Wednesday, October 12, 2011


Gender Equality: the Right and Smart Thing to Do – World Bank Report

Economic Development Alone is Not Enough to Shrink All Gender Disparities - Corrective Policies Essential    


NEW DELHI, October 12, 2011: Gender equality matters in its own right but is also smart economics: Countries that create better opportunities and conditions for women and girls can raise productivity, improve outcomes for children, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for all, says a new World Bank flagship report.




According to the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, in India women have made rapid progress in improving girls’ education, lowering fertility levels and in increasing asset ownership by women. In fact as far as education enrolment is concerned, India has achieved close to parity on the number of boys and girls enrolled in primary, secondary and tertiary schooling. Between 1960 and 2009, the fertility rate in India declined from almost 6 children per woman to around 2.3. And the pace at which this reduction in fertility was achieved has been much more rapid than in other countries. It took only about 35 years to achieve a decline similar to what took the United States over 100 years to achieve.

Despite these big strides, disparities remain in many areas and a particular concern is that of excess female mortality, or “missing women.” Globally, “missing” girls at birth and excess female mortality after birth account for an estimated 3.9 million women each year in low-and middle-income countries. About two-fifths are never born due to a preference for sons, a sixth die in early childhood, and over a third die in their reproductive years. Almost one million of these excess deaths are in India – evenly distributed across the three periods in the lifecycle – before birth; in infancy and early childhood; and in the reproductive years.

Although maternal mortality ratios in the South Asia region have fallen by 34 percent since 1990, they continue to remain high. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest ratios at 640 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008, followed by South Asia (280). Bangladesh and India have maternal mortality ratios comparable to Sweden’s around 1900.

We need to achieve gender equality,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick“Over the past five years, the World Bank Group has provided $65 billion to support girls’ education, women’s health, and women’s access to credit, land, agricultural services, jobs, and infrastructure. This has been important work, but it has not been enough or central enough to what we do.  Going forward, the World Bank Group will mainstream our gender work and find other ways to move the agenda forward to capture the full potential of half the world’s population.”

Persistent differences in access to economic opportunities continue to lead to earnings and productivity gaps between men and women. Female labor force participation in South Asia (including India) is among the lowest in the developing world (35 percent compared to 64 percent, for instance in East Asia and the Pacific).  As in many other countries, women in India – especially poor women – have less say over decisions and less control over resources in their households. For instance, about a quarter of girls from the poorest 40 percent of the population in India are married before the age of 18. Similarly, over a fifth of women in the poorest 20 percent of the population in India have no say over the use of their own incomes.

The report argues that persistence in closing gender gaps matters for development policies and in enhancing productivity. Getting rid of barriers that limit women from working in certain occupations and sectors can increase output per worker by as much as 25 percent, the report says. And it can improve other development outcomes, including prospects for the next generation. And these benefits are likely to be even greater in a globalized world.

Yet, as experience in India and other parts of the world shows, economic development is not enough to shrink all gender disparities – corrective policies that focus on persisting gender gaps are essential. For example, providing better infrastructure like putting water sources closer to homes has increased the time allocated to market work in several countries and in India, equalizing provisions of inheritance laws for women and men has increased asset ownership by women.

The report cites examples of how countries could gain by addressing disparities between men and women:
  • The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that equal access to resources for female farmers could increase agricultural output in developing countries by as much as 2.5 to 4 percent.
  • Eliminating barriers that prevent women from working in certain occupations or sectors would have similar positive effects, reducing the productivity gap between male and female workers by one-third to one-half and increasing output per worker by 3 to 25 percent across a range of countries.
To be effective, policies need to address the root causes of gender gaps. For some problems, as with high maternal mortality, this will require strengthening the institutions that deliver services. For other gaps, as with unequal access to economic opportunities, policies will need to tackle the multiple constraints – in markets and institutions – that keep women trapped in low productivity/low earning jobs,” said Giovanna Prennushi, World Bank’s Economic Advisor for India.

The report also notes that the world has made significant progress in narrowing gender gaps in education, health and labor markets over the past 25 years.  Disparities between boys and girls in primary education have closed in almost all countries. In secondary education, these gaps are closing rapidly, and in many countries, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia, it is now boys and young men who are disadvantaged. Among developing countries, girls now outnumber boys in secondary schools in 45 countries, and there are more young women than men in universities in 60 countries. Similar progress can be seen in life expectancy where women in low-income countries not only outlive men but live 20 years longer than they did in 1960.  And in much of the world, gaps in labor force participation have narrowed with over half a billion women having joined the workforce in the last 30 years.

Remaining gaps include the lower school enrollments of disadvantaged girls; unequal access for women to economic opportunities and incomes, whether in the labor market, agriculture or entrepreneurship; and large differences in voice between women and men both in households and societies.

Higher incomes help close some gaps, as in education. As schools expand and more jobs open up for young women, parents see clear benefits to educating their girls.  But too often in India, as in many other countries, markets and institutions (including social norms around house and care work) combine with household decisions to perpetuate disparities between men and women.  As part of this, gender gaps in earnings remain stubbornly unchanged in much of the world.

The report recommends that policymakers focus on the most stubborn gender gaps that rising incomes alone cannot solve. It is by fixing those shortcomings that the payoffs to development are likely to be greatest, and where policy changes will make the most difference

The WDR 2012 calls for action in four areas: 1) addressing human capital issues, such asexcess deaths of girls and women and gender gaps in education where these persist; 2)closing earning and productivity gaps between women and men; 3) giving women greater voice within households and societies; and 4) limiting the perpetuation of gender inequalityacross generations. 

To ensure that progress on gender equality is sustained, the international community needs to complement domestic policy actions in each of these priority areas. It can also support evidence-based action by fostering efforts to improve data, promote impact evaluation and encourage learning.

Development partners can support domestic policies in many ways -- more funding, greater innovation and better partnerships,” said Sudhir Shetty, WDR Co-Director, “Additional financing for clean water and sanitation and maternal services, for instance, will help the poorest countries. For India, as in manyother countries, more experimentation, systematic evaluation and better gender-disaggregated data can point to ways of improving women’s access to markets. And partnerships can fruitfully be expanded to include the private sector, civil society groups and academic institutions.

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