10 - Gender Flashcards
Missing women
A concept of referring to the gap between men and women in many countries as a consequence of preferring men. 6 million are missing. Due to sex selective abortion, prioritizing boys in calories, maternal mortality etc.
How to measure gender inequality?
Pretty easy, just take all the measures and see how they differ between males and females. Ex school enrollment, literacy, life expectancy etc.
Cen economic development improve female empowerment? It can do 5 things:
- Relax the constraints poor HH face –> more likely to spend more on the girls in a disproportionately way to help girls.
- Improve maternal mortality rate which increases incentives to invest in females.
- Increase service sector jobs which are more conducive to womens workk
- Increases women’s free time, less HH work, more market work.
- Improve legal rights, women can demand more when they have better position.
Is the 5 improvements of growth enough to eliminate gender inequalities?
NO, they are not enough. Large differences still exist ex skewed sex ratios, educational gender gap etc.
The other way around: can female empowerment improve development? (2)
- Family outcomes: empowerment –> more decision making in HH –> more food and education to children –> children’s welfare better.
- Productivity outcome: Empowerment –> property rights better for women –> investments –> agricultural productivity.
3 reasons for why gender inequality exist?
- Poverty
- Bargaining power
- Institutions (social norms, identity)
Gender inequality and poverty:
Inequalities are largest in poor areas. HH are distributed unequally under poverty - prioritizing nutrition and education to boys bc high expected returns + they work physically.
Gender inequality and bargaining power:
2 models
- Unitary model - M and F utility is the same, one or both make decisions on HH spending, income is pooled and then allocated.
- Bargaining model - diff. utility, HH maximizes weighted function of two utilities where the weight reflects the bargaining power.
- if w is determined exogenous: HH maximizes utility but struggles with equity.
- if w is endogenous, the resources are inefficiently dist. + issues with equity.
Is income pooling likely?
No, most studies show that it matters who you give the money to, so the unitary model is not really plausible. WHich in turn means that HH have issues with the equity…
Gender inequality and institutions/social norms:
Social norms can affect the bargaining power as they set limits on what can be bargained about, how the power is shared and how the bargaining s conducted.
Social norms and female leaders?
There is a widespread perception that women are not competent leaders and this is probably the strongest barrier for women’s participation i policy making.
Three distinct processes in social identity:
- Social categorisation - you categorise yourself into groups based on shared characteristics.
- Social identification - we adopt the identity of the group we have categorised ourselves into. Norms are beliefs about how to act and behave in this group.
(lack of conformity is seen as a threat). - Social comparison - who we are is partly defined by who we are not. Group specific norms will enhance in-group feeling and increase differences between groups and outsiders. This raises self image/self-esteem. (not always positive, ex recruiting IS).
Link the 3 steps in identity to the perception of female leaders -
Females will most likely categorise themselves as females and start conforming to the characteristics that females are expected to exercise. If females are unexpected to take leading positions, they will behave like non-leaders, not promoting themselves, not rule over others etc. And this will be self-fulfilling… Will be punished if behaving outside this norm –> receiving hate.This maintains the female position as inferior to men.
Policies for gender equality:
Quotas are a common way of forcing women into positions they might not have had otherwise. In general, better health care for maternal mortality, better reward for women’s education, improved access for women to invest and own land etc, are policies that can be implemented.
Community driven development (CDD)
CDD is when the community decides what needs there are and plans investments etc and then reaches out to the donors with these project plans. This is a way of increasing the women’s benefits of the project if the community focuses on tit.
