6.

0

9.

3

4.

1

5.

7

5.

1

5.

7

8.

5

8.

4

7.

9

Female1998

Female2006

Male1998

Male2006

20

18

16

14

12

10 8 6 4 2 0

Percent

FiGURE2:ulyRabysx

&R,

1998&2006

Source:ILO

.2009.


Geneva:ILO,

TableA2.

Notes:Figu

resestimatedbytheILOusingitsGlobalEmploymentTrendsModel,

whichemp

loyseconometricmethodstoproducereg

ionalestimatesoflabor

marketind

icatorswhencountrydataisunavailable.


24/103

15


But capturing the impact o the globalrecession using standard macroeconomicindicators like GDP growth and unemploymentrates in developing economies is potentiallymisleading on a couple o counts. First, owing

to the greater likelihood o inormal andinsecure work in developing countries relativeto advanced economies, it is more likely thatunemployed developing economy workers

will move out o standard labor categoriesand not be counted as ocially unemployedduring periods o economic upheaval. Second,social saety nets that provide benets likeunemployment insurance and ood or thepoor are weak to non-existent in the developing

world, so even seemingly small increases inunemployment can have extremely deleteriousimpacts on human development relative tothe social dislocation experienced in advancedeconomies as a result o unemployment.

One way to get at this issue is to considerthe ILOs gures on the share o what it termsvulnerable employment, which reers to thesum o own-account workers and contributing

amily workers as a share o total employment.Workers in vulnerable employment acegreater economic risk; they are less likely tohave ormal work arrangements and access tosocial insurance, while earning less incomeand acing more income volatility overall(ILO 2009). Looking at gure 3, we seethat the majority o workers are engaged invulnerable employment in most developingregions, with the exception o Latin America

and the Caribbean, the Middle East andNorth Arica. In addition, women are morelikely to experience this vulnerability in everyregion except or Latin America and theCaribbean, where mens and womens sharesare very close. Clearly, to the extent that theseshares represent the distribution o economicinsecurity between women and men, womensemployment is on the whole certainly moreunstable and hence more vulnerable to the

vagaries o the economic boom-and-bustcycle.

It is not just whether one has a job thatcontributes to economic well-being, but alsothe income earned rom that work. Figure 4illustrates the percentage gender gap in medianearnings o ull-time employees or OECD

countries. It is good to consider median,as opposed to average, earnings becausethe median is not inuenced by extremelyhigh (pulling the average up) or low earners(pulling the average down). One is essentiallyconsidering what the middle person in thespectrum o earners is earning. Te averagemedian gap among OECD countries is 17.6percent. Tat is, among ull-time workers,men earn 17.6 percent more than women on

average when considering median earnings.Tis average masks some large diferencesbetween countries, however, with Korea and

Japan showing a 38.0 percent and 33.0 percentgap respectively, ollowed by Germany at 23.0percent.

Gender-specic wage data is notoriouslyspotty and at times misleading when it doesexist or developing economies. For example,

wage gaps tend to be lower in regions that areassociated with the greatest gender inequalitiesin other measures such as education or labororce participation (e.g. countries in the MiddleEast and North Arica, Sub-Saharan Arica,and low-income Asian countries) (zannatos2009). Tis is because women in the labormarket in these countries are those with moreeducation and thus relatively high labor marketreturns; women in these regions are also more

likely than men to be working or the higher-paying public sector (Ibid.). Tat said, wecan make some general statements about thegender pay gap and womens income in thecontext o economic development. Womentypically earn about two-thirds o what similarmen earn, with only around 20 percent othe worlds wages accruing to women bothbecause women are less likely to work or paythan men, and because when they do work or

pay, they tend to work in low-paying sectors(Ibid: 154).


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16


61.

4

66.

2

85.

1

31.

5

43.

6

48.

4

83.

9

51.

1

58.

9

74.

3

32.

1

29.

1

33.

4

71.

3

Female

Male

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10 0

Percent

EastAsia

S

outh-EastAsia&

thePacifc

SouthAsia

LatinAmerica&

theCaribbean

MiddleEast

NorthArica

Sub-Sahar

an

Arica

Source:ILO

.2009.


Geneva:ILO,

TableA7.

Note:Vuln

erableemploymentreferstothesumofo

wnaccountworkersandcontributingfam

ilyworkersasashareoftotalemploymen

t.

FiGURE3:vlrablelysharbysxadR,

2007(rc)


26/103

17


Tis suggests that the sorting o womenand men into diferent occupations andindustries reerred to as sex segregation contributes to the gender wage gap. Even inthe aggregate, segregation by sex is apparent.

Figure 5 illustrates the sectoral distributiono employment by sex and region or 1998and 2008, and a couple o patterns appear.Te service sector is by ar the largest sourceo both womens and mens employmentor the Developed Economies, Central andSouth Eastern Europe, and Latin Americaand the Caribbean, though women have alarger and increasing share o employment inthe service sector relative to men or all three

regions. A similar point can be made aboutthe agricultural sector in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Arica: it is the largest (but declining)source o employment or both women andmen, though its share o employment declinedaster between 1998 and 2008 or men thanor women. Industry is a more signicantsource o employment or men than womenthroughout the world, though the industrialshare is similar or women and men in East

and South East Asia.

Te less aggregated the industry oroccupation, the more sex segregation there is,a phenomenon that does not seem to changemuch with economic development (Clark,

York and Anker 2003). In export-orientedindustrial production, or instance, it is well-documented that women are concentrated inthe most labor-intensive sectors, garments and

electronics, while men are more likely to workin more capital intensive, higher value-added(and paying) industrial sectors (Braunsteinand Brenner 2007; agatay 2001; Elson1996; Fontana 2009). Female-dominatedindustries and occupations have diferentcareer ladders and structures o pay even whenproductivity characteristics like education andskill are the same (zannatos 2009: 147-48).

As documented by the statistics on vulnerable

employment in gure 3, women are alsomore likely to work in the inormal sector,

or to be a temporary, part-time or casualworker in the home or subcontracting (Ibid.).Women also tend to be concentrated in ewerproessions than men. In a cross-countrystudy o gender and the labor market, Clark,

York and Anker (2003) ound seven times asmany male-dominated occupations as emale-dominated occupations. So men ace littlecompetition rom women in most sectors othe labor market, and womens crowding intoewer occupations depresses wages in emale-dominated occupations while raising them inmale-dominated occupations.

3.2 Mnnm Dvopmnt goindcto

Dissatisaction with the economicperormance o the 1980s and the 1990s led

world leaders rom 189 countries to adopt theMDGs in 2000, a set o eight goals to addresspoverty by 2015 (Grown 2008a). Te targetor MDG Goal 3, to promote gender equalityand empower women, is to eliminate gender

disparity in primary and secondary education,preerably by 2005, and in all levels oeducation no later than 2015 (UN 2009:18). Eighty-two out o 122 countries (withdata available) achieved the mid-term target oparity in primary and secondary schooling by2005. Only one additional country is on trackto achieve it by 2015. Around 19 countriesseem unlikely to achieve this target by 2015;o these, 13 are in Sub-Saharan Arica (Buvinic

and Morrison 2008: 9).

Many have critiqued this target as toonarrow a denition o gender equality andempowerment, and have advocated a sorto MDG-plus approach that supplementsthe education target with a number o otherstrategic priorities dealing with issues like sexualand reproductive health and rights, propertyrights, violence and social inrastructure

(Buvinic and Morrison 2008; Grown, Gupta,and Aslihan 2005).


27/103

18


38.

0

33.

0

23.

0

21.

0

21.

0

19.

0

19.

0

19.

0

18.

9

18.

0

17.

3

17.

0

17.

0

15.

0

14.

0

13.

2

12.

0

11.

5

11.

0

10.

0

10.

0

9.

3

40

35

30

25

20

15

10 5 0

PercentKo

rea

Japa

n

Germ

any

Cana

da

Unite

dKin

gdom Sw

itzer

land U

nite

dStat

es Finlan

d

Portu

gal

Czec

hRe

publi

cSp

ain

Austr

alia

Neth

erlan

ds Swe

den

Irelan

d

Hung

ary

Franc

e

Gree

ce

Denm

ark

Polan

d

New

Zeala

nd Belg

ium

OECD

average=17.6

%

Source:OrganisationforEconomicCooperationand

Development.

FiGURE4:prcagdrgam

daearfFll-telyoeCDCr

,2006rlayaraalabl


28/103

19


But in light o the dominance o the MDGsin the development discourse, it is importantto have a sense o the statistics used to evaluateMDG3 progress.

Tree indicators are used to track MDG3:the ratio o girls to boys in primary, secondaryand tertiary education; the share o womenin wage employment in the nonagriculturalsector, and the proportion o seats held by

women in national parliament illustrates theeducation data by region or 2000 and 2007,and indicates that progress towards genderparity in all levels o education has been madeover the period. For developing regions as a

whole, in 2007 there were 95 girls per 100 boysenrolled in primary education, 94 in secondaryeducation, and 96 in tertiary education.Tough this progress is important, these ratiosdo not capture absolute enrollment rates (soincreases could reect lower enrollment orboys), nor do they indicate anything aboutcompletion rates, a perhaps more importantindicator o the development o humancapabilities (Buvinic and Morrison 2008.)

I we think o enrollment in school as anindicator o capabilities, and the share o

women in non-agricultural wage employmentand the proportion o seats held by womenin parliaments as indicators o opportunities,there remains a lot more ground to be coveredto reach gender parity in opportunities thancapabilities, as illustrated by gures 6 and7. Te share o women in non-agricultural

wage employment is a sort o reverse imageo the vulnerable employment portrait ingure 3, as working or a wage outside othe agricultural sector indicates more stable,modern and higher-paid employment thanother alternatives. With the exception o theCommonwealth o Independent States region,men constitute the majority o these workers inall regions, though the ratio is near 50 percentin developed regions (and the circumstances o

other types o employment are not necessarilyindicative o ewer opportunities or womenin the same way as in developing regions).

For most regions, the share o women in non-agricultural wage employment roughly parallels

womens employment-to-population ratiosoverall (see gure 1), with two exceptions:Sub-Saharan Arica and Southern Asia. In

both o these regions, women are much moreunderrepresented in the modern wage sector relative to their overall employment levels than in other regions, as also suggested bytheir high shares o vulnerable employment ingure 3.

urning to gure 8, or developing regionsas a whole, women held17.2 percent onational parliament seats as o January o

2009, compared with 10.8 percent in 2000.Women hold 30 percent or more o upper orlower national parliament chamber seats in 24countries, and 30 percent or more o upperchamber seats in 15 countries (UN 2009:23). Tese rontrunners are a diverse set ocountries, and include developed countries as

well as post-conict and developing countriesin Arica, Asia and Latin America and theCaribbean; nine chambers, mostly in the

Pacic Islands and the Arab Gul States, haveno women members o parliament (Ibid.).

3.3 Compot indc

Uni-dimensional indicators o genderdiferences, such as the ones reviewed above,are preerable when trying to understand aparticular aspect o economic development. Butthe persistent use o, and dissatisaction with,per capita GDP as a proxy or developmenthas spurred the creation o composite indicesto serve as an alternative. Te earliest andmost well-known is the UNDPs HumanDevelopment Index (HDI), which combinesmeasures o health (lie expectancy at birth),education (adult literacy and gross primary,secondary, and tertiary enrollment ratios), andstandard o living (the natural log o per capitaGDP at purchasing power parity). Regularlypublished with the UNDPs annual HumanDevelopment Report since 1990, the HDI


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20


F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

F98

F08

M98

M08

Developed

Economies&

EuropeanUnion

Central&South

EasternEurope

(non-EU)&CIS

EastAsia

South-EastAsia

&thePacifc

SouthAsia

LatinAmerica

&theCarribean

M

iddleEast

NorthArica

Sub-S

aharan

Arica

Agriculture

Industry

Services

1

00%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Source:ILO

.2009.


Geneva:ILO,

TablesA6bandA6c.

Note:F98referstofemalesin1998,

F08tofemalesin2008,andM98andM08tomaleshare

sin1998and2008respectively.

FiGURE5:scralDrbfelybysxadR,

1998&2008


30/103

21


91

85

97

101

84

97

88

90

99

99

91

94

90

97

99

95

98

90

89

99

100

95

Northern Arica

Sub- Saharan Arica

Latin America & Caribbean

Eastern Asia

Southern Asia

South- Eastern Asia

Western Asia

Oceania

Commonwealtho Independence States

Developed Regions

Developing Regions

2000 2007

0 20 40 60 80 100

FiGURE 6: Ra f rl rar, cdar ad rar dca(rl r 100 )

(a) Primary education

reects Amartya Sens work on the centrality ounctionings and capabilities as the appropriatetarget and barometer o development eforts.

Te 1995 Human Development Reportintroduced two new human developmentindicators: the gender development indicator(GDI) and the gender empowerment measure(GEM). Te GDI imposes a welare penaltyon the HDI or diferences between men and

women in lie expectancy, adult illiteracy andgross enrollment ratios (what proportion othe age-appropriate population is enrolled inprimary, secondary, and tertiary education),and earned income. Te GEM combinesmeasures o womens relative empowerment inthe ollowing three areas: political participation

and decision-making, as reected in womensand mens percentage shares o parliamentaryseats; economic participation and decision-making, as measured by womens relative

share o positions as legislators, senior ocials,managers, and proessional and technicalworkers; and power over economic resources,as measured by their share o earned income(UN 2007: 360).

Both the GDI and the GEM have spawned anumber o comparative studies, debate, and thecreation o new, alternative aggregate measureso gender inequality and absolute achievements(see theJournal o Human Developments2006special issue or an overview o this work). Oneo the more common criticisms is that the GDI


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22


is sometimes used incorrectly as a stand-alonemeasure o gender inequality, when it wasdesigned to be used in direct comparison to theHDI to underscore the GDIs role as a welarepenalty to the HDI (Grown 2008b). A second

critique applies to the statistical methodologyused to compute both the GDI and the GEM.For both indices, the component with themost variation (income) ends up having themost inuence, so the indices mix measureso gender equality with measures o absolute

well-being, and women in wealthier countriesappear to have greater gender equality whenthey actually have similar shares o economicor political power as women in lower income

countries (Dijkstra 2006; Grown 2008b).Tis is sometimes reerred to as a weightingproblem, because high variance componentso the index end up with greater weights thanlow variance components. A third issue is thatmost indices are based on some average o

their components, so high gender equality inone area can mute extreme gender inequalityin another. Te ultimate question is how tointerpret the nal index.

With these caveats in mind, we illustratethe latest gures or the HDI, GDI and GEMby region in gure 9. Note that none o theregions incur a very high human development

welare penalty when comparing the HDI andthe GDI. One way to capture this relationshipis by using the ratio o the GDI to the HDI;a ratio o one means that there is no welarepenalty or gender inequality in humandevelopment. able 2 gives these ratios by

region, with the lowest ratio in the Arab Statesbeing 0.967, and the highest in the Centraland Eastern European region at 0.998. Similarto the conditions suggested by the MDG3education indicators, there is very limitedgender inequality in capabilities as measured by

91

85

97

101

77

98

80

91

100

101

90

94

90

97

99

85

103

84

87

98

100

94

Northern Arica

Sub- Saharan Arica


Eastern Asia

Southern Asia

South- Eastern Asia

Western Asia

Oceania


Developed Regions

Developing Regions

2000 2007

0 20 40 60 80 100

(b) Secondary education


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68

63

113

55

67

90

82

68

121

120

77

104

67

119

96

77

111

93

85

129

129

96

Northern Arica

Sub- Saharan Arica


Eastern Asia

Southern Asia

South- Eastern Asia

Western Asia

Oceania


Developed Regions

Developing Regions

2000 2007

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

Source: UN (2009), Statistical Annex. For a list o countries in each region, seehttp://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.

aspx?Content=Data/RegionalGroupings.htm.Note: These ratios are based on gross enrollment: the number o girls and boys enrolled in a particular school level regardless oage.

(c) Tertiary education

comparing the HDI to the GDI (though thereis a lot o variation in human development,as illustrated by the vertical diferences ingure 9). Te GEM, however, tells a slightlydiferent story, with all regions scoring muchlower on gendered empowerment than (genderinequality-adjusted) human development.

A number o scholars, practitioners anddevelopment organizations have come up withalternative composite measures that addressthe critiques o the GDI and the GEM. Teollowing is a representative list.

TeStandardizedIndexofGenderEquality(SIGE) combines indicatorsthat capture emale versus male

achievements in the ollowing areas:education, lie expectancy, economicactivity rates, the emale share o higherlabor market positions, and the emale

share o parliament (Dijkstra 2002).While all o these actors are reected inthe GDI and the GEM, the SIGE onlycaptures the extent o gender equality(and not absolute achievements). Itcounters the weighting problem bystandardizing the components o theindex, so cross-country comparisonsare more straightorward. But thestandardization process means thatgender inequality in any one country ismeasured relative to the average positiono gender inequality in other countries,and does not indicate whether womenspositions are better or worse than mens(Permanyer 2010). Another problem

with this approach is that componentweights are diferent every year, thusmaking comparisons over time somewhatproblematic (Klasen 2006).


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FiGURE 7: shar f w wa l h -arclral cr (rc)

2.1

9.1

14.8

19.9

6.7

9.7

4.7

3.4

7.3

17.5

10.8

8.3

18.1

22.2

20.2

16.7

17.3

9.2

2.5

14.1

22.9

17.2

Northern Arica

Sub- Saharan Arica


Eastern Asia

Southern Asia

South- Eastern Asia

Western Asia

Oceania

Commonwealth o Independence States

Developed Regions

Developing Regions

2000 2009

0 5 10 15 20 25

Source: Statistical Annex, U.N. (2009). For a list o countries in each region, see http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Data/RegionalGroupings.htm.

tablE 2: Ral gDi a a rr f HDi, 2007

Source: Authors calculations based on 2009 Human Development Report.

Developed & EU (non-CIS) 0.988

Central & Eastern Europe & CIS 0.998

East Asia & Pacifc 0.996

South Asia 0.969

Arab States 0.967

Latin America & the Caribbean 0.994

Sub-Saharan Arica 0.980


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AfricanGenderandDevelopmentIndex. Launched by the UN Economic

Commission or Arica, the AricanGDI is an efort to broaden the scope ostandard indices. It combines a GenderStatus Index, which is a weighted averageo the emale-to-male ratio o 41 diverseindicators o basic capabilities, economicopportunities and political power,

with the Arican Womens ProgressScoreboard, which uses 28 indicators tomeasure government policy perormance

in our areas: womens rights, capabilities,economic opportunities and politicalpower (Grown 2008b; UNECA 2009).

Te Arican GDIs strength its broadcoverage is also its major weakness,

as the data requirements mean it canbe gured or only a limited number ocountries (Permanyer 2010). A 2009pilot study covered only 12 countries(UNECA 2009).

SocialWatchGenderEquityIndex(GEI). Social Watchs GEI combinesthree composite measures o genderinequality, the components o whichare measured as emale-to-male ratios.Tus, it too measures emale-to-malerelative perormance, not womens

FiGURE 8: prr f a hld w aal arla

17.5

7.3

3.4

4.7

9.7

5.6

6.7

14.6

19.9

14.8

9.1

2.1

22.9

14.1

2.5

9.2

17.2

18.7

16.7

17.2

20.2

22.2

18.1

8.3

Northern Arica

Sub- Saharan Arica


Eastern Asia

Eastern Asia Excluding China

Southern Asia

Southern Asia excluding India

South- Eastern Asia

Western Asia

Oceania

Commonwealth o Independence States (CIS)

Developing Regions

2000 2009

0 5 10 15 20 25

Source: Statistical Annex, U.N. (2009). For a list o countries in each region, see http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Data/RegionalGroupings.htm.


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Source:Au

thorscalculationsbasedondatainthe2009HumanDevelopmentReport.

Notes:Ind

icesareweightedbypopulation.

SeeApp

endixAforalistofcountriesineachregion,andhowmissingdataweremanaged.

ThereisnoGEMobservationforSub-Sah

aranAfricadueto

lackofregionalcoverage.

10.9

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1 0

HDI

HDI

HDI

Developed&EU(non-CIS)

Central&EasternEurope&

CommonwealthIndependentStates

EastAsia&Pacifc

SouthAsia

ArabStates

LatinAmerica&

theCaribbean

Sub-SaharanArica

FiGURE9:HDi,gDiadgembyr

,2007


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or mens absolute achievements. Tethree areas include education, whichis measured the same way as the GDI,economy, measured by the relativeshares o income and total paid jobs,

and empowerment, measured by relativeshares in parliament, ministries, andhigher labor market positions (Grown2008b; Social Watch 2010). Te result isa simple arithmetic average o the threedimensions, so high equality in one areacompensates or low equality in another.

And there is no standardization o theindex components, so the indicator withthe biggest variation will dominate the

index (Grown 2008b).

GlobalGenderGapIndex. Te WorldEconomic Forums (WEF) GlobalGender Gap Index (GGG) has beenpublished annually since 2006, andit too captures relative achievementsrather than womens absolute levels oempowerment. Its our componentsinclude: (1) economic participation and

opportunity, which in addition to labororce participation, estimated income,and the proportion o women in higherend jobs, also includes an estimate o

wage equality or similar work takenrom the WEFs executive opinionsurvey; (2) educational attainment,

which is the same as the GDI; (3)health and survival, which includesboth lie expectancy and sex ratios

at birth, both adjusted or biologicaldiferences between women and men;and (4) political empowerment, whichincludes both the proportion o seats inhigher levels o government and numbero years with a emale head o state.(Hausmann, yson and Zaahidi 2009).Sub-component values are weightedto correct or the problem o variables

with highest variability having undue

inuence on the average, and then theour components are averaged togetherto get the GGG, with the maximum

score equal to one. As with the SIGE,weighting takes care o one problem andintroduces another that comparisonsover time are problematic as the weightschange each year.

o give readers an idea o what one o thesealternative indices look like, gure 10 presents2009 data on the WEFs GGG by region.

While not directly comparable to the GDI orthe GEM, it is still instructive to see an exampleo the diferent sorts o inormation portrayedby one o the alternative indicators. Te GGGcan be considered a sort o combination o theinormation represented by the GDI and the

GEM, though the GGG ocuses exclusivelyon emale relative to male achievements, so itis more strictly comparable to the GEM. Interms o ordinal ranking, the GGG orderingroughly corresponds to the GEM orderingin gure 9, with the developed region at thetop o the ranking, ollowed by Central andEastern Europe and the CommonwealthIndependent States, then East Asia and thePacic and Latin America and the Caribbean

(though Latin America ranks slightly aboveEast Asia in the GEM ordering and slightlybelow in the GGG ordering), and nally bySouth Asia and the Arab States at the bottom(note there is no GEM observation or Sub-Saharan Arica due to limited data). Tevariance o the GEM is also higher, with astandard deviation (the standard diferencebetween an observation and the entire groupsaverage) o 0.16 compared to 0.05 or the

GGG, perhaps because o the standardizationprocess applied to the GGG computations.

Figure 11 illustrates the components oGGG by region in 2009 to give readers a senseo the relative perormance o the components,and how averaging or an index can obscureinormation. Consistent with the MDG3ndings discussed above, gender equality isgreatest in the capabilities o education and

health in all regions. Te next highest category(though with ar lower scores than educationand health) is economic participation and


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0.704 0.6940.685

0.612

0.582

0.678

0.650

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0Developed &EU (non-CIS)

Central & EasternEurope &

CommonwealthIndependent

East Asia& Pacifc

South Asia Arab States Latin America & theCaribbean Arica

Sub-Saharan

Source: Authors calculations based on data rom Haussman, Tyson and Zahidi (2009).Note: Regional grouping scores weighted by population. See Appendix A or a list o countries o in regional groupings, and

urther notes on the weighting scheme.

FiGURE 10: th glal gdr ga id r, 2009

opportunity, with South Asia and the ArabStates ranking lowest with scores o 0.41and 0.42 respectively. As with the GEM, allregions lag arthest behind in terms o politicalempowerment, with South Asia rankinghighest with a score o 0.25 (largely because oits tradition o emale heads o state), ollowed

by the developed region with a score o 0.19.

3.4 smmy

3.4.1 by indcto

EmploymentIndicators

In terms o adult employment-to-population ratios in 2006, men acrossthe developing world have similarly highemployment rates (with an average o

0.85), with lower rates in the developedand Central and Southeastern Europeanregions (with an average o 0.69). Teyare, however, everywhere much higherthan emale employment rates. Tereare three categories o emale adultemployment-to-population ratios: low,

medium and high. Te Middle East andNorth Arica have similarly low emaleemployment rates, with an average o0.25. Medium emale employment ratesprevail in the developed economies,Central and South Eastern Europe, andLatin America and the Caribbean, withan average o 0.51. Te highest emaleemployment rates are ound in East andSouth East Asia and Sub-Saharan Arica,

with an average o 0.64.


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1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0Political

Health

Education

Economic

Central & Eastern Europe &Commonwealth Independent States

Health

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0Political Education

Economic

East Asia & Pacifc

Developed & EU (non-CIS)

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2


Economic

Health

South Asia

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2


Economic

Health

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2


Economic

Health

Sub-Saharan Arica

1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2


Economic

Health


FiGURE 11: C f h glal gdr ga id R, 2009


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Women ace higher unemployment thanmen in all developing regions with theexception o East Asia, where womensunemployment rates are lower than mens(though unemployment rates are lowor both groups overall). Women aceparticularly high unemployment rates inNorth Arica and the Middle East, whereemale unemployment was 18.3 percentand 16.1 percent respectively in 2006.

Conversely, in developed regions mensunemployment has increased more than

womens as a result o the 2008 nancialcrisis and consequent global recession.

Vulnerable employment, dened asthe sum o own account workers andcontributing amily workers, is thenorm or working women and menin Sub-Saharan Arica, South Asia,

East and South East Asia, thoughwomen are more likely to engage invulnerable employment than men,

with the exception o Latin Americaand the Caribbean, where vulnerableemployment rates are relatively low andabout equal or men and women.

Available statistics reveal a lot more aboutlabor orce participation and aggregateemployment patterns than gender-

based wage gaps, sex segregation byindustry or occupation, and the gender-

disaggregated impact o economicexpansions and contractions. Tat said,available evidence indicates that jobs areextremely segregated by sex, and that

women around the world earn less than

men or similar work.

MDG3Indicators

MDG3 indicators portray the relativeachievements o women and menin educational enrollments, wageemployment, and parliamentaryrepresentation.

At a regional level, women and men arenear parity on capabilities as measured bygross enrollment in primary education;there is more inequality but signicantconvergence in secondary and tertiaryeducation.

A lot more ground remains to be coveredin opportunities as measured by theemale share o the wage labor orce andseats in parliament.

CompositeIndices

Te UNDPs GDI imposes a welarepenalty on the HDI or diferencesbetween men and women in lieexpectancy, adult illiteracy and grossenrollment ratios, and

Documents

UN--HABITAT 2010 'Gender and Economic Development, Global Urban Economic Dialogue Series, HS--033--11E, UN Human Settlements Programme (93 Pp.)