ECO 433

Gender and Development

Topic 3
Implications of gender inequality on economic development
• A development strategy/policy/programme/project has certain
purpose/mission/goal/objectives
e.g. poverty reduction, improving literacy rate, improving
access to healthcare services
• Gender blind/gender neutral approaches have limitations
• Formulating development strategies/policies or carrying out
development programmes/projects need a good understanding
of the context and dynamics involving multiple interlinked
components
e.g. - poverty reduction strategy
- Improving access to credit
• Gender neutral – Access to health
• Gender focused – Access to maternal health
• Targeted – Access to health for low-income slum dwellers
• Inclusive approach – including those who are often
excluded/marginalised (e.g. access to credit for poor women in
slums)

• Why non-inclusive policies/programmes/projects have limited

impacts?
Some attributes of poverty/underdevelopment
• Low income/earning/productivity/output
• Low education attainments
- school enrollment
- years of schooling
- academic performance
• Health and nutrition
- infant/child mortality
- immunisation
- nutrition and child survival
- HIV/AIDS
• Emotional/mental wellbeing
• Corruption
• Exclusion
Gender Inequality Hinders Development
• Inequalities in rights, resources and voice not only disadvantage
women, it also disadvantage the rest of the society and impede
development:
- more poverty
- more malnutrition
- more illness
- more deprivation
A few examples of how gender inequality is associated
with underdevelopment/development challenges

i. HIV/AIDS
A study in capital cities of 72 developing countries finds gender
inequality associated with higher infection rates:

A. High ratio of male to female urban residents:

• Involving high-risk adults – speeding up the spread of HIV within
and outside small pool of risky individuals

B. Larger gap between male and female literacy rate:

• Involving low-risk adults – infection rates are higher in cities where
there are larger gaps between male and female literacy rates (lacking
awareness and voice)
• HIV/AIDS patients and orphans
- pulling healthy women out of labour market to care for AIDS
patients and orphans
- A missing generation of family members in Uganda where
HIV/AIDS orphans are being cared by grandparents, majority of
them are women
- Serious financial, physical and emotional stress
ii. Stress and violence induced by gender roles
• Gender roles and expectations produce reactions and behaviours that
lead to violence
- The traditional expectations that men are dominant bread earners and
decision makers – a sense of higher responsibility
- Examples of transitional economies (e.g. Russia) between 1990-97
- Cardiovascular disease, ridicule, suicide, domestic violence ,
alcoholism (higher among men than women)
- All Eastern European countries have seen larger declines in Men’s life
expectancy since the beginning of transition (joblessness associated
with increase in men’s mortality)
• Economic costs of violence against women
- Direct costs (criminal justice, medical, employment loss, social
welfare systems)
- Indirect costs (lower productivity, absence from workplace, lost
income)
- Fiji: Cost of domestic violence is about 7% of GNP
iii. Formation of future human capital
A. Education and survival
• Strong negative correlation between mother’s average years of schooling
and child mortality
• Mother’s education has a large effect on healthcare seeking behavior
(e.g. immunisation)
• If Sub-Saharan Africa had same female to male ratio of years of
schooling as Eastern Europe (about parity), it’s under 5 mortality would
have been more than 25% lower than it was in 1990 (167/1,000)
• In India: children of more literate mothers study nearly 2 more hours a
day than children of illiterate mothers
B. Access to resources and child-welfare
• Additional income in the hands of women has a greater positive
impact on child survival and malnutrition than does additional
income in the hands of men
• In Bangladesh it has been observed that borrowing by women in
rural areas has greater positive impact on child welfare than
borrowing by men (school enrollment, nutrition)
iv. Costs to productivity and growth
• Less skilled future workforce due to discrimination
• Output lost as a result of prejudice in labour market and unequal distribution of
productive assets between men and women
• Less schooling means more limited capacity to attain technical skills
• Inefficient allocation of labour – occupational segregation based on prejudice
rather than qualifications
• A study on 70 countries: Elasticity of GDP/worker with respect to stock of female
education is higher than stock of male education
• Employment in formal sector will lead to substitution of unrecorded female
labour force and captured in national income accounting
• Female share of working age population in the formal sector has an economically
and statistically significant positive correlation with economic growth
iv. Costs to governance

A. Corruption
- Dishonest and illegal behavior
- Accepting and paying bribes
- Political participation and parliamentary seats

B. Exclusion narrows perspectives

End of Topic 3