Final New shit

Question 1

Explain what the Hecksher Ohlin theory predicts in terms of the relation between wages
and exporting.

Answer 1

(mainstream trade theory) Hecksher Ohlin theory:
Countries export good that are intensive in the factor of production that is relatively
abundant in a country
export increases should lead to a reallocation of factors of production to the sectors that
intensively use the relatively abundant factor of production.
Suppose Mexico is abundant in unskilled labor, not skilled labor, and it produces
garments that use unskilled labor intensively. If Mexico trades, it will export garments.
When there is an increase of exports of garments, the relative demand for unskilled
workers will increase, increasing their wages.
Assuming majority of women are unskilled expect their wages to increase.
Men are in skilled jobs, demand for them might decrease because resources are
reallocated to the unskilled worker intensive sector which is garment production.
Gender gap would be narrowed.

Question 2

How would increasing international competitiveness with trade affect wages?

Answer 2

There is a positive relation between market power and discrimination.
Because discrimination is costly in the sense that discriminating employers forego profits
in order to indulge their ‘taste for discrimination’, employers with market power will be
able to practice discrimination to a greater extent than employers with little market
power.
If women were the ones discriminated against, elimination of discrimination would
increase their wages, gender wage gap would narrow.

Question 3

What do plots of gender wage gap and trade, and wage gap and FDI indicate?

Answer 3

Gender gap narrowed

Question 4

Taiwan moved towards capital intensive manufacturing exports from labor intensive
exports.
Small firms relocated labor intensive manufacture production out of Taiwan.
How would you expect these changes to affect women’s wages?

Answer 4

Because women are more heavily employed in unskilled worker intensive sectors,
demand for them decreases leading to a decrease in their wages.

Question 5

Has export oriented production in maquiladoras affected women’s wages? Why?

Answer 5

No. They are employing women who are disadvantaged in the local labor market by their
age, education, and family status.

Question 6

In China the foreign direct investment coming from abroad moved towards high
productivity industries. How would this affect the wages of women?

Answer 6

Women typically are segregated to low productivity sectors. The shift would lower the
demand for women workers and their wages would decline.

Question 7

Exports were estimated as a function of female to male ration and other relevant variables
for South Korea. The coefficient estimate is -1.84 and the standard error is 0.8. How do
you interpret this result statistically? What does that mean?

Answer 7

The absolute value of the coefficient estimate divided by the standard error is greater than
two meaning the result is statistically significant. It means that women’s lower wages
relative to men provided an important source of export growth.

Question 8

What is absolute poverty?

Answer 8

Absolute poverty: specific minimum level of income needed to satisfy the basic physical
needs of food, clothing, shelter in order to ensure survival.-poverty line

Question 9

What is head count index?

Answer 9

Head count index: Number of people (H) living below the poverty line level income
(Y(p)) divided by total population (N).

Question 10

How is total poverty gap calculated?

Answer 10

Total poverty gap (TPG) measures the total amount of income necessary to raise
everyone who is below the poverty line to that line.
* It is the sum of the difference between the poverty line and the incomes of those who are
poor.

Question 11

How is multidimensional poverty index calculated?

Answer 11

• Education: school attendance
• Health: nutrition, child mortality
• Standard of living: Lacking electricity, water sanitation, cooking fuel, dirt or dung floor,
  radio, TV, phone

Question 12

What are the analytic problems with the feminization of poverty hypothesis?

Answer 12

• Lack of difference among women, such as age: poverty of women may increase with age
  due to becoming poorer over time relative to men.
• Over-emphasis on income
  a. Other criteria: access to land, and credit, decision making power, legal rights,
  vulnerability to violence are not considered.
  b. Women may not have access to income because it is controlled by their husbands.
• Neglect of men and gender relations.
  Some men are disadvantaged, which can lead to suicide and stress.
• Missing the major points about gendered poverty: Burden of household survival falls on
  women (for example, during SAPs).
• Over-emphasis on female-headed households

Question 13

What are the elements of feminization of responsibility and obligation?

Answer 13

i) Diversification and intensification of women’s inputs: unpaid work
ii) persistent and or growing disparities in capabilities to negotiate entitlements in
households
Men feel entitled to escape from daily hardship.
Gender differences in time and labor inputs.
iii) Increasing disarticulation between investments/ responsibilities and rewards.

Question 14

What are the policy problems with the feminization of poverty thesis?

Answer 14

• Poverty reduction and reduction in gender inequality are not one and the same.
• Competing interests of GAD (gender and development advocates) and poverty
  stakeholders
  For GAD gender inequality is an end in itself.
  It is also a means of poverty reduction.
  For mainstream economists, pursuing gender equality as a means to achieve poverty
  reduction is instrumentalist.
• Neglect of domestic gender inequalities
• Missing men
• Missing real empowerment.

Question 15

What does time poverty square measure?

Answer 15

It measures the severity of poverty and inequality among the poor by putting a higher
weight on those who are further above the time poverty line.

Question 16

How does solidarity lending work?

Answer 16

Solidarity lending: Each borrower must belong to a five-member group.
Repayment responsibility rests solely on the individual borrower.
The group and the center oversee that everyone behaves responsibly and none gets into a
repayment problem
No formal joint liability exists, i.e. group members are not obliged to pay on behalf of a
defaulting member.
But, in practice the group members often contribute the defaulted amount with an
intention to collect the money from the defaulted member at a later time.
Such behavior is encouraged because Grameen does not extend further credit to a group
in which a member default.

Question 17

Explain the three categories of 16 decisions

Answer 17

1) Aspirations: The borrowers promise to work hard and lift themselves and their families
out of poverty.
2) Investments: The borrowers promise to focus on the long term:
Planting trees, eating vegetables, digging pit latrines to protect the water supply, and
educating their children.
3) Gender equality and solidarity:
The borrowers promise neither to pay nor to accept dowries
keep their families small,
to join together to invest, to help each other, and to socialize together.

Question 18

What is the role of shame in microcredit?

Answer 18

Repayment is ensured.

Question 19

How does the reality of microcredit differ from the stated goals?

Answer 19

• Too much cash is chasing too few creditworthy borrowers.
• Almost every woman NGO member has membership in 7-8 NGOs.
• Very few borrowers know the 16 decisions.
  Women put down projects to get loans, but what they do is not monitored
• What mattered was the recovery rate
• Not skill training.

Question 20

How has microcredit become a form or reproducing usury?

Answer 20

the rich client used the loan while the poor woman joined the NGO as a proxy member in
exchange for a fee.
* If the rich client defaulted, it was still the poor proxy member who was held accountable
by the NGO

Question 21

What is the economic impact of microcredit?

Answer 21

By and large, access to microfinance has helped the poor
this impact has been often larger for those closer to the poverty line than those further
away
Benefits increase with duration of membership or intensity of loans
Benefits increase if invested in assets rather than consumed
Improvement of asset base
Diversification into higher return occupations
New agricultural practices that lead to income increase

Question 22

What are the social impacts of microcredit?

Answer 22

Children’s education improved
Nutrition, food security, regularity of meals
Access to clean water
Improvements in housing

Question 23

Under what conditions poverty was exacerbated among the most vulnerable female
borrowers?

Answer 23

1) long periods between start-up and revenue generation from the investment
2) financial setbacks or losses incurred during the initial stages of business
3) use of the loan money to meet unforeseen contingencies/emergencies; and
4) use of loan money for day-to-day consumption or one-off, ‘luxury’ expenditures

Question 24

How does empowerment take place in the microcredit literature?

Answer 24

• Empowerment is “something that is done to rather than by women.”
• Agents: development workers or male household members
• The effect of credit programs on women’s empowerment comes about because credit
  programs create opportunities for women to earn independent incomes

Question 25

In what ways would empowerment take place in the microfinance view?

Answer 25

Access to credit leading to greater income generation potential serve to increase women’s
autonomy
Women’s self-confidence and the value and status in the eyes of their husbands will
increase
Even though a significant portion of loans are controlled by men, the fact that credit
flows through the hands of women is empowering and women will be treated with greater
respect
Microcredit is thought to challenge patriarchal norms
Increase women’s visibility in the public sphere
Lending groups are said to foster gender-based solidarity among women. This will enable
women to challenge structural and institutionalized gender oppression
Women can articulate common interests and concerns
Lending groups expose women to new ideas and facilitate greater gender awareness.

Question 26

What is the feminist objection to microcredit approach?

Answer 26

Externally imposed definitions and criteria of success are not always consistent with
women’s own aspirations or the changes they value.

Question 27

What is the feminist definition of empowerment?

Answer 27

A long-term process with end goal of eradicating gender oppression and patriarchy.
need to be “directed and driven by women themselves” and at the grass roots level.
Women could benefit from external/environmental changes that lessen oppression, but
women are the agents of change.
Empowerment is a process of:
* one’s internal strength,
* agency
* capacity to affect change in the institutions, behaviors, and ideologies
* gaining greater autonomy over one’s life
devising strategies to challenge and indeed change one’s subordinate position in society

Question 28

Parmer problematizes the emphasis on the status of women in the eyes of male
household members as a measure of empowerment. Why?

Answer 28

• risks mistaking the empowerment of women for their exploitation.
• If men’s respect and cessation of oppressive behavior is predicated on their desire to share
  in the material benefits of loans, the change in their perception of women rests on a new-
  found appreciation for their instrumental value as a source of labor and capital, not their
  intrinsic value as woman and as human being.
• In the long term, women cannot be dependent on men ascribing them greater status and
  value or relinquishing the power given to them by the patriarchal system to achieve social
  change.
• It is women’s own ability to challenge male dominance that will change gender relations
  in a meaningful way.
• Thus, the focus should be not on men’s perception of women
• But on women’s perception of themselves - their self-worth and confidence in their ability
  to effect change

Question 29

What are conditional cash transfers?

Answer 29

• Since 1990s governments use conditional cash transfer programs (CCT) to tackle
  poverty.
• Give transfers directly to women
• Conditional on fulfilling responsibilities

Question 30

In what areas conditional transfers achieve success?

Answer 30

• Generally successful in
• Increasing children’s school attendance
• Improving nutritional and health indicators
• Women report that their status increase and they gain more control over household
  expenditures.
• Valuable safety net for poor households
• Household food security
• Financial security of women independent of their partners
• Provides women with the flexibility and choice in how the money is spent.
• Eases women’s burdens of coping with poverty, care and domestic responsibilities and
  obligations

Question 31

What would incorporating gender equality into CCT as a goal imply?

Answer 31

Strengthen women’s capabilities
Social and economic empowerment of women
Family friendly-acknowledge women’s role in caregiving, but promote alternative
childcare arrangements
Transform gender relations
Give women voice in design, implementation, and evaluation of the programs

Question 32

What are the three theoretical approaches to conditional cash transfers and household
dynamics? Explain.

Answer 32

Resource based theories
* Autonomy perspective: Receiving CCT increases autonomy, and household decision
making, reduces time household tasks
* Resource-exchange perspective: Receiving CCT will improve wife’s reducing the
attribution of housework tasks to wives and increasing their decision-making and
autonomy—while also leading to a compensatory response from spouses in these same
areas
Time constraint perspective
* Receiving payments with time-demanding requirements will reduce the attribution of
housework tasks to wives.
* Increase the number of chores husbands perceive as their responsibility.
Gender based theories
* Gender shapes power between couples not only through the economic resources each
spouse bring to the table
* But also, via gender expectations attached to specific behaviors in everyday interactions.
* For example, when male breadwinner ideal is transgressed couples respond by
reinforcing gender roles in other spheres.
* This explains why wives who out-earn their husbands still end up doing more housework.
They see a reduction of their autonomy and household-decision making.

Question 33

What are the theories that link women’s income to domestic violence?

Answer 33

• 1) violence against women increases
• Violence could be due to tensions arising from control over income
• Men may feel that their traditional gender role is threatened.
• 2) Increase in income increases women’s bargaining power, reducing domestic violence