Transcript Gender Equality and Economic Growth: A Rights Based

Gender Equality and Economic
Growth: A Rights Based
Perspective
Diane Elson
SID Presentation
Amsterdam 19 Jan 2008
The Allure of Economic Growth
• Economic growth appears to provide more
resources that can be used to meet
development objectives, such as MDGs
• Economic progress widely judged in terms
of economic growth as measured by
increase in GDP per capita
• Falls in the rate of growth, and no growth,
is widely viewed as a cause for concern
Some Doubts About Economic
Growth
• Is growth illusory and unsustainable?
• Does the growth process really increase
resources, or does it deplete resources and
simply make output more visible by transferring
it to the market?
• Is growth equitable?
• Does it require and create inequality?
• Does it exclude many groups of people?
• Does it entail deprivations that violate human
rights ?
Gender Equality and Economic
Growth: A Variety of Views
• Nobel laureate, Arthur Lewis, a founding
father of development economics
• Mainstream economists such as Stephen
Klasen
• Feminist economists such as Stephanie
Seguino
Economic Growth Benefits Women
Even More Than Men
In his book on the theory of economic growth,
Lewis was in no doubt about the benefits to
women:
‘Women benefit from growth even more than
men . . . Woman gains freedom from drudgery,
is emancipated from the seclusion of the
household, and gains at last the chance to be a
full human being, exercising her mind and her
talents in the same way as men’ (Lewis, 1955, p.
422).
Growth Reduces Women’s
Drudgery
Arthur Lewis made this claim
‘because most of the things which women
otherwise do in the household can in fact be
done much better or more cheaply outside,
thanks to large scale economies of
specialization, and also to the use of capital.
(Grinding grain, fetching water from the river,
making cloth, making clothes, cooking the
midday meal, teaching children, nursing the sick
etc.)’ (Lewis 1954, p. 404).
Gender Equality in Education
Promotes Economic Growth
Klasen (2002) finds that the higher gender gaps in
education in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to East Asia,
and their slower reduction, accounted for 0.6 percentage
points in the 3.5 percentage points difference in the
growth rates in the two regions in the period 1960–92.
Closing the gender gap in enrolment in primary school
by 2005 is a Millennium Development target An estimate
of the impact on the economic growth of countries that
were not on track to meet this target found that they
would have grown faster by about 0.1 to 0.3 percentage
points if they had been on track to close the gap (AbuGhaida and Klasen,2004).
Or is the Causation the Other Way
Round?
Robbins (1999) argued, in a study of six Latin
American countries, that causation goes from
increases in growth to increases in education of
girls, rather than vice versa.
He found that economic growth leads to rising
educational attainment by drawing more women
into the labour force, increasing the opportunity
cost of women’s time, and thus reducing fertility
and leading families to invest more in the
education of their (fewer) children, girls as well
as boys.
Gender Equality in Participation in the
Labour Market Promotes Economic Growth
Studies on the Middle East and North Africa (Klasen and
Lamanna, 2003) and India (Esteve-Volart, 2004) suggest
that growth would be higher if the gender gap in labour
market participation were reduced (through more women
entering the market).
But is it higher growth that pulls more women into the
labour market, rather than women’s entry into labour
market pushing up growth?
In the global economic slow down, higher female
participation rates might lead to higher female
unemployment.
Gender Inequality in Wages Promotes
Economic Growth
Seguino (2000)examines a set of export-oriented semiindustrialized countries between 1975 and 1995.She
finds that a 0.10 increase in the gender wage gap leads
to a 0.15 percentage point increase in GDP growth.
This means, for instance, that the difference in growth
rates attributable to gender wage differentials for Korea
(growth of 8.0 per cent a year ) and Chile (growth of 5.3
per cent) was 1.2 percentage points per year.
A second gender wage-gap measure that corrects for
gender differences in education lowers the impact only
slightly: a 0.10 increase in the gender wage-gap level
now leads to 0.10 percentage point increase in GDP
growth.
Or is the Causation the Other Way
Round?
• It could be argued that it is the faster
economic growth that has kept the gender
wage gap high.
• If faster growth brings less educated, less
skilled women into employment, then this
will depress the average level of women’s
earnings and tend to widen the gender
wage gap.
What Policy Conclusions Does the
Research Point To?
If we put aside concerns about the
direction of causation, we might conclude
that to promote faster economic growth, a
government should:
• educate girls to the same level as boys,
• reduce barriers to women’s participation in
the labour market,
• but not act to reduce the gender wage
gap.
Is this Advice in Compliance with
Human Rights Obligations?
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has
been signed and ratified by most countries in the
world.
• CEDAW places obligations on governments to
eliminate all forms of discrimination against
women.
• In so far as the gender wage gap reflects
discrimination against women, the advice would
not be compliant with CEDAW.
Compliance with Other Obligations
Governments also have obligations to protect workers’
rights at work and to social security ( see Int Cov on
Econ Soc and Cultural Rights) and ILO Conventions).
Informal employment, that lacks such rights, has being
growing as a share of total employment (Standing,
1999).
Women workers in developing countries are more
concentrated than men in informal employment ; and
within informal employment, in the more precarious
types, with the lowest incomes (Chen et al., 2005).
Rapid employment creation is necessary but not
sufficient. Inclusion per se is not enough.
Is Human Rights Compliant Growth
Possible?
It requires well-regulated markets, monetary and fiscal
policies focused on provision of decent work, industrial
policy that promotes high productivity jobs, respect for
the rights of workers to organize, and the use of taxation
and public expenditure to provide public services, and
redistribute income.
Some of today’s rich countries managed to combine
economic growth with similar policies, and have the
world’s best outcomes for gender equality.
A similar policy package for today’s developing countries
is outlined by Seguino and Grown (2006), with a
particular focus on women’s rights. It emphasizes not
growth through keeping labour cheap but through
enabling labour to be more productive and returns to be
fairly distributed.
Obstacles to a Human Rights Compliant
Policy- and New Opportunities
• Internal obstacles include elites acting to
safeguard their own privileges.
• Also external obstacle, especially poorly
regulated international markets, that put
pressure on governments to compete by
keeping labour cheap and failing to protect
workers’ rights, and punish more progressive
policies with capital flight.
• The global economic crisis has destroyed the
case for this kind of regulation.
• New opportunities for new thinking.
References
Abu-Ghaida, D. and S. Klasen (2004), ‘The Costs of Missing the
Millennium Development Goals on Gender Equity’, World Development, 32
(7): 1075–1107.
Chen, M., J. Vanek, F. Lind, J. Heintz, R. Jhabvala and C. Bonner
(2005),Women,Work and Poverty, New York: UNIFEM.
Esteve-Volart, B. (2004), ‘Gender Discrimination and Growth: Theory and
Evidence from India’, STICERD Development Economics Papers, Suntory
and Toyota International Centres for Economic and Related Disciplines,
London: London School of Economics.
Klasen, S. (2002), ‘Low Schooling for Girls? Slower Growth for All?’, World
Bank Economic Review, 16: 345–73.
Klasen, S. and F. Lamanna (2003), ‘The Impact of Gender Equality in
Education and Employment in the Middle East and North Africa’,
background paper for report on Gender and Development in Middle East
and North Africa, Washington, DC: World
References
Lewis, W. Arthur (1954), ‘Economic Development with Unlimited
Supplies of Labour’,Manchester School, 22 (2): 139–91.
Lewis, W. Arthur (1955), The Theory of Economic Growth, London:
Allen & Unwin.
Robbins,D. (1999), ‘Gender, Human Capital and Growth: Evidence
from Six Latin American Countries’, OECD Development Centre,
Working Paper No 151, Paris: OECD.
Seguino, S. (2000), ‘Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: A
Cross Country Analysis’,
World Development, 28 (7): 1211–30.
Seguino, S. and C. Grown (2006), ‘Gender Equity and
Globalization’, Journal of International Development, 18 (8): 1081–
104.
Standing, G. (1999), ‘Global Feminization Through Flexible Labor: A
Theme Revisited’, World Development, 27 (3): 583–602