The Roots of Gender Inequality in India
8 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2017
St.Mary's College, Tuticorin
Date Written: January 27, 2017
Man and woman both are equal and play a paramount role in the creation and development of their families in a particular and the society in general. Indeed, the struggle for equality has been one of the major concerns of the women’s movement all over the world. The difference in sex and physical form denotes no difference in status. Woman is the complement of man, and not inferior. In India, since long back, women were considered as an oppressed section of the society and they were neglected for centuries. The birth of the son is being celebrated while the birth of a daughter is filled with pain. Boys are encouraged to be tough and outgoing but girls are encouraged to be homebound and shy. All these differences are gender differences and they are created by society. It has adverse impact on development goals and consequently reduces economic growth. It hampers the overall well-being because blocking women from participation in social, political and economic activities can adversely affect the whole society. Gender inequality is, therefore, a form of inequality which is distinct from other forms of socioeconomic inequalities. Gender inequality in India is a crucial reality. In modern times, women are performing exceptionally well in different spheres of activities. Still majority of Indian women are facing the problem of gender inequality and discrimination. As per UNDP report, India ranks 132 out of 187 countries on gender inequality index (GII). India ranks low partly because of its skewed ratio, with only 914 females for every 1000 males, according to Indian government data. As per UNDP report, only 29% of Indian women above the age of 15 in 2011 were part of labour force, as compared to 80.7% men. In parliament, only 10.9% of law makers are women, while in Pakistan it is 21%. In India, 200 women died for every 100,000 child births and 80% of Indian women didn’t have bank account in 2016 as per UNDP report Every day 39000 girls are forced for early marriage i.e. 27 girls are married a minute. This paper is trying to bring out the factors that are responsible for gender inequality and suggests measures to eradicate this problem.
Keywords: gender differences, infanticide, undignified treatment, sexual harassment, occupational hazards
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
D. Amutha (Contact Author)
St.mary's college, tuticorin ( email ).
Associate Professor of Economics, St. Mary's Coll Thoothukudi, Tamilnadu 628001 India 9442091588 (Phone)
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Paper statistics, related ejournals, development economics: women, gender, & human development ejournal.
Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic
Development Economics: Regional & Country Studies eJournal
Sociology of education ejournal, cultural anthropology: history, theory, methods & applications ejournal, anthropology of kinship, gender, the body & sexuality ejournal, human rights ejournal.
Subscribe to this free journal for more curated articles on this topic
Advertisement
Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature
- Open access
- Published: 15 January 2021
- Volume 19 , pages 581–614, ( 2021 )
Cite this article
You have full access to this open access article
- Manuel Santos Silva 1 &
- Stephan Klasen 1
57k Accesses
31 Citations
27 Altmetric
Explore all metrics
In this article, we survey the theoretical literature investigating the role of gender inequality in economic development. The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to development, particularly over the long run. Among the many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy, the role of women for fertility decisions and human capital investments is particularly emphasized in the literature. Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions.
Similar content being viewed by others
Gender Inequality and Growth in Europe
The effect of gender inequality on economic development: case of african countries.
The Feminization U
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
1 Introduction
Theories of long-run economic development have increasingly relied on two central forces: population growth and human capital accumulation. Both forces depend on decisions made primarily within households: population growth is partially determined by households’ fertility choices (e.g., Becker & Barro 1988 ), while human capital accumulation is partially dependent on parental investments in child education and health (e.g., Lucas 1988 ).
In an earlier survey of the literature linking family decisions to economic growth, Grimm ( 2003 ) laments that “[m]ost models ignore the two-sex issue. Parents are modeled as a fictive asexual human being” (p. 154). Footnote 1 Since then, however, economists are increasingly recognizing that gender plays a fundamental role in how households reproduce and care for their children. As a result, many models of economic growth are now populated with men and women. The “fictive asexual human being” is a dying species. In this article, we survey this rich new landscape in theoretical macroeconomics, reviewing, in particular, micro-founded theories where gender inequality affects economic development.
For the purpose of this survey, gender inequality is defined as any exogenously imposed difference between male and female economic agents that, by shaping their behavior, has implications for aggregate economic growth. In practice, gender inequality is typically modeled as differences between men and women in endowments, constraints, or preferences.
Many articles review the literature on gender inequality and economic growth. Footnote 2 Typically, both the theoretical and empirical literature are discussed, but, in almost all cases, the vast empirical literature receives most of the attention. In addition, some of the surveys examine both sides of the two-way relationship between gender inequality and economic growth: gender equality as a cause of economic growth and economic growth as a cause of gender equality. As a result, most surveys end up only scratching the surface of each of these distinct strands of literature.
There is, by now, a large and insightful body of micro-founded theories exploring how gender equality affects economic growth. In our view, these theories merit a separate review. Moreover, they have not received sufficient attention in empirical work, which has largely developed independently (see also Cuberes & Teignier 2014 ). By reviewing the theoretical literature, we hope to motivate empirical researchers in finding new ways of putting these theories to test. In doing so, our work complements several existing surveys. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2016 ) review the theoretical literature that incorporates families in macroeconomic models, without focusing exclusively on models that include gender inequality, as we do. Greenwood, Guner and Vandenbroucke ( 2017 ), in turn, review the theoretical literature from the opposite direction; they study how macroeconomic models can explain changes in family outcomes. Doepke, Tertilt and Voena ( 2012 ) survey the political economy of women’s rights, but without focusing explicitly on their impact on economic development.
To be precise, the scope of this survey consists of micro-founded macroeconomic models where gender inequality (in endowments, constraints, preferences) affects economic growth—either by influencing the economy’s growth rate or shaping the transition paths between multiple income equilibria. As a result, this survey does not cover several upstream fields of partial-equilibrium micro models, where gender inequality affects several intermediate growth-related outcomes, such as labor supply, education, health. Additionally, by focusing on micro-founded macro models, we do not review studies in heterodox macroeconomics, including the feminist economics tradition using structuralist, demand-driven models. For recent overviews of this literature, see Kabeer ( 2016 ) and Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ). Overall, we find very little dialogue between the neoclassical and feminist heterodox literatures. In this review, we will show that actually these two traditions have several points of contact and reach similar conclusions in many areas, albeit following distinct intellectual routes.
Although the incorporation of gender in macroeconomic models of economic growth is a recent development, the main gendered ingredients of those models are not new. They were developed in at least two strands of literature. First, since the 1960s, “new home economics” has applied the analytical toolbox of rational choice theory to decisions being made within the boundaries of the family (see, e.g., Becker 1960 , 1981 ). Footnote 3 A second literature strand, mostly based on empirical work at the micro level in developing countries, described clear patterns of gender-specific behavior within households that differed across regions of the developing world (see, e.g., Boserup 1970 ). Footnote 4 As we shall see, most of the (micro-founded) macroeconomic models reviewed in this article use several analytical mechanisms from "new home economics”; these mechanisms can typically rationalize several of the gender-specific regularities observed in early studies of developing countries. The growth theorist is then left to explore the aggregate implications for economic development.
The first models we present focus on gender discrimination in (or on access to) the labor market as a distortionary tax on talent. If talent is randomly distributed in the population, men and women are imperfect substitutes in aggregate production, and, as a consequence, gender inequality (as long as determined by non-market processes) will misallocate talent and lower incentives for female human capital formation. These theories do not rely on typical household functions such as reproduction and childrearing. Therefore, in these models, individuals are not organized into households. We review this literature in section 2 .
From there, we proceed to theories where the household is the unit of analysis. In sections 3 and 4 , we cover models that take the household as given and avoid marriage markets or other household formation institutions. This is a world where marriage (or cohabitation) is universal, consensual, and monogamous; families are nuclear, and spouses are matched randomly. The first articles in this tradition model the household as a unitary entity with joint preferences and interests, and with an efficient and centralized decision making process. Footnote 5 These theories posit how men and women specialize into different activities and how parents interact with their children. Section 3 reviews these theories. Over time, the literature has incorporated intra-household dynamics. Now, family members are allowed to have different preferences and interests; they bargain, either cooperatively or not, over family decisions. Now, the theorist recognizes power asymmetries between family members and analyzes how spouses bargain over decisions. Footnote 6 These articles are surveyed in section 4 .
The final set of articles we survey take into account how households are formed. These theories show how gender inequality can influence economic growth and long-run development through marriage market institutions and family formation patterns. Among other topics, this literature has studied ages at first marriage, relative supply of potential partners, monogamy and polygyny, arranged and consensual marriages, and divorce risk. Upon marriage, these models assume different bargaining processes between the spouses, or even unitary households, but they all recognize, in one way or another, that marriage, labor supply, consumption, and investment decisions are interdependent. We review these theories in section 5 .
Table 1 offers a schematic overview of the literature. To improve readability, the table only includes studies that we review in detail, with articles listed in order of appearance in the text. The table also abstracts from models’ extensions and sensitivity checks, and focuses exclusively on the causal pathways leading from gender inequality to economic growth.
The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to economic development, particularly over the long run. The focus on long-run supply-side models reflects a recent effort by growth theorists to incorporate two stylized facts of economic development in the last two centuries: (i) a strong positive association between gender equality and income per capita (Fig. 1 ), and (ii) a strong association between the timing of the fertility transition and income per capita (Fig. 2 ). Footnote 7 Models that endogenize a fertility transition are able to generate a transition from a Malthusian regime of stagnation to a modern regime of sustained economic growth, thus replicating the development experience of human societies in the very long run (e.g., Galor 2005a , b ; Guinnane 2011 ). In contrast, demand-driven models in the heterodox and feminist traditions have often argued that gender wage discrimination and gendered sectoral and occupational segregation can be conducive to economic growth in semi-industrialized export-oriented economies. Footnote 8 In these settings—that fit well the experience of East and Southeast Asian economies—gender wage discrimination in female-intensive export industries reduces production costs and boosts exports, profits, and investment (Blecker & Seguino 2002 ; Seguino 2010 ).
Income level and gender equality. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted). The Gender Development Index is the ratio of gender-specific Human Development Indexes: female HDI/male HDI. Data are for the year 2000. Sources: UNDP
Income level and timing of the fertility transition. Income is the natural log of per capita GDP (PPP-adjusted) in 2000. Years since fertility transition are the number of years between 2000 and the onset year of the fertility decline. See Reher ( 2004 ) for details. Sources: UNDP and Reher ( 2004 )
In most long-run, supply-side models reviewed here, irrespectively of the underlying source of gender differences (e.g., biology, socialization, discrimination), the opportunity cost of women’s time in foregone labor market earnings is lower than that of men. This gender gap in the value of time affects economic growth through two main mechanisms. First, when the labor market value of women’s time is relatively low, women will be in charge of childrearing and domestic work in the family. A low value of female time means that children are cheap. Fertility will be high, and economic growth will be low, both because population growth has a direct negative impact on long-run economic performance and because human capital accumulates at a slower pace (through the quantity-quality trade-off). Second, if parents expect relatively low returns to female education, due to women specializing in domestic activities, they will invest relatively less in the education of girls. In the words of Harriet Martineau, one of the first to describe this mechanism, “as women have none of the objects in life for which an enlarged education is considered requisite, the education is not given” (Martineau 1837 , p. 107). In the long run, lower human capital investments (on girls) lead to slower economic development.
Overall, gender inequality can be conceptualized as a source of inefficiency, to the extent that it results in the misallocation of productive factors, such as talent or labor, and as a source of negative externalities, when it leads to higher fertility, skewed sex ratios, or lower human capital accumulation.
We conclude, in section 6 , by examining the limitations of the current literature and pointing ways forward. Among them, we suggest deeper investigations of the role of (endogenous) technological change on gender inequality, as well as greater attention to the role and interests of men in affecting gender inequality and its impact on growth.
2 Gender discrimination and misallocation of talent
Perhaps the single most intuitive argument for why gender discrimination leads to aggregate inefficiency and hampers economic growth concerns the allocation of talent. Assume that talent is randomly distributed in the population. Then, an economy that curbs women’s access to education, market employment, or certain occupations draws talent from a smaller pool than an economy without such restrictions. Gender inequality can thus be viewed as a distortionary tax on talent. Indeed, occupational choice models with heterogeneous talent (as in Roy 1951 ) show that exogenous barriers to women’s participation in the labor market or access to certain occupations reduce aggregate productivity and per capita output (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ; Hsieh, Hurst, Jones and Klenow 2019 ).
Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) represent the US economy with a model where individuals sort into occupations based on innate ability. Footnote 9 Gender and race identity, however, are a source of discrimination, with three forces preventing women and black men from choosing the occupations best fitting their comparative advantage. First, these groups face labor market discrimination, which is modeled as a tax on wages and can vary by occupation. Second, there is discrimination in human capital formation, with the costs of occupation-specific human capital being higher for certain groups. This cost penalty is a composite term encompassing discrimination or quality differentials in private or public inputs into children’s human capital. The third force are group-specific social norms that generate utility premia or penalties across occupations. Footnote 10
Assuming that the distribution of innate ability across race and gender is constant over time, Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ) investigate and quantify how declines in labor market discrimination, barriers to human capital formation, and changing social norms affect aggregate output and productivity in the United States, between 1960 and 2010. Over that period, their general equilibrium model suggests that around 40 percent of growth in per capita GDP and 90 percent of growth in labor force participation can be attributed to reductions in the misallocation of talent across occupations. Declining in barriers to human capital formation account for most of these effects, followed by declining labor market discrimination. Changing social norms, on the other hand, explain only a residual share of aggregate changes.
Two main mechanisms drive these results. First, falling discrimination improves efficiency through a better match between individual ability and occupation. Second, because discrimination is higher in high-skill occupations, when discrimination decreases, high-ability women and black men invest more in human capital and supply more labor to the market. Overall, better allocation of talent, rising labor supply, and faster human capital accumulation raise aggregate growth and productivity.
Other occupational choice models assuming gender inequality in access to the labor market or certain occupations reach similar conclusions. In addition to the mechanisms in Hsieh et al. ( 2019 ), barriers to women’s work in managerial or entrepreneurial occupations reduce average talent in these positions, resulting in aggregate losses in innovation, technology adoption, and productivity (Cuberes & Teignier 2016 , 2017 ; Esteve-Volart 2009 ). The argument can be readily applied to talent misallocation across sectors (Lee 2020 ). In Lee’s model, female workers face discrimination in the non-agricultural sector. As a result, talented women end up sorting into ill-suited agricultural activities. This distortion reduces aggregate productivity in agriculture. Footnote 11
To sum up, when talent is randomly distributed in the population, barriers to women’s education, employment, or occupational choice effectively reduce the pool of talent in the economy. According to these models, dismantling these gendered barriers can have an immediate positive effect on economic growth.
3 Unitary households: parents and children
In this section, we review models built upon unitary households. A unitary household maximizes a joint utility function subject to pooled household resources. Intra-household decision making is assumed away; the household is effectively a black-box. In this class of models, gender inequality stems from a variety of sources. It is rooted in differences in physical strength (Galor & Weil 1996 ; Hiller 2014 ; Kimura & Yasui 2010 ) or health (Bloom et al. 2015 ); it is embedded in social norms (Hiller 2014 ; Lagerlöf 2003 ), labor market discrimination (Cavalcanti & Tavares 2016 ), or son preference (Zhang, Zhang and Li 1999 ). In all these models, gender inequality is a barrier to long-run economic development.
Galor & Weil ( 1996 ) model an economy with three factors of production: capital, physical labor (“brawn”), and mental labor (“brain”). Men and women are equally endowed with brains, but men have more brawn. In economies starting with very low levels of capital per worker, women fully specialize in childrearing because their opportunity cost in terms of foregone market earnings is lower than men’s. Over time, the stock of capital per worker builds up due to exogenous technological progress. The degree of complementarity between capital and mental labor is higher than that between capital and physical labor; as the economy accumulates capital per worker, the returns to brain rise relative to the returns to brawn. As a result, the relative wages of women rise, increasing the opportunity cost of childrearing. This negative substitution effect dominates the positive income effect on the demand for children and fertility falls. Footnote 12 As fertility falls, capital per worker accumulates faster creating a positive feedback loop that generates a fertility transition and kick starts a process of sustained economic growth.
The model has multiple stable equilibria. An economy starting from a low level of capital per worker is caught in a Malthusian poverty trap of high fertility, low income per capita, and low relative wages for women. In contrast, an economy starting from a sufficiently high level of capital per worker will converge to a virtuous equilibrium of low fertility, high income per capita, and high relative wages for women. Through exogenous technological progress, the economy can move from the low to the high equilibrium.
Gender inequality in labor market access or returns to brain can slow down or even prevent the escape from the Malthusian equilibrium. Wage discrimination or barriers to employment would work against the rise of relative female wages and, therefore, slow down the takeoff to modern economic growth.
The Galor and Weil model predicts how female labor supply and fertility evolve in the course of development. First, (married) women start participating in market work and only afterwards does fertility start declining. Historically, however, in the US and Western Europe, the decline in fertility occurred before women’s participation rates in the labor market started their dramatic increase. In addition, these regions experienced a mid-twentieth century baby boom which seems at odds with Galor and Weil’s theory.
Both these stylized facts can be addressed by adding home production to the modeling, as do Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ). In their article, as capital per worker accumulates, the market wage for brains rises and the economy moves through four stages of development. In the first stage, with a sufficiently low market wage, both husband and wife are fully dedicated to home production and childrearing. The household does not supply labor to the market; fertility is high and constant. In the second stage, as the wage rate increases, men enter the labor market (supplying both brawn and brain), whereas women remain fully engaged in home production and childrearing. But as men partially withdraw from home production, women have to replace them. As a result, their time cost of childrearing goes up. At this stage of development, the negative substitution effect of rising wages on fertility dominates the positive income effect. Fertility starts declining, even though women have not yet entered the labor market. The third stage arrives when men stop working in home production. There is complete specialization of labor by gender; men only do market work, and women only do home production and childrearing. As the market wage rises for men, the positive income effect becomes dominant and fertility increases; this mimics the baby-boom period of the mid-twentieth century. In the fourth and final stage, once sufficient capital is accumulated, women enter the market sector as wage-earners. The negative substitution effect of rising female opportunity costs dominates once again, and fertility declines. The economy moves from a “breadwinner model” to a “dual-earnings model”.
Another important form of gender inequality is discrimination against women in the form of lower wages, holding male and female productivity constant. Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ) estimate the aggregate effects of wage discrimination using a model-based general equilibrium representation of the US economy. In their model, women are assumed to be more productive in childrearing than men, so they pay the full time cost of this activity. In the labor market, even though men and women are equally productive, women receive only a fraction of the male wage rate—this is the wage discrimination assumption. Wage discrimination works as a tax on female labor supply. Because women work less than they would without discrimination, there is a negative level effect on per capita output. In addition, there is a second negative effect of wage discrimination operating through endogenous fertility. Since lower wages reduce women’s opportunity costs of childrearing, fertility is relatively high, and output per capita is relatively low. The authors calibrate the model to US steady state parameters and estimate large negative output costs of the gender wage gap. Reducing wage discrimination against women by 50 percent would raise per capita income by 35 percent, in the long run.
Human capital accumulation plays no role in Galor & Weil ( 1996 ), Kimura & Yasui ( 2010 ), and Cavalcanti & Tavares ( 2016 ). Each person is exogenously endowed with a unit of brains. The fundamental trade-off in the these models is between the income and substitution effects of rising wages on the demand for children. When Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) adds education investments to a gender-based model, an additional trade-off emerges: that between the quantity and the quality of children.
Lagerlöf ( 2003 ) models gender inequality as a social norm: on average, men have higher human capital than women. Confronted with this fact, parents play a coordination game in which it is optimal for them to reproduce the inequality in the next generation. The reason is that parents expect the future husbands of their daughters to be, on average, relatively more educated than the future wives of their sons. Because, in the model, parents care for the total income of their children’s future households, they respond by investing relatively less in daughters’ human capital. Here, gender inequality does not arise from some intrinsic difference between men and women. It is instead the result of a coordination failure: “[i]f everyone else behaves in a discriminatory manner, it is optimal for the atomistic player to do the same” (Lagerlöf 2003 , p. 404).
With lower human capital, women earn lower wages than men and are therefore solely responsible for the time cost of childrearing. But if, exogenously, the social norm becomes more gender egalitarian over time, the gender gap in parental educational investment decreases. As better educated girls grow up and become mothers, their opportunity costs of childrearing are higher. Parents trade-off the quantity of children by their quality; fertility falls and human capital accumulates. However, rising wages have an offsetting positive income effect on fertility because parents pay a (fixed) “goods cost” per child. The goods cost is proportionally more important in poor societies than in richer ones. As a result, in poor economies, growth takes off slowly because the positive income effect offsets a large chunk of the negative substitution effect. As economies grow richer, the positive income effect vanishes (as a share of total income), and fertility declines faster. That is, growth accelerates over time even if gender equality increases only linearly.
The natural next step is to model how the social norm on gender roles evolves endogenously during the course of development. Hiller ( 2014 ) develops such a model by combining two main ingredients: a gender gap in the endowments of brawn (as in Galor & Weil 1996 ) generates a social norm, which each parental couple takes as given (as in Lagerlöf 2003 ). The social norm evolves endogenously, but slowly; it tracks the gender ratio of labor supply in the market, but with a small elasticity. When the male-female ratio in labor supply decreases, stereotypes adjust and the norm becomes less discriminatory against women.
The model generates a U-shaped relationship between economic development and female labor force participation. Footnote 13 In the preindustrial stage, there is no education and all labor activities are unskilled, i.e., produced with brawn. Because men have a comparative advantage in brawn, they supply more labor to the market than women, who specialize in home production. This gender gap in labor supply creates a social norm that favors boys over girls. Over time, exogenous skill-biased technological progress raises the relative returns to brains, inducing parents to invest in their children’s education. At the beginning, however, because of the social norm, only boys become educated. The economy accumulates human capital and grows, generating a positive income effect that, in isolation, would eventually drive up parental investments in girls’ education. Footnote 14 But endogenous social norms move in the opposite direction. When only boys receive education, the gender gap in returns to market work increases, and women withdraw to home production. As female relative labor supply in the market drops, the social norm becomes more discriminatory against women. As a result, parents want to invest relatively less in their daughters’ education.
In the end, initial conditions determine which of the forces dominates, thereby shaping long-term outcomes. If, initially, the social norm is very discriminatory, its effect is stronger than the income effect; the economy becomes trapped in an equilibrium with high gender inequality and low per capita income. If, on the other hand, social norms are relatively egalitarian to begin with, then the income effect dominates, and the economy converges to an equilibrium with gender equality and high income per capita.
In the models reviewed so far, human capital or brain endowments can be understood as combining both education and health. Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) explicitly distinguish these two dimensions. Health affects labor market earnings because sick people are out of work more often (participation effect) and are less productive per hour of work (productivity effect). Female health is assumed to be worse than male health, implying that women’s effective wages are lower than men’s. As a result, women are solely responsible for childrearing. Footnote 15
The model produces two growth regimes: a Malthusian trap with high fertility and no educational investments; and a regime of sustained growth, declining fertility, and rising educational investments. Once wages reach a certain threshold, the economy goes through a fertility transition and education expansion, taking off from the Malthusian regime to the sustained growth regime.
Female health promotes growth in both regimes, and it affects the timing of the takeoff. The healthier women are, the earlier the economy takes off. The reason is that a healthier woman earns a higher effective wage and, consequently, faces higher opportunity costs of raising children. When female health improves, the rising opportunity costs of children reduce the wage threshold at which educational investments become attractive; the fertility transition and mass education periods occur earlier.
In contrast, improved male health slows down economic growth and delays the fertility transition. When men become healthier, there is only a income effect on the demand for children, without the negative substitution effect (because male childrearing time is already zero). The policy conclusion would be to redistribute health from men to women. However, the policy would impose a static utility cost on the household. Because women’s time allocation to market work is constrained by childrearing responsibilities (whereas men work full-time), the marginal effect of health on household income is larger for men than for women. From the household’s point of view, reducing the gender gap in health produces a trade-off between short-term income maximization and long-term economic development.
In an extension of the model, the authors endogeneize health investments, while keeping the assumption that women pay the full time cost of childrearing. Because women participate less in the labor market (due to childrearing duties), it is optimal for households to invest more in male health. A health gender gap emerges from rational household behavior that takes into account how time-constraints differ by gender; assuming taste-based discrimination against girls or gender-specific preferences is not necessary.
In the models reviewed so far, parents invest in their children’s human capital for purely altruistic reasons. This is captured in the models by assuming that parents derive utility directly from the quantity and quality of children. This is the classical representation of children as durable consumption goods (e.g., Becker 1960 ). In reality, of course, parents may also have egoistic motivations for investing in child quantity and quality. A typical example is that, when parents get old and retire, they receive support from their children. The quantity and quality of children will affect the size of old-age transfers and parents internalize this in their fertility and childcare behavior. According to this view, children are best understood as investment goods.
Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) build an endogenous growth model that incorporates the old-age support mechanism in parental decisions. Another innovative element of their model is that parents can choose the gender of their children. The implicit assumption is that sex selection technologies are freely available to all parents.
At birth, there is a gender gap in human capital endowment, favoring boys over girls. Footnote 16 In adulthood, a child’s human capital depends on the initial endowment and on the parents’ human capital. In addition, the probability that a child survives to adulthood is exogenous and can differ by gender.
Parents receive old-age support from children that survive until adulthood. The more human capital children have, the more old-age support they provide to their parents. Beyond this egoistic motive, parents also enjoy the quantity and the quality of children (altruistic motive). Son preference is modeled by boys having a higher relative weight in the altruistic-component of the parental utility function. In other words, in their enjoyment of children as consumer goods, parents enjoy “consuming” a son more than “consuming” a girl. Parents who prefer sons want more boys than girls. A larger preference for sons, a higher relative survival probability of boys, and a higher human capital endowment of boys positively affect the sex ratio at birth, because, in the parents’ perspective, all these forces increase the marginal utility of boys relative to girls.
Zhang et al. ( 1999 ) show that, if human capital transmission from parents to children is efficient enough, the economy grows endogenously. When boys have a higher human capital endowment than girls, and the survival probability of sons is not smaller than the survival probability of daughters, then only sons provide old-age support. Anticipating this, parents invest more in the human capital of their sons than on the human capital of their daughters. As a result, the gender gap in human capital at birth widens endogenously.
When only boys provide old-age support, an exogenous increase in son preference harms long-run economic growth. The reason is that, when son preference increases, parents enjoy each son relatively more and demand less old-age support from him. Other things equal, parents want to “consume” more sons now and less old-age support later. Because parents want more sons, the sex ratio at birth increases; but because each son provides less old-age support, human capital investments per son decrease (such that the gender gap in human capital narrows). At the aggregate level, the pace of human capital accumulation slows down and, in the long run, economic growth is lower. Thus, an exogenous increase in son preference increases the sex ratio at birth, and reduces human capital accumulation and long-run growth (although it narrows the gender gap in education).
In summary, in growth models with unitary households, gender inequality is closely linked to the division of labor between family members. If women earn relatively less in market activities, they specialize in childrearing and home production, while men specialize in market work. And precisely due to this division of labor, the returns to female educational investments are relatively low. These household behaviors translate into higher fertility and lower human capital and thus pose a barrier to long-run development.
4 Intra-household bargaining: husbands and wives
In this section, we review models populated with non-unitary households, where decisions are the result of bargaining between the spouses. There are two broad types of bargaining processes: non-cooperative, where spouses act independently or interact in a non-cooperative game that often leads to inefficient outcomes (e.g., Doepke & Tertilt 2019 , Heath & Tan 2020 ); and cooperative, where the spouses are assumed to achieve an efficient outcome (e.g., De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ). As in the previous section, all of these non-unitary models take the household as given, thereby abstracting from marriage markets or other household formation institutions, which will be discussed separately in section 5 . When preferences differ by gender, bargaining between the spouses matters for economic growth. If women care more about child quality than men do and human capital accumulation is the main engine of growth, then empowering women leads to faster economic growth (Prettner & Strulik 2017 ). If, however, men and women have similar preferences but are imperfect substitutes in the production of household public goods, then empowering women has an ambiguous effect on economic growth (Doepke & Tertilt 2019 ).
A separate channel concerns the intergenerational transmission of human capital and woman’s role as the main caregiver of children. If the education of the mother matters more than the education of the father in the production of children’s human capital, then empowering women will be conducive to growth (Agénor 2017 ; Diebolt & Perrin 2013 ), with the returns to education playing a crucial role in the political economy of female empowerment (Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ).
However, different dimensions of gender inequality have different growth impacts along the development process (De la Croix & Vander Donckt 2010 ). Policies that improve gender equality across many dimensions can be particularly effective for economic growth by reaping complementarities and positive externalities (Agénor 2017 ).
The idea that women might have stronger preferences for child-related expenditures than men can be easily incorporated in a Beckerian model of fertility. The necessary assumption is that women place a higher weight on child quality (relative to child quantity) than men do. Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) build a unified growth theory model with collective households. Men and women have different preferences, but they achieve efficient cooperation based on (reduced-form) bargaining parameters. The authors study the effect of two types of preferences: (i) women are assumed to have a relative preference for child quality, while men have a relative preference for child quantity; and (ii) parents are assumed to have a relative preference for the education of sons over the education of daughters. In addition, it is assumed that the time cost of childcare borne by men cannot be above that borne by women (but it could be the same).
When women have a relative preference for child quality, increasing female empowerment speeds up the economy’s escape from a Malthusian trap of high fertility, low education, and low income per capita. When female empowerment increases (exogenously), a woman’s relative preference for child quality has a higher impact on household’s decisions. As a consequence, fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and the economy starts growing. The model also predicts that the more preferences for child quality differ between husband and wife, the more effective is female empowerment in raising long-run per capita income, because the sooner the economy escapes the Malthusian trap. This effect is not affected by whether parents have a preference for the education of boys relative to that of girls. If, however, men and women have similar preferences with respect to the quantity and quality of their children, then female empowerment does not affect the timing of the transition to the sustained growth regime.
Strulik ( 2019 ) goes one step further and endogeneizes why men seem to prefer having more children than women. The reason is a different preference for sexual activity: other things equal, men enjoy having sex more than women. Footnote 17 When cheap and effective contraception is not available, a higher male desire for sexual activity explains why men also prefer to have more children than women. In a traditional economy, where no contraception is available, fertility is high, while human capital and economic growth are low. When female bargaining power increases, couples reduce their sexual activity, fertility declines, and human capital accumulates faster. Faster human capital accumulation increases household income and, as a consequence, the demand for contraception goes up. As contraception use increases, fertility declines further. Eventually, the economy undergoes a fertility transition and moves to a modern regime with low fertility, widespread use of contraception, high human capital, and high economic growth. In the modern regime, because contraception is widely used, men’s desire for sex is decoupled from fertility. Both sex and children cost time and money. When the two are decoupled, men prefer to have more sex at the expense of the number of children. There is a reversal in the gender gap in desired fertility. When contraceptives are not available, men desire more children than women; once contraceptives are widely used, men desire fewer children than women. If women are more empowered, the transition from the traditional equilibrium to the modern equilibrium occurs faster.
Both Prettner & Strulik ( 2017 ) and Strulik ( 2019 ) rely on gender-specific preferences. In contrast, Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ) are able to explain gender-specific expenditure patterns without having to assume that men and women have different preferences. They set up a non-cooperative model of household decision making and ask whether more female control of household resources leads to higher child expenditures and, thus, to economic development. Footnote 18
In their model, household public goods are produced with two inputs: time and goods. Instead of a single home-produced good (as in most models), there is a continuum of household public goods whose production technologies differ. Some public goods are more time-intensive to produce, while others are more goods-intensive. Each specific public good can only be produced by one spouse—i.e., time and good inputs are not separable. Women face wage discrimination in the labor market, so their opportunity cost of time is lower than men’s. As a result, women specialize in the production of the most time-intensive household public goods (e.g., childrearing activities), while men specialize in the production of goods-intensive household public goods (e.g., housing infrastructure). Notice that, because the household is non-cooperative, there is not only a division of labor between husband and wife, but also a division of decision making, since ultimately each spouse decides how much to provide of his or her public goods.
When household resources are redistributed from men to women (i.e., from the high-wage spouse to the low-wage spouse), women provide more public goods, in relative terms. It is ambiguous, however, whether the total provision of public goods increases with the re-distributive transfer. In a classic model of gender-specific preferences, a wife increases child expenditures and her own private consumption at the expense of the husband’s private consumption. In Doepke & Tertilt ( 2019 ), however, the rise in child expenditures (and time-intensive public goods in general) comes at the expense of male consumption and male-provided public goods.
Parents contribute to the welfare of the next generation in two ways: via human capital investments (time-intensive, typically done by the mother) and bequests of physical capital (goods-intensive, typically done by the father). Transferring resources to women increases human capital, but reduces the stock of physical capital. The effect of such transfers on economic growth depends on whether the aggregate production function is relatively intensive in human capital or in physical capital. If aggregate production is relatively human capital intensive, then transfers to women boost economic growth; if it is relatively intensive in physical capital, then transfers to women may reduce economic growth.
There is an interesting paradox here. On the one hand, transfers to women will be growth-enhancing in economies where production is intensive in human capital. These would be more developed, knowledge intensive, service economies. On the other hand, the positive growth effect of transfers to women increases with the size of the gender wage gap, that is, decreases with female empowerment. But the more advanced, human capital intensive economies are also the ones with more female empowerment (i.e., lower gender wage gaps). In other words, in settings where human capital investments are relatively beneficial, the contribution of female empowerment to human capital accumulation is reduced. Overall, Doepke and Tertilt’s ( 2019 ) model predicts that female empowerment has at best a limited positive effect and at worst a negative effect on economic growth.
Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) argue that, in a non-cooperative household model, income transfers to women may increase female labor supply. Footnote 19 This result may appear counter-intuitive at first, because in collective household models unearned income unambiguously reduces labor supply through a negative income effect. In Heath and Tan’s model, husband and wife derive utility from leisure, consuming private goods, and consuming a household public good. The spouses decide separately on labor supply and monetary contributions to the household public good. Men and women are identical in preferences and behavior, but women have limited control over resources, with a share of their income being captured by the husband. Female control over resources (i.e., autonomy) depends positively on the wife’s relative contribution to household income. Thus, an income transfer to the wife, keeping husband unearned income constant, raises the fraction of her own income that she privately controls. This autonomy effect unambiguously increases women’s labor supply, because the wife can now reap an additional share of her wage bill. Whenever the autonomy effect dominates the (negative) income effect, female labor supply increases. The net effect will be heterogeneous over the wage distribution, but the authors show that aggregate female labor supply is always weakly larger after the income transfer.
Diebolt & Perrin ( 2013 ) assume cooperative bargaining between husband and wife, but do not rely on sex-specific preferences or differences in ability. Men and women are only distinguished by different uses of their time endowments, with females in charge of all childrearing activities. In line with this labor division, the authors further assume that only the mother’s human capital is inherited by the child at birth. On top of the inherited maternal endowment, individuals can accumulate human capital during adulthood, through schooling. The higher the initial human capital endowment, the more effective is the accumulation of human capital via schooling.
A woman’s bargaining power in marriage determines her share in total household consumption and is a function of the relative female human capital of the previous generation. An increase in the human capital of mothers relative to that of fathers has two effects. First, it raises the incentives for human capital accumulation of the next generation, because inherited maternal human capital makes schooling more effective. Second, it raises the bargaining power of the next generation of women and, because women’s consumption share increases, boosts the returns on women’s education. The second effect is not internalized in women’s time allocation decisions; it is an intergenerational externality. Thus, an exogenous increase in women’s bargaining power would promote economic growth by speeding up the accumulation of human capital across overlapping generations.
De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) contribute to the literature by clearly distinguishing between different gender gaps: a gap in the probability of survival, a wage gap, a social and institutional gap, and a gender education gap. The first three are exogenously given, while the fourth is determined within the model.
By assumption, men and women have identical preferences and ability, but women pay the full time cost of childrearing. As in a typical collective household model, bargaining power is partially determined by the spouses’ earnings potential (i.e., their levels of human capital and their wage rates). But there is also a component of bargaining power that is exogenous and captures social norms that discriminate against women—this is the social and institutional gender gap.
Husbands and wives bargain over fertility and human capital investments for their children. A standard Beckerian result emerges: parents invest relatively less in the education of girls, because girls will be more time-constrained than boys and, therefore, the female returns to education are lower in relative terms.
There are at least two regimes in the economy: a corner regime and an interior regime. The corner regime consists of maximum fertility, full gender specialization (no women in the labor market), and large gender gaps in education (no education for girls). Reducing the wage gap or the social and institutional gap does not help the economy escaping this regime. Women are not in labor force, so the wage gap is meaningless. The social and institutional gap will determine women’s share in household consumption, but does not affect fertility and growth. At this stage, the only effective instruments for escaping the corner regime are reducing the gender survival gap or reducing child mortality. Reducing the gender survival gap increases women’s lifespan, which increases their time budget and attracts them to the labor market. Reducing child mortality decreases the time costs of kids, therefore drawing women into the labor market. In both cases, fertility decreases.
In the interior regime, fertility is below the maximum, women’s labor supply is above zero, and both boys and girls receive education. In this regime, with endogenous bargaining power, reducing all gender gaps will boost economic growth. Footnote 20 Thus, depending on the growth regime, some gender gaps affect economic growth, while others do not. Accordingly, the policy-maker should tackle different dimensions of gender inequality at different stages of the development process.
Agénor ( 2017 ) presents a computable general equilibrium that includes many of the elements of gender inequality reviewed so far. An important contribution of the model is to explicitly add the government as an agent whose policies interact with family decisions and, therefore, will impact women’s time allocation. Workers produce a market good and a home good and are organized in collective households. Bargaining power depends on the spouses’ relative human capital levels. By assumption, there is gender discrimination in market wages against women. On top, mothers are exclusively responsible for home production and childrearing, which takes the form of time spent improving children’s health and education. But public investments in education and health also improve these outcomes during childhood. Likewise, public investment in public infrastructure contributes positively to home production. In particular, the ratio of public infrastructure capital stock to private capital stock is a substitute for women’s time in home production. The underlying idea is that improving sanitation, transportation, and other infrastructure reduces time spent in home production. Health status in adulthood depends on health status in childhood, which, in turn, relates positively to mother’s health, her time inputs into childrearing, and government spending. Children’s human capital depends on similar factors, except that mother’s human capital replaces her health as an input. Additionally, women are assumed to derive less utility from current consumption and more utility from children’s health relative to men. Wives are also assumed to live longer than their husbands, which further down-weights female’s emphasis on current consumption. The final gendered assumption is that mother’s time use is biased towards boys. This bias alone creates a gender gap in education and health. As adults, women’s relative lower health and human capital are translated into relative lower bargaining power in household decisions.
Agénor ( 2017 ) calibrates this rich setup for Benin, a low income country, and runs a series of policy experiments on different dimensions of gender inequality: a fall in childrearing costs, a fall in gender pay discrimination, a fall in son bias in mother’s time allocation, and an exogenous increase in female bargaining power. Footnote 21 Interestingly, despite all policies improving gender equality in separate dimensions, not all unambiguously stimulate economic growth. For example, falling childrearing costs raise savings and private investments, which are growth-enhancing, but increase fertility (as children become ‘cheaper’) and reduce maternal time investment per child, thus reducing growth. In contrast, a fall in gender pay discrimination always leads to higher growth, through higher household income that, in turn, boosts savings, tax revenues, and public spending. Higher public spending further contributes to improved health and education of the next generation. Lastly, Agénor ( 2017 ) simulates the effect of a combined policy that improves gender equality in all domains simultaneously. Due to complementarities and positive externalities across dimensions, the combined policy generates more economic growth than the sum of the individual policies. Footnote 22
In the models reviewed so far, men are passive observers of women’s empowerment. Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) set up an interesting political economy model of women’s rights, where men make the decisive choice. Their model is motivated by the fact that, historically, the economic rights of women were expanded before their political rights. Because the granting of economic rights empowers women in the household, and this was done before women were allowed to participate in the political process, the relevant question is why did men willingly share their power with their wives?
Doepke & Tertilt ( 2009 ) answer this question by arguing that men face a fundamental trade-off. On the one hand, husbands would vote for their wives to have no rights whatsoever, because husbands prefer as much intra-household bargaining power as possible. But, on the other hand, fathers would vote for their daughters to have economic rights in their future households. In addition, fathers want their children to marry highly educated spouses, and grandfathers want their grandchildren to be highly educated. By assumption, men and women have different preferences, with women having a relative preference for child quality over quantity. Accordingly, men internalize that, when women become empowered, human capital investments increase, making their children and grandchildren better-off.
Skill-biased (exogenous) technological progress that raises the returns to education over time can shift male incentives along this trade-off. When the returns to education are low, men prefer to make all decisions on their own and deny all rights to women. But once the returns to education are sufficiently high, men voluntarily share their power with women by granting them economic rights. As a result, human capital investments increase and the economy grows faster.
In summary, gender inequality in labor market earnings often implies power asymmetries within the household, with men having more bargaining power than women. If preferences differ by gender and female preferences are more conducive to development, then empowering women is beneficial for growth. When preferences are the same and the bargaining process is non-cooperative, the implications are less clear-cut, and more context-specific. If, in addition, women’s empowerment is curtailed by law (e.g., restrictions on women’s economic rights), then it is important to understand the political economy of women’s rights, in which men are crucial actors.
5 Marriage markets and household formation
Two-sex models of economic growth have largely ignored how households are formed. The marriage market is not explicitly modeled: spouses are matched randomly, marriage is universal and monogamous, and families are nuclear. In reality, however, household formation patterns vary substantially across societies, with some of these differences extending far back in history. For example, Hajnal ( 1965 , 1982 ) described a distinct household formation pattern in preindustrial Northwestern Europe (often referred to as the “European Marriage Pattern”) characterized by: (i) late ages at first marriage for women, (ii) most marriages done under individual consent, and (iii) neolocality (i.e., upon marriage, the bride and the groom leave their parental households to form a new household). In contrast, marriage systems in China and India consisted of: (i) very early female ages at first marriage, (ii) arranged marriages, and (iii) patrilocality (i.e., the bride joins the parental household of the groom).
Economic historians argue that the “European Marriage Pattern” empowered women, encouraging their participation in market activities and reducing fertility levels. While some view this as one of the deep-rooted factors explaining Northwestern Europe’s earlier takeoff to sustained economic growth (e.g., Carmichael, de Pleijt, van Zanden and De Moor 2016 ; De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hartman 2004 ), others have downplayed the long-run significance of this marriage pattern (e.g., Dennison & Ogilvie 2014 ; Ruggles 2009 ). Despite this lively debate, the topic has been largely ignored by growth theorists. The few exceptions are Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ), Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ), and Tertilt ( 2005 , 2006 ).
After exploring different marriage institutions, we zoom in on contemporary monogamous and consensual marriage and review models where gender inequality affects economic growth through marriage markets that facilitate household formation (Du & Wei 2013 ; Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ). In contrast with the previous two sections, where the household is the starting point of the analysis, the literature on marriage markets and household formation recognizes that marriage, labor supply, and investment decisions are interlinked. The analysis of these interlinkages is sometimes done with unitary households (upon marriage) (Du & Wei 2013 ; Guvenen & Rendall 2015 ), or with non-cooperative models of individual decision-making within households (Grossbard & Pereira 2015 ; Grossbard-Shechtman 1984 ).
Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) argue that the emergence of the “European Marriage Pattern” is a direct consequence of the mid-fourteen century Black Death. They set up a two-sector agricultural economy consisting of physically demanding cereal farming, and less physically demanding pastoral production. The economy is populated by many male and female peasants and by a class of idle, rent-maximizing landlords. Female peasants are heterogeneous with respect to physical strength, but, on average, are assumed to have less brawn relative to male peasants and, thus, have a comparative advantage in the pastoral sector. Both sectors use land as a production input, although the pastoral sector is more land-intensive than cereal production. All land is owned by the landlords, who can rent it out for peasant cereal farming, or use it for large-scale livestock farming, for which they hire female workers. Crucially, women can only work and earn wages in the pastoral sector as long as they are unmarried. Footnote 23 Peasant women decide when to marry and, upon marriage, a peasant couple forms a new household, where husband and wife both work on cereal farming, and have children at a given time frequency. Thus, the only contraceptive method available is delaying marriage. Because women derive utility from consumption and children, they face a trade-off between earned income and marriage.
Initially, the economy rests in a Malthusian regime, where land-labor ratios are relatively low, making the land-intensive pastoral sector unattractive and depressing relative female wages. As a result, women marry early and fertility is high. The initial regime ends in 1348–1350, when the Black Death kills between one third and half of Europe’s population, exogenously generating land abundance and, therefore, raising the relative wages of female labor in pastoral production. Women postpone marriage to reap higher wages, and fertility decreases—moving the economy to a regime of late marriages and low fertility.
In addition to late marital ages and reduced fertility, another important feature of the “European Marriage Pattern” was individual consent for marriage. Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ) study how rules of consent for marriage influence long-run economic development. In their model, marriages can be formed according to two types of consent rules: individual consent or parental consent. Under individual consent, young people are free to marry whomever they wish, while, under parental consent, their parents are in charge of arranging the marriage. Depending on the prevailing rule, the recipient of the bride-price differs. Under individual consent, a woman receives the bride-price from her husband, whereas, under parental consent, her father receives the bride-price from the father of the groom. Footnote 24 In both situations, the father of the groom owns the labor income of his son and, therefore, pays the bride-price, either directly, under parental consent, or indirectly, under individual consent. Under individual consent, the father needs to transfer resources to his son to nudge him into marrying. Thus, individual consent implies a transfer of resources from the old to the young and from men to women, relative to the rule of parental consent. Redistributing resources from the old to the young boosts long-run economic growth. Because the young have a longer timespan to extract income from their children’s labor, they invest relatively more in the human capital of the next generation. In addition, under individual consent, the reallocation of resources from men to women can have additional positive effects on growth, by increasing women’s bargaining power (see section 4 ), although this channel is not explicitly modeled in Edlund and Lagerlöf ( 2006 ).
Tertilt ( 2005 ) explores the effects of polygyny on long-run development through its impact on savings and fertility. In her model, parental consent applies to women, while individual consent applies to men. There is a competitive marriage market where fathers sell their daughters and men buy their wives. As each man is allowed (and wants) to marry several wives, a positive bride-price emerges in equilibrium. Footnote 25 Upon marriage, the reproductive rights of the bride are transferred from her father to her husband, who makes all fertility decisions on his own and, in turn, owns the reproductive rights of his daughters. From a father’s perspective, daughters are investments goods; they can be sold in the marriage market, at any time. This feature generates additional demand for daughters, which increases overall fertility, and reduces the incentives to save, which decreases the stock of physical capital. Under monogamy, in contrast, the equilibrium bride-price is negative (i.e., a dowry). The reason is that maintaining unmarried daughters is costly for their fathers, so they are better-off paying a (small enough) dowry to their future husbands. In this setting, the economic returns to daughters are lower and, consequently, so is the demand for children. Fertility decreases and savings increase. Thus, moving from polygny to monogamy lowers population growth and raises the capital stock in the long run, which translates into higher output per capita in the steady state.
Instead of enforcing monogamy in a traditionally polygynous setting, an alternative policy is to transfer marriage consent from fathers to daughters. Tertilt ( 2006 ) shows that when individual consent is extended to daughters, such that fathers do not receive the bride-price anymore, the consequences are qualitatively similar to a ban on polygyny. If fathers stop receiving the bride-price, they save more physical capital. In the long run, per capita output is higher when consent is transferred to daughters.
Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) develops the first non-cooperative model where (monogamous) marriage, home production, and labor supply decisions are interdependent. Footnote 26 Spouses are modeled as separate agents deciding over production and consumption. Marriage becomes an implicit contract for ‘work-in-household’ (WiHo), defined as “an activity that benefits another household member [typically a spouse] who could potentially compensate the individual for these efforts” (Grossbard 2015 , p. 21). Footnote 27 In particular, each spouse decides how much labor to supply to market work and WiHo, and how much labor to demand from the other spouse for WiHo. Through this lens, spousal decisions over the intra-marriage distribution of consumption and WiHo are akin to well-known principal-agent problems faced between firms and workers. In the marriage market equilibrium, a spouse benefiting from WiHo (the principal) must compensate the spouse producing it (the agent) via intra-household transfers (of goods or leisure). Footnote 28 Grossbard-Shechtman ( 1984 ) and Grossbard ( 2015 ) show that, under these conditions, the ratio of men to women (i.e., the sex ratio) in the marriage market is inversely related to female labor supply to the market. The reason is that, as the pool of potential wives shrinks, prospective husbands have to increase compensation for female WiHo. From the potential wife’s point of view, as the equilibrium price for her WiHo increases, market work becomes less attractive. Conversely, when sex ratios are lower, female labor supply outside the home increases. Although the model does not explicit derive growth implications, the relative increase in female labor supply is expected to be beneficial for economic growth, as argued by many of the theories reviewed so far.
In an extension of this framework, Grossbard & Pereira ( 2015 ) analyze how sex ratios affect gendered savings over the marital life-cycle. Assuming that women supply a disproportionate amount of labor for WiHo (due, for example, to traditional gender norms), the authors show that men and women will have very distinct saving trajectories. A higher sex ratio increases savings by single men, who anticipate higher compensation transfers for their wives’ WiHo, whereas it decreases savings by single women, who anticipate receiving those transfers upon marriage. But the pattern flips after marriage: precautionary savings raise among married women, because the possibility of marriage dissolution entails a loss of income from WiHo. The opposite effect happens for married men: marriage dissolution would imply less expenditures in the future. The higher the sex ratio, the higher will be the equilibrium compensation paid by husbands for their wives’ WiHo. Therefore, the sex ratio will positively affect savings among single men and married women, but negatively affect savings among single women and married men. The net effect on the aggregate savings rate and on economic growth will depend on the relative size of these demographic groups.
In a related article, Du & Wei ( 2013 ) propose a model where higher sex ratios worsen marriage markets prospects for young men and their families, who react by increasing savings. Women in turn reduce savings. However, because sex ratios shift the composition of the population in favor of men (high saving type) relative to women (low saving type) and men save additionally to compensate for women’s dis-saving, aggregate savings increase unambiguously with sex ratios.
In Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ), female education is, in part, demanded as insurance against divorce risk. The reason is that divorce laws often protect spouses’ future labor market earnings (i.e., returns to human capital), but force them to share their physical assets. Because, in the model, women are more likely to gain custody of their children after divorce, they face higher costs from divorce relative to their husbands. Therefore, the higher the risk of divorce, the more women invest in human capital, as insurance against a future vulnerable economic position. Guvenen & Rendall ( 2015 ) shows that, over time, divorce risk has increased (for example, consensual divorce became replaced by unilateral divorce in most US states in the 1970s). In the aggregate, higher divorce risk boosted female education and female labor supply.
In summary, the rules regulating marriage and household formation carry relevant theoretical consequences for economic development. While the few studies on this topic have focused on age at marriage, consent rules and polygyny, and the interaction between sex ratios, marriage, and labor supply, other features of the marriage market remain largely unexplored (Borella, De Nardi and Yang 2018 ). Growth theorists would benefit from further incorporating theories of household formation in gendered macro models. Footnote 29
6 Conclusion
In this article, we surveyed micro-founded theories linking gender inequality to economic development. This literature offers many plausible mechanisms through which inequality between men and women affects the aggregate economy (see Table 1 ). Yet, we believe the body of theories could be expanded in several directions. We discuss them below and highlight lessons for policy.
The first direction for future research concerns control over fertility. In models where fertility is endogenous, households are always able to achieve their preferred number of children (see Strulik 2019 , for an exception). The implicit assumption is that there is a free and infallible method of fertility control available for all households—a view rejected by most demographers. The gap between desired fertility and achieved fertility can be endogeneized at three levels. First, at the societal level, the diffusion of particular contraceptive methods may be influenced by cultural and religious norms. Second, at the household level, fertility control may be object of non-cooperative bargaining between the spouses, in particular, for contraceptive methods that only women perfectly observe (Ashraf, Field and Lee 2014 ; Doepke & Kindermann 2019 ). More generally, the role of asymmetric information within the household is not yet explored (Walther 2017 ). Third, if parents have preferences over the gender composition of their offspring, fertility is better modeled as a sequential and uncertain process, where household size is likely endogenous to the sex of the last born child (Hazan & Zoabi 2015 ).
A second direction worth exploring concerns gender inequality in a historical perspective. In models with multiple equilibria, an economy’s path is often determined by its initial level of gender equality. Therefore, it would be useful to develop theories explaining why initial conditions varied across societies. In particular, there is a large literature on economic and demographic history documenting how systems of marriage and household formation differed substantially across preindustrial societies (e.g., De Moor & Van Zanden 2010 ; Hajnal 1965 , 1982 ; Hartman 2004 ; Ruggles 2009 ). In our view, more theoretical work is needed to explain both the origins and the consequences of these historical systems.
A third avenue for future research concerns the role of technological change. In several models, technological change is the exogenous force that ultimately erodes gender gaps in education or labor supply (e.g., Bloom et al. 2015 ; Doepke & Tertilt 2009 ; Galor & Weil 1996 ). For that to happen, technological progress is assumed to be skill-biased, thus raising the returns to education—or, in other words, favoring brain over brawn. As such, new technologies make male advantage in physical strength ever more irrelevant, while making female time spent on childrearing and housework ever more expensive. Moreover, recent technological progress increased the efficiency of domestic activities, thereby relaxing women’s time constraints (e.g., Cavalcanti & Tavares 2008 ; Greenwood, Seshadri and Yorukoglu 2005 ). These mechanisms are plausible, but other aspects of technological change need not be equally favorable for women. In many countries, for example, the booming science, technology, and engineering sectors tend to be particularly male-intensive. And Tejani & Milberg ( 2016 ) provide evidence for developing countries that as manufacturing industries become more capital intensive, their female employment share decreases.
Even if current technological progress is assumed to weaken gender gaps, historically, technology may have played exactly the opposite role. If technology today is more complementary to brain, in the past it could have been more complementary to brawn. An example is the plow that, relative to alternative technologies for field preparation (e.g., hoe, digging stick), requires upper body strength, on which men have a comparative advantage over women (Alesina, Giuliano and Nunn 2013 ; Boserup 1970 ). Another, even more striking example, is the invention of agriculture itself—the Neolithic Revolution. The transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture involved a relative loss of status for women (Dyble et al. 2015 ; Hansen, Jensen and Skovsgaard 2015 ). One explanation is that property rights on land were captured by men, who had an advantage on physical strength and, consequently, on physical violence. Thus, in the long view of human history, technological change appears to have shifted from being male-biased towards being female-biased. Endogeneizing technological progress and its interaction with gender inequality is a promising avenue for future research.
Fourth, open economy issues are still almost entirely absent. An exception is Rees & Riezman ( 2012 ), who model the effect of globalization on economic growth. Whether global capital flows generate jobs primarily in female or male intensive sectors matters for long-run growth. If globalization creates job opportunities for women, their bargaining power increases and households trade off child quantity by child quality. Fertility falls, human capital accumulates, and long-run per capita output is high. If, on the other hand, globalization creates jobs for men, their intra-household power increases; fertility increases, human capital decreases, and steady-state income per capita is low. The literature would benefit from engaging with open economy demand-driven models of the feminist tradition, such as Blecker & Seguino ( 2002 ), Seguino ( 2010 ). Other fruitful avenues for future research on open economy macro concern gender analysis of global value chains (Barrientos 2019 ), gendered patterns of international migration (Cortes 2015 ; Cortes & Tessada 2011 ), and the diffusion of gender norms through globalization (Beine, Docquier and Schiff 2013 ; Klasen 2020 ; Tuccio & Wahba 2018 ).
A final point concerns the role of men in this literature. In most theoretical models, gender inequality is not the result of an active male project that seeks the domination of women. Instead, inequality emerges as a rational best response to some underlying gender gap in endowments or constraints. Then, as the underlying gap becomes less relevant—for example, due to skill-biased technological change—, men passively relinquish their power (see Doepke & Tertilt 2009 , for an exception). There is never a male backlash against the short-term power loss that necessarily comes with female empowerment. In reality, it is more likely that men actively oppose losing power and resources towards women (Folbre 2020 ; Kabeer 2016 ; Klasen 2020 ). This possibility has not yet been explored in formal models, even though it could threaten the typical virtuous cycle between gender equality and growth. If men are forward-looking, and the short-run losses outweigh the dynamic gains from higher growth, they might ensure that women never get empowered to begin with. Power asymmetries tend to be sticky, because “any group that is able to claim a disproportionate share of the gains from cooperation can develop social institutions to fortify their position” (Folbre 2020 , p. 199). For example, Eswaran & Malhotra ( 2011 ) set up a household decision model where men use domestic violence against their wives as a tool to enhance male bargaining power. Thus, future theories should recognize more often that men have a vested interest on the process of female empowerment.
More generally, policymakers should pay attention to the possibility of a male backlash as an unintended consequence of female empowerment policies (Erten & Keskin 2018 ; Eswaran & Malhotra 2011 ). Likewise, whereas most theories reviewed here link lower fertility to higher economic growth, the relationship is non-monotonic. Fertility levels below the replacement rate will eventually generate aggregate social costs in the form of smaller future workforces, rapidly ageing societies, and increased pressure on welfare systems, to name a few.
Many theories presented in this survey make another important practical point: public policies should recognize that gender gaps in separate dimensions complement and reinforce one another and, therefore, have to be dealt with simultaneously. A naïve policy targeting a single gap in isolation is unlikely to have substantial growth effects in the short run. Typically, inequalities in separate dimensions are not independent from each other (Agénor 2017 ; Bandiera & Does 2013 ; Duflo 2012 ; Kabeer 2016 ). For example, if credit-constrained women face weak property rights, are unable to access certain markets, and have mobility and time constraints, then the marginal return to capital may nevertheless be larger for men. Similarly, the return to male education may well be above the female return if demand for female labor is low or concentrated in sectors with low productivity. In sum, “the fact that women face multiple constraints means that relaxing just one may not improve outcomes” (Duflo 2012 , p. 1076).
Promising policy directions that would benefit from further macroeconomic research are the role of public investments in physical infrastructure and care provision (Agénor 2017 ; Braunstein, Bouhia and Seguino 2020 ), gender-based taxation (Guner, Kaygusuz and Ventura 2012 ; Meier & Rainer 2015 ), and linkages between gender equality and pro-environmental agendas (Matsumoto 2014 ).
See Echevarria & Moe ( 2000 ) for a similar complaint that “theories of economic growth and development have consistently neglected to include gender as a variable” (p. 77).
A non-exhaustive list includes Bandiera & Does ( 2013 ), Braunstein ( 2013 ), Cuberes & Teignier ( 2014 ), Duflo ( 2012 ), Kabeer ( 2016 ), Kabeer & Natali ( 2013 ), Klasen ( 2018 ), Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ), Sinha et al. ( 2007 ), Stotsky ( 2006 ), World Bank ( 2001 , 2011 ).
For an in-depth history of “new home economics” see Grossbard-Shechtman ( 2001 ) and Grossbard ( 2010 , 2011 ).
For recent empirical reviews see Duflo ( 2012 ) and Doss ( 2013 ).
Although the unitary approach has being rejected on theoretical (e.g., Echevarria & Moe 2000 ; Folbre 1986 ; Knowles 2013 ; Sen 1989 ) and empirical grounds (e.g., Doss 2013 ; Duflo 2003 ; Lundberg et al. 1997 ), these early models are foundational to the subsequent literature. As it turns out, some of the key mechanisms survive in non-unitary theories of the household.
For nice conceptual perspectives on conflict and cooperation in households see Sen ( 1989 ), Grossbard ( 2011 ), and Folbre ( 2020 ).
The relationship depicted in Fig. 1 is robust to using other composite measures of gender equality (e.g., UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index or OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) (see Branisa, Klasen and Ziegler 2013 )), and other years besides 2000. In Fig. 2 , the linear prediction explains 56 percent of the cross-country variation in per capita income.
See Seguino ( 2013 , 2020 ) for a review of this literature.
The model allows for sorting on ability (“some people are better teachers”) or sorting on occupation-specific preferences (“others derive more utility from working as a teacher”) (Hsieh et al. 2019 , p. 1441). Here, we restrict our presentation to the case where sorting occurs primarily on ability. The authors find little empirical support for sorting on preferences.
Because the home sector is treated as any other occupation, the model can capture, in a reduced-form fashion, social norms on women’s labor force participation. For example, a social norm on traditional gender roles can be represented as a utility premium obtained by all women working on the home sector.
Note, however, that discrimination against women raises productivity in the non-agricultural sector. The reason is that the few women who end up working outside agriculture are positively selected on talent. Lee ( 2020 ) shows that this countervailing effect is modest and dominated by the loss of productivity in agriculture.
This is not the classic Beckerian quantity-quality trade-off because parents cannot invest in the quality of their children. Instead, the mechanism is built by assumption in the household’s utility function. When women’s wages increase relative to male wages, the substitution effect dominates the income effect.
The hypothesis that female labor force participation and economic development have a U-shaped relationship—known as the feminization-U hypothesis—goes back to Boserup ( 1970 ). See also Goldin ( 1995 ). Recently, Gaddis & Klasen ( 2014 ) find only limited empirical support for the feminization-U.
The model does not consider fertility decisions. Parents derive utility from their children’s human capital (social status utility). When household income increases, parents want to “consume” more social status by investing in their children’s education—this is the positive income effect.
Bloom et al. ( 2015 ) build their main model with unitary households, but show that the key conclusions are robust to a collective representation of the household.
This assumption does not necessarily mean that boys are more talented than girls. It can be also interpreted as a reduced-form way of capturing labor market discrimination against women.
Many empirical studies are in line with this assumption, which is rooted in evolutionary psychology. See Strulik ( 2019 ) for references. There are several other evolutionary arguments for men wanting more children (including with different women). See, among others, Mulder & Rauch ( 2009 ), Penn & Smith ( 2007 ), von Rueden & Jaeggi ( 2016 ). However, for a different view, see Fine ( 2017 ).
They do not model fertility decisions. So there is no quantity-quality trade-off.
In their empirical application, Heath & Tan ( 2020 ) study the Hindu Succession Act, which, through improved female inheritance rights, increased the lifetime unearned income of Indian women. Other policies consistent with the model are, for example, unconditional cash transfers to women.
De la Croix & Vander Donckt ( 2010 ) show this with numerical simulations, because the interior regime becomes analytically intractable.
We focus on gender-related policies in our presentation, but the article simulates additional public policies.
Agénor and Agénor ( 2014 ) develop a similar model, but with unitary households, and Agénor and Canuto ( 2015 ) have a similar model of collective households for Brazil, where adult women can also invest time in human capital formation. Since public infrastructure substitutes for women’s time in home production, more (or better) infrastructure can free up time for female human capital accumulation and, thus, endogenously increase wives’ bargaining power.
Voigtländer and Voth ( 2013 ) justify this assumption arguing that, in England, employment contracts for farm servants working in animal husbandry were conditional on celibacy. However, see Edwards & Ogilvie ( 2018 ) for a critique of this assumption.
The bride-price under individual consent need not be paid explicitly as a lump-sum transfer. It could, instead, be paid to the bride implicitly in the form of higher lifetime consumption.
In Tertilt ( 2005 ), all men are similar (except in age). Widespread polygyny is possible because older men marry younger women and population growth is high. This setup reflects stylized facts for Sub-Saharan Africa. It differs from models that assume male heterogeneity in endowments, where polygyny emerges because a rich male elite owns several wives, while poor men remain single (e.g., Gould, Moav and Simhon 2008 ; Lagerlöf 2005 , 2010 ).
See Grossbard ( 2015 ) for more details and extensions of this model and Grossbard ( 2018 ) for a non-technical overview of the related literature. For an earlier application, see Grossbard ( 1976 ).
The concept of WiHo is closely related but not equivalent to the ‘black-box’ term home production used by much of the literature. It also relates to feminist perspectives on care and social reproduction labor (c.f. Folbre 1994 ).
In the general setup, the model need not lead to a corner solution where only one spouse specializes in WiHo.
For promising approaches, see, among others, Cubeddu and Ríos-Rull ( 2003 ), Goussé, Jacquemet and Robin ( 2017 ), Greenwood, Guner, Kocharkov and Santos ( 2016 ), Guler, Guvenen and Violante ( 2012 ), Walther ( 2017 ), Wong ( 2016 ).
Agénor, P.-R. (2017). A computable overlapping generations model for gender and growth policy analysis. Macroeconomic Dynamics , 21 (1), 11–54.
Article Google Scholar
Agénor, P.-R., & Agénor, M. (2014). Infrastructure, women’s time allocation, and economic development. Journal of Economics , 113 (1), 1–30.
Agénor, P.-R., & Canuto, O. (2015). Gender equality and economic growth in Brazil: A long-run analysis. Journal of Macroeconomics , 43 , 155–172.
Alesina, A., Giuliano, P., & Nunn, N. (2013). On the origins of gender roles: women and the plough. Quarterly Journal of Economics , 128 (2), 469–530.
Ashraf, N., Field, E., & Lee, J. (2014). Household bargaining and excess fertility: an experimental study in Zambia. American Economic Review , 104 (7), 2210–2237.
Bandiera, O., & Does, A. N. (2013). Does gender inequality hinder development and economic growth? evidence and policy implications. World Bank Research Observer , 28 (1), 2–21.
Barrientos, S. (2019). Gender and work in global value chains: Capturing the gains? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Becker, G. S. (1960). An economic analysis of fertility. In Demographic and Economic Change in Developed Countries . Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 209–240.
Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar
Becker, G. S., & Barro, R. J. (1988). A reformulation of the economic theory of fertility. Quarterly Journal of Economics , 103 (1), 1–26.
Beine, M., Docquier, F., & Schiff, M. (2013). International migration, transfer of norms and home country fertility. Canadian Journal of Economics , 46 (4), 1406–1430.
Blecker, R. A., & Seguino, S. (2002). Macroeconomic effects of reducing gender wage inequality in an export-oriented, semi-industrialized economy. Review of Development Economics , 6 (1), 103–119.
Bloom, D. E., Kuhn, M., & Prettner, K. (2015). The Contribution of Female Health to Economic Development . NBER Working Paper 21411, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
Borella, M., De Nardi, M., & Yang, F. (2018). The aggregate implications of gender and marriage. The Journal of the Economics of Ageing , 11 , 6–26.
Boserup, E. (1970). Woman’s role in economic development . London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Branisa, B., Klasen, S., & Ziegler, M. (2013). Gender inequality in social institutions and gendered development outcomes. World Development , 45 , 252–268.
Braunstein, E. (2013). Gender, growth and employment. Development , 56 (1), 103–113.
Braunstein, E., Bouhia, R., & Seguino, S. (2020). Social reproduction, gender equality and economic growth. Cambridge Journal of Economics , 44 (1), 129–156.
Carmichael, S. G., de Pleijt, A., van Zanden, J. L., & De Moor, T. (2016). The European marriage pattern and its measurement. Journal of Economic History , 76 (01), 196–204.
Cavalcanti, T., & Tavares, J. (2016). The output cost of gender discrimination: a model-based macroeconomics estimate. Economic Journal , 126 (590), 109–134.
Cavalcanti, T. Vd. V., & Tavares, J. (2008). Assessing the "Engines of Liberation”: Home Appliances and Female Labor Force Participation. The Review of Economics and Statistics , 90 (1), 81–88.
Cortes, P. (2015). The feminization of international migration and its effects on the children left behind: evidence from the Philippines. World Development , 65 , 62–78.
Cortes, P., & Tessada, J. (2011). Low-skilled immigration and the labor supply of highly skilled women. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 3 (3), 88–123.
Cubeddu, L., & Ríos-Rull, J.-V. (2003). Families as shocks. Journal of the European Economic Association , 1 (2–3), 671–682.
Cuberes, D., & Teignier, M. (2014). Gender inequality and economic growth: a critical review. Journal of International Development , 26 (2), 260–276.
Cuberes, D., & Teignier, M. (2016). Aggregate effects of gender gaps in the labor market: a quantitative estimate. Journal of Human Capital , 10 (1), 1–32.
Cuberes, D., & Teignier, M. (2017). Macroeconomic costs of gender gaps in a model with entrepreneurship and household production. The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics , 18 (1), 20170031.
De la Croix, D., & VanderDonckt, M. (2010). Would empowering women initiate the demographic transition in least developed countries? Journal of Human Capital , 4 (2), 85–129.
De Moor, T., & Van Zanden, J. L. (2010). Girl power: The European marriage pattern and labour markets in the north sea region in the late medieval and early modern period. Economic History Review , 63 (1), 1–33.
Dennison, T., & Ogilvie, S. (2014). Does the European marriage pattern explain economic growth? Journal of Economic History , 74 (3), 651–693.
Diebolt, C., & Perrin, F. (2013). From stagnation to sustained growth: the role of female empowerment. American Economic Review , 103 (3), 545–549.
Doepke, M., & Kindermann, F. (2019). Bargaining over babies: Theory, evidence, and policy implications. American Economic Review , 109 (9), 3264–3306.
Doepke, M., & Tertilt, M. (2009). Women’s Liberation: What’s in It for Men? Quarterly Journal of Economics , 124 (4), 1541–1591.
Doepke, M., & Tertilt, M. (2016). Families in macroeconomics. In J. B. Taylor and H. Uhlig (eds.), Handbook of Macroeconomics , vol. 2, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 1789–1891.
Doepke, M., & Tertilt, M. (2019). Does female empowerment promote economic development? Journal of Economic Growth , 24 (4), 309–343.
Doepke, M., Tertilt, M., & Voena, A. (2012). The economics and politics of women’s rights. Annual Review of Economics , 4 (1), 339–372.
Doss, C. (2013). Intrahousehold bargaining and resource allocation in developing countries. The World Bank Research Observer , 28 (1), 52–78.
Du, Q., & Wei, S.-J. (2013). A theory of the competitive saving motive. Journal of International Economics , 91 (2), 275–289.
Duflo, E. (2003). Grandmothers and granddaughters: old-age pensions and intrahousehold allocation in South Africa. The World Bank Economic Review , 17 (1), 1–25.
Duflo, E. (2012). Women empowerment and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature , 50 (4), 1051–1079.
Dyble, M., Salali, G. D., Chaudhary, N., Page, A., Smith, D., Thompson, J., Vinicius, L., Mace, R., & Migliano, A. B. (2015). Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands. Science , 348 (6236), 796–798.
Echevarria, C., & Moe, K. S. (2000). On the need for gender in dynamic models. Feminist Economics , 6 (2), 77–96.
Edlund, L., & Lagerlöf, N.-P. (2006). Individual versus parental consent in marriage: implications for intra-household resource allocation and growth. American Economic Review , 96 (2), 304–307.
Edwards, J., & Ogilvie, S. (2018). Did the Black Death cause economic development by “inventing” fertility restriction? CESifo Working Papers 7016, Munich.
Erten, B., & Keskin, P. (2018). For better or for worse? Education and the prevalence of domestic violence in Turkey. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 10 (1), 64–105.
Esteve-Volart, B. (2009). Gender discrimination and growth: theory and evidence from India . Mimeo: York University.
Eswaran, M., & Malhotra, N. (2011). Domestic violence and women’s autonomy in developing countries: theory and evidence. Canadian Journal of Economics , 44 (4), 1222–1263.
Fine, C. (2017). Testosterone rex: Myths of sex, science, and society . New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.
Folbre, N. (1986). Hearts and spades: paradigms of household economics. World Development , 14 (2), 245–255.
Folbre, N. (1994). Who pays for the kids: gender and the structures of constraint . New York: Routledge.
Book Google Scholar
Folbre, N. (2020). Cooperation & conflict in the patriarchal labyrinth. Daedalus , 149 (1), 198–212.
Gaddis, I., & Klasen, S. (2014). Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation. Journal of Population Economics , 27 (3), 639–681.
Galor, O. (2005a). From stagnation to growth: unified growth theory. Handbook of Economic Growth , vol. 1, North-Holland: Elsevier, pp. 171–293.
Galor, O. (2005b). The demographic transition and the emergence of sustained economic growth. Journal of the European Economic Association , 3 (2-3), 494–504.
Galor, O., & Weil, D. N. (1996). The gender gap, fertility, and growth. American Economic Review , 86 (3), 374–387.
Goldin, C. (1995). The U-shaped female labor force function in economic development and economic history. In T. P. Schultz (ed.), Investment in Women’s Human Capital and Economic Development . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 61–90.
Gould, E. D., Moav, O., & Simhon, A. (2008). The mystery of monogamy. American Economic Review , 98 (1), 333–57.
Goussé, M., Jacquemet, N., & Robin, J.-M. (2017). Household labour supply and the marriage market in the UK, 1991-2008. Labour Economics , 46 , 131–149.
Greenwood, J., Guner, N., Kocharkov, G., & Santos, C. (2016). Technology and the changing family: a unified model of marriage, divorce, educational attainment, and married female labor-force participation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics , 8 (1), 1–41.
Greenwood, J., Guner, N., & Vandenbroucke, G. (2017). Family economics writ large. Journal of Economic Literature , 55 (4), 1346–1434.
Greenwood, J., Seshadri, A., & Yorukoglu, M. (2005). Engines of liberation. Review of Economic Studies , 72 (1), 109–133.
Grimm, M. (2003). Family and economic growth: a review. Mathematical Population Studies , 10 (3), 145–173.
Grossbard, A. (1976). An economic analysis of polygyny: The case of Maiduguri. Current Anthropology , 17 (4), 701–707.
Grossbard, S. (2010). How “Chicagoan” are Gary Becker’s Economic Models of Marriage? Journal of the History of Economic Thought , 32 (3), 377–395.
Grossbard, S. (2011). Independent individual decision-makers in household models and the New Home Economics. In J. A. Molina (ed.), Household Economic Behaviors . New York, NY: Springer, pp. 41–56.
Grossbard, S. (2015). The Marriage Motive: A Price Theory of Marriage. How Marriage Markets Affect Employment, Consumption, and Savings . New York, NY: Springer.
Grossbard, S. (2018). Marriage and Marriage Markets. In S. L. Averett, L. M. Argys and S. D. Hoffman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp. 55–74.
Grossbard, S., & Pereira, A. M. (2015). Savings, Marriage, and Work-in-Household. In S. Grossbard, The Marriage Motive . New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 191–209.
Grossbard-Shechtman, A. (1984). A theory of allocation of time in markets for labour and marriage. The Economic Journal , 94 (376), 863–882.
Grossbard-Shechtman, S. (2001). The new home economics at Colombia and Chicago. Feminist Economics , 7 (3), 103–130.
Guinnane, T. W. (2011). The historical fertility transition: a guide for economists. Journal of Economic Literature , 49 (3), 589–614.
Guler, B., Guvenen, F., & Violante, G. L. (2012). Joint-search theory: new opportunities and new frictions. Journal of Monetary Economics , 59 (4), 352–369.
Guner, N., Kaygusuz, R., & Ventura, G. (2012). Taxation and household labour supply. The Review of Economic Studies , 79 (3), 1113–1149.
Guvenen, F., & Rendall, M. (2015). Women’s emancipation through education: a macroeconomic analysis. Review of Economic Dynamics , 18 (4), 931–956.
Hajnal, J. (1965). European Marriage Patterns in Perspective. In D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (eds.), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography , 6 . London: Edward Arnold Ltd, pp. 101–143.
Hajnal, J. (1982). Two kinds of preindustrial household formation system. Population and Development Review , 8 (3), 449–494.
Hansen, C. W., Jensen, P. S., & Skovsgaard, C. V. (2015). Modern gender roles and agricultural history: the neolithic inheritance. Journal of Economic Growth , 20 (4), 365–404.
Hartman, M. S. (2004). The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hazan, M., & Zoabi, H. (2015). Sons or daughters? Sex preferences and the reversal of the gender educational gap. Journal of Demographic Economics , 81 (2), 179–201.
Heath, R., & Tan, X. (2020). Intrahousehold bargaining, female autonomy, and labor supply: theory and evidence from India. Journal of the European Economic Association , 18 (4), 1928–1968.
Hiller, V. (2014). Gender inequality, endogenous cultural norms, and economic development. Scandinavian Journal of Economics , 116 (2), 455–481.
Hsieh, C.-T., Hurst, E., Jones, C. I., & Klenow, P. J. (2019). The allocation of talent and US economic growth. Econometrica , 87 (5), 1439–1474.
Kabeer, N. (2016). Gender equality, economic growth, and women’s agency: the “endless variety” and “monotonous similarity” of patriarchal constraints. Feminist Economics , 22 (1), 295–321.
Kabeer, N., & Natali, L. (2013). Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Is there a Win-Win? IDS Working Papers 417. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.
Kimura, M., & Yasui, D. (2010). The Galor-Weil gender-gap model revisited: from home to market. Journal of Economic Growth , 15 , 323–351.
Klasen, S. (2018). The impact of gender inequality on economic performance in developing countries. Annual Review of Resource Economics , 10 , 279–298.
Klasen, S. (2020). From ‘MeToo’ to Boko Haram: a survey of levels and trends of gender inequality in the world. World Development , 128 , 104862.
Knowles, J. A. (2013). Why are married men working so much? An aggregate analysis of intra-household bargaining and labour supply. Review of Economic Studies , 80 (3), 1055–1085.
Lagerlöf, N.-P. (2003). Gender equality and long-run growth. Journal of Economic Growth , 8 , 403–426.
Lagerlöf, N.-P. (2005). Sex, equality, and growth. Canadian Journal of Economics , 38 (3), 807–831.
Lagerlöf, N.-P. (2010). Pacifying monogamy. Journal of Economic Growth , 15 (3), 235–262.
Lee, M. (2020). Allocation of Female Talent and Cross-Country Productivity Differences . Mimeo: UC San Diego.
Lucas, R. E. (1988). On the mechanics of economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics , 22 (1), 3–42.
Lundberg, S. J., Pollak, R. A., & Wales, T. J. (1997). Do husbands and wives pool their resources? Evidence from the United Kingdom child benefit. Journal of Human Resources , 32 (3), 463–480.
Martineau, H. (1837). Society in America , vol. 3. London: Saunders & Otley.
Matsumoto, S. (2014). Spouses’ time allocation to pro-environmental activities: Who is saving the environment at home? Review of Economics of the Household , 12 (1), 159–176.
Meier, V., & Rainer, H. (2015). Pigou meets Ramsey: gender-based taxation with non-cooperative couples. European Economic Review , 77 , 28–46.
Mulder, M. B., & Rauch, K. L. (2009). Sexual conflict in humans: variations and solutions. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews , 18 (5), 201–214.
Penn, D. J., & Smith, K. R. (2007). Differential fitness costs of reproduction between the sexes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 104 (2), 553–558.
Prettner, K., & Strulik, H. (2017). Gender equity and the escape from poverty. Oxford Economic Papers , 69 (1), 55–74.
Rees, R., & Riezman, R. (2012). Globalization, gender, and growth. Review of Income and Wealth , 58 (1), 107–117.
Reher, D. S. (2004). The demographic transition revisited as a global process. Population, Space and Place , 10 (1), 19–41.
Roy, A. D. (1951). Some thoughts on the distribution of earnings. Oxford Economic Papers , 3 (2), 135–146.
Ruggles, S. (2009). Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective. Population and Development Review , 35 (2), 249–273.
Seguino, S. (2010). Gender, distribution, and balance of payments constrained growth in developing countries. Review of Political Economy , 22 (3), 373–404.
Seguino, S. (2013). From micro-level gender relations to the macro economy and back again. In D. M. Figart and T. L. Warnecke (eds.), Handbook of Research on Gender and Economic Life . Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 325–344.
Seguino, S. (2020). Engendering macroeconomic theory and policy. Feminist Economics , 26 , 27–61.
Sen, A. (1989). Cooperation, inequality, and the family. Population and Development Review , 15 , 61–76.
Sinha, N., Raju, D., & Morrison, A. (2007). Gender equality, poverty and economic growth . World Bank Policy Research Paper 4349. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Stotsky, J. G. (2006). Gender and its relevance to macroeconomic policy: a survey . IMF Working Paper 06/233. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund.
Strulik, H. (2019). Desire and development. Macroeconomic Dynamics , 23 (7), 2717–2747.
Tejani, S., & Milberg, W. (2016). Global defeminization? Industrial upgrading and manufacturing employment in developing countries. Feminist Economics , 22 (2), 24–54.
Tertilt, M. (2005). Polygyny, fertility, and savings. Journal of Political Economy , 113 (6), 1341–1371.
Tertilt, M. (2006). Polygyny, women’s rights, and development. Journal of the European Economic Association , 4 , 523–530.
Tuccio, M., & Wahba, J. (2018). Return migration and the transfer of gender norms: evidence from the Middle East. Journal of Comparative Economics , 46 (4), 1006–1029.
Voigtländer, N., & Voth, H.-J. (2013). How the West “invented” fertility restriction. American Economic Review , 103 (6), 2227–2264.
von Rueden, C. R., & Jaeggi, A. V. (2016). Men’s status and reproductive success in 33 nonindustrial societies: effects of subsistence, marriage system and reproductive strategy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 113 (39), 10824–10829.
Walther, S. (2017). Moral hazard in marriage: the use of domestic labor as an incentive device. Review of Economics of the Household , 15 (2), 357–382.
Wong, H.-P. C. (2016). Credible commitments and marriage: when the homemaker gets her share at divorce. Journal of Demographic Economics , 82 (3), 241–279.
World Bank (2001). Engendering Development Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
World Bank (2011). World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development . Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Zhang, J., Zhang, J., & Li, T. (1999). Gender bias and economic development in an endogenous growth model. Journal of Development Economics , 59 (2), 497–525.
Download references
Acknowledgements
We thank the Editor, Shoshana Grossbard, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) initiative, a multi-funder partnership between the UK’s Department for International Development, the Hewlett Foundation and the International Development Research Centre. All views expressed here and remaining errors are our own. Manuel dedicates this article to Stephan Klasen, in loving memory.
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Author information
Authors and affiliations.
Department of Economics, University of Goettingen, Platz der Goettinger Sieben 3, 37073, Goettingen, Germany
Manuel Santos Silva & Stephan Klasen
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Manuel Santos Silva .
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Santos Silva, M., Klasen, S. Gender inequality as a barrier to economic growth: a review of the theoretical literature. Rev Econ Household 19 , 581–614 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-020-09535-6
Download citation
Received : 27 May 2019
Accepted : 07 December 2020
Published : 15 January 2021
Issue Date : September 2021
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-020-09535-6
Share this article
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
- Gender equality
- Economic growth
- Human capital
- Comparative development
JEL classification
- Find a journal
- Publish with us
- Track your research
- Previous Article
This paper identifies five key issues that are important for the continued efforts to tackle gender inequality: (i) gender inequality needs to be distinguished from gender gaps. Not all gender gaps necessarily reflect gender inequality as some gender gaps are not driven by the lack of equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities bywomen and girls, and this has important implications on policy designs to address gender inequity. However, the literature has paid little attention to this issue, often using gender inequality and gender gaps interchangeably; (ii) the evolving focus of gender inequality suggests there is still a long way to go to fully address gender inequality. Particularly gender inequality is taking more subtle and implicit forms, though the social and economic benefits from addressing the remaininggender inequality is still likely to be substantial; (iii) addressing gender inequality benefits everyone, not just women. Thus, the entire society should work together, even for each individual’s own interest; (iv) both general policies and targeted gender policies can help address gender inequality.However, as gender inequality becomes more subtle and implicit, targeted gender policies will likely need to play an increasing role, which also makes separating gender inequality from gender gaps all that more important; and (v) addressing gender inequality does not need to start with policies targeted at its root causes, but needs to end with eliminating the root causes. Only then, any remaining gender gaps would only reflect preference and comparative advantage between men and women. The paper concludes by discussing gaps in the literature and policy challenges going forward.
- I. Introduction
Gender gaps have been observed in a broad range of social and economic dimensions and well-documented in the literature. Here gender gaps refer to the observed differences between men and women or between boys and girls in the relevant indicators. For example:
Gender gaps in nutritional intake have been often reported as a result of intra household allocation of resources in South Asia, with also evidence in sub-Sahara Africa ( Pal, 1999 ; World Bank, 2006 ; Hadley and others, 2007 ; Dasgupta, 2016 ; Hafeez and Quintana-Domeque, 2018 ).
In developing countries, while gender gaps in school enrollment have been narrowing rapidly over the recent decades, particularly for preprimary, primary and secondary education, considerable gaps still remain for tertiary education and there are large variations across countries ( Demery and Gaddis, 2009 ; Duflo, 2012 ; Austen and others, 2013 ; Evans and others, 2021 ). Furthermore, significant differences exist in the field of study between male and female students, likely in nearly all countries but with most evidence from advanced economies ( OECD, 2017 ; Cook and others, 2021 ).
Empirical studies, based on subjective self-reporting of unmet healthcare needs, find that women are more likely to report healthcare access related issues (Socías and others, 2016; Daher and others, 2021 ).
Access to formal financial services is generally lower for women than for men. Over time, access to financial services has increased worldwide, but significant gaps remain by gender, and both saving and borrowing services are more accessible to men than to women ( Demirgüç-Kunt and others, 2015 ; Sahay and others, 2020 ).
Differences between male and female labor force participation rates have narrowed, but the gaps remain high in most of the world, with large variations across regions and countries ( Field and others, 2010 ; Alesina and others, 2013 ; Bernhardt and others, 2018 ; Jayachandran, 2021 ). Even when women participate in the labor market, they tend to be overrepresented in certain sectors, often characterized by low status and low pay ( OECD, 2012 ; ILO, 2012 ). Particularly, women are strongly under-represented in corporate managerial positions and political leadership ( Profeta and others, 2014 ; OECD, 2017 ). Even for the same jobs and with similar qualifications, women tend to be paid less ( OECD, 2012 ; OECD, 2017 ; NSF, 2021 ).
Women are subject to more violence at home, in commuting, and at work ( Jayachandran, 2021 ). In addition, legal barriers to women’s rights and opportunities remain pervasive. Women on average have only three-quarters of the legal protections given to men during their working life, ranging from bans on entering some jobs to a lack of equal pay or freedom from sexual harassment ( World Bank, 2021 ).
Many research and policy work often equates gender gaps with gender inequality without clearly defining them. According to UN Women ,
“ Equality between women and men (gender equality) refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men. ”
This suggests that not all gender gaps necessarily reflect gender inequality, as defined above. This has important policy implications, that is, policies should focus on eliminating gender inequality, not on achieving an equal gender share or fully closing all gender gaps.
The urgency to address gender inequality stems from its substantial social and economic consequences. First and foremost, gender inequality is a matter of fairness and concerning the wellbeing of women. 1 For example, some gender inequality reflects direct harmful actions against women —such as violence, harassment, and the resulting fear—or restrictions on women’s behaviors, legal or social. More generally, as gender inequality is the result of gender bias and social norms that restrict women’s rights and opportunities, it leads to lower welfare for women. Furthermore, as women account for half of the population, gender inequality means potentially a substantial misallocation of human capital, including both investment in women and utilization of women talent. A growing body of literature shows that reducing gender inequality can help foster better household decision-making, improve firm/institution performance, and generate substantial macroeconomic benefits, through boosting productivity and economic growth, strengthening macroeconomic and financial stability, and lowering income inequality ( Kochhar and others, 2017 ; Sahay and others, 2018 ; Cihák and Sahay, 2020 ; Gonzales and others, 2015 b).
There is clear evidence that gender inequality narrows as countries develop and new technologies, such as labor-saving household appliances, are being developed and widely adopted ( Jayachandran, 2015 ; Tewari and Wang, 2021 ). However, the interrelationships between women empowerment and economic development are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and because of the social and economic significance of gender inequality, policy actions are needed to speed up the process ( Duflo, 2012 ). For example, around 82 percent of 40-year-old inventors are men, and while this gender gap in innovation is shrinking gradually, at the current rate of convergence, it will take another 118 years to reach gender parity ( Bell and others, 2019 ).
One of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. 2 Many efforts have been taken over the past decades, particularly after the establishment of the SDGs in 2015, to tackle gender inequality. For example, public investment in education has nearly erased the gender gaps in primary and secondary school enrollment; legislative reforms have led to reductions in discrimination; countries have enacted reforms to boost women’s economic opportunities; countries have enacted laws or introduced policies to end child and early marriage, provide paternity and parental leave, reduce the gender wage gap, address violence against women including sexual harassment, and promote women in leadership ( World Bank, 2021 ; OECD, 2014 ; OECD, 2017 ). 3
While globally important progress has been made in some areas (e.g., enrollment in primary and secondary education), substantial gender inequality still remains in many other areas (e.g., enrollment in tertiary education, labor force participation, wages, and leadership positions). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected women, further exacerbating pre-existing gender inequality, for example, as women shouldered more burden in taking care of young children when schools were closed ( Albanesi and Kim, 2021 ; Bluedorn and others 2021 ; Fabrizio and others, 2021 ; WEF, 2021 ).
Thus, much work still lies ahead to achieve gender equality, with some forms of gender inequality still existing in nearly all countries and often in relation to the SDGs. As countries seek to step up their efforts to address gender inequality, many questions remain for policymakers. This includes: (i) what are the main forms of gender inequality for countries at different stages of development? (ii) what are the economic benefits from continued efforts to reduce gender inequality, are the benefits diminishing as some gender inequality is being eliminated, and who would benefit from lower gender inequality? (iii) What policies are most effective in addressing gender inequality, what are the tradeoffs of adopting different types of policies, and are some of the policies more about ticking a box rather than making a real difference? And (iv) what are the roles of different types of policies at eliminating gender inequality, given the root causes of gender inequality is often social and cultural?
The literature on the economic impacts of gender inequality and the policies to address gender inequality has been growing rapidly over the recent decades. In addition, many countries have adopted policies to tackle gender inequality for many years, and there is a lot to learn from their experiences. This paper intends to draw on the vast literature—which tends to focus on specific aspects of gender inequality and policies —and the diverse country experiences to provide a holistic view of gender inequality and shed light on some of the key policy questions that can help countries approach gender issues in a more systematic manner. More specifically, the paper identifies five key lessons:
Gender inequality versus gender gaps . Gender inequality differs from gender gaps in important ways, and this has important policy implications. However, the literature often equates gender inequality with gender gaps and use them interchangeably. This paper defines gender gaps as the observed differences between men and women or between boys and girls in the various social and economic indicators, and gender inequality refers to the part of gender gaps that are driven by gender bias and unequal gender rights and opportunities. The rest of the gaps are driven by preference/comparative advantage between men and women. Therefore, policies should be targeted at reducing gender inequality, which does not necessarily mean to fully close all gender gaps.
The evolving focus of gender inequality . Gender inequality extends to nearly every dimension of social and economic activities. The policy focus often varies by country, depending on their circumstances and level of development. There appears to be a shift toward more subtle and implicit forms of gender inequality, as gender reforms deepen, for example, from school enrollment to quality of education and field of study and from labor force participation to distribution of employment across sector s and pay. However, this does not mean that the social and economic impacts of the remaining gender inequality are smaller. In fact, the literature has shown that they could have substantial economic consequences. Furthermore, for countries that are still at the early stage of addressing gender inequality, this suggests that they should learn from the experiences of other countries, and it may be more effective and efficient to tackle different forms of gender inequality simultaneously. For example, countries could consider policy measures to simultaneously address gender inequality in tertiary enrollment and field of study, rather than tackling gender imbalances in field of study only after gender inequality in enrollment is eliminated.
The benefits of reducing gender inequality go beyond women . Gender equality may be seen by some as a zero-sum game, from an economic point of view. Less unpaid work at home and higher labor force participation by women would mean more unpaid work at home and lower labor force participation for men. Better representation at leadership positions by women would mean less for men. It is, however, important to recognize that better gender equality benefits not just women, but it enlarges the economic pie and benefits everyone, through several potential channels: (i) women tend to make better decisions regarding children; (ii) gender-mixed teams are more productive; and (iii) lower gender inequality can bring important macroeconomic benefits to everyone, with stronger economic growth and financial stability, more jobs, and less income inequality.
Policies and their designs matter . Large variations in gender gaps among countries with a similar level of development and in the same region suggest that policy interventions and their designs can make a difference, and this is further illustrated with an econometric analysis of gender laws and regulations and selected gender gaps. In addition, the literature provides strong evidence that a broad range of policy reforms can help reduce gender inequality and ultimately improve social and economic outcomes. However, not all policy interventions work under all circumstances, and policy tradeoffs are often involved. The paper compares general policies and targeted gender policies and discusses some considerations in their designs and implementation.
Policy actions do not have to start with those targeted at the root causes . While gender inequality shows many symptoms, the root causes are typically traced to gender bias and social norms. Ideally, reforms should be directly targeted at the root causes. However, this appears difficult with limited policy options (e.g., educational programs, information campaign, and legal reforms to ensure women’s rights and opportunities), and it takes time to change people’s views and beliefs. Instead, policies have focused on reducing gender inequality in different areas such as education, labor market, and financial access. Not only do these policies have immediate impacts on gender inequality, but they could also help change social norms. While policies may not need to start with the root causes of gender inequality, fully eliminating gender inequality requires eventually addressing the root causes.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II to VI in turn take on the five key lessons discussed above. Section VII concludes with a discussion on the gaps in the literature and on some considerations in addressing gender inequality going forward.
- II. Gender gaps and gender inequality: definitions and drivers
Gender gaps are defined here as the observed differences between men and women or between boys and girls in the various social and economic indicators. Gender gaps can be considered to consist of two components, one that is caused by unequal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities for women and girls 4 and the other that is driven by women’s preference 5 or comparative advantage between men and women. 6 The former is what is defined in this paper as gender inequality, and the latter is the result of efficient allocation of human capital. For example, for school enrollment in primary and secondary education, it would be expected that most, if not all, of the gender gaps reflect gender inequality. For tertiary education in advanced economies, female enrollment rate is about 25 percent higher than that of male ( Figure 1 ). This gap, however, would not be expected to reflect gender inequality, that is, boys are facing less rights and opportunities. Instead, this likely reflects preference and choices (e.g., girls have comparative advantage in brain-based sectors and the returns to education are higher in such sectors ( Pitt and others, 2012 )). On the other hand, males represent a very small share of employment in registered nurses, some of which may indeed reflect social norms that hinder male’s entry into this profession. 7
Distinguishing between gender gaps and gender inequality has important policy implications. For the part of gender gaps that reflect preference/comparative advantage between men and women, there would be no need for policy intervention as there is no welfare loss from such gaps. For example, in many advanced economies where female tertiary enrollment rate is higher than that of male, there appears no need for policy interventions to further increase male tertiary enrollment rate to close the gap. On the other hand, there is a clear need to address gender inequality as it hurts women’s wellbeing, leads to distortions, and reduces overall social welfare. In many developing economies where female tertiary enrollment rate is lower than that of male due to gender bias, if it is left unaddressed, there would be an underutilization of women’s talent. Recognizing the difficulties often in separating gender inequality from gender gaps, Section V discusses some implications on policy designs.
Better understanding the drivers of gender inequality and gender gaps helps formulate effective policies. Both the theoretical and empirical literature offers evidence on the main drivers of gender gaps and gender inequality, particularly in the context of economic development:
Comparative advantage improves for women as countries develop. Women have a comparative advantage in mentally intensive tasks while men in physical intensive tasks; the process of development entails a growing capital stock and thus reduces the female-male wage gap, which in turn causes female labor force participation to increase ( Galor and Weil, 1996 ). 8 As brain-based sectors grow, if the returns to education are higher in brain-based than in brawn-based occupations, girls’ schooling could overtake that of boys ( Pitt and others, 2012 ). Gender differences in labor productivity as a driver of gender gaps are also supported by empirical evidence ( Qian, 2008 ; Alesina and others, 2013 ; Carranza; 2014 ). This strand of literature highlights the mechanism through which gender gaps narrow as countries develop, by largely reducing the part of gender gaps that reflect preference/comparative advantage between men and women.
Economic development is associated with better physical infrastructure and more advanced technology, making home production more efficient and less labor intensive. Because women perform the lion’s share of household chores, advances in home production technologies mainly free up women’s time and lead to an increase in female labor force participation ( Greenwood and others, 2005 ; Dinkelman, 2011 ; Tewari and Wang, 2021 ). As women performing much home production likely reflects both preference/comparative advantage between men and women and gender bias/social norms, better physical infrastructure and more advanced technology help reduce both components of gender gaps. 9
Gender bias and cultural barriers to women’s rights and opportunities are major drivers of gender gaps ( Jayachandran, 2015 ; Jayachandran, 2021 ; Alesina and others, 2013 ; Bernhardt and others, 2018 ). For example, Fernandez and Fogli (2009) show that whether a female second-generation immigrant in the United States works is strongly influenced by the female employment and fertility norms in her ancestral homeland. One form of barriers is the lack of basic legal rights, preventing women from joining the formal labor market or becoming entrepreneurs in many countries. Women are sometimes legally restricted from heading a household, pursuing a profession, or owning or inheriting assets. Such legal restrictions significantly hamper female labor force participation and pose a drag on female entrepreneurship (World Bank, 2015). Limiting gender bias and cultural barriers helps close gender gaps through reducing gender inequality.
Figure 1 illustrates conceptually the interrelationship between gender gaps, gender inequality, their drivers, and policy interventions to address them:
The root causes of gender inequality are gender bias and social norms that restrict women’s rights and opportunities, which, together with preference /comparative advantage between men and women, are the root drivers of gender gaps.
Gender bias/social norms and preference/comparative advantage between men and women interact with other factors (e.g., development, technological advances, and public policies) in determining gender gaps and gender inequality in different areas such as education, labor market and financial access. In other words, the root causes of gender inequality are gender bias and social norms; gender inequality in different areas are just symptoms of the root causes. This means that while some policies can help reduce gender inequality in some of these areas, fully addressing gender inequality would require the elimination of the root causes, gender bias/social norms.
As discussed above, development, technological advances, and public policies can affect gender bias/social norms and preference/comparative advantage between men and women.
Furthermore, interventions to lower gender inequality in different areas could also in turn alter gender bias/social norms. For example, as women become more educated and more women participate in the labor market, attitude toward women’s education and work may start to shift (see section VI for additional discussions).
Gender inequality, gender gaps and their causes
Citation: IMF Working Papers 2022, 232; 10.5089/9798400224843.001.A001
- Download Figure
- Download figure as PowerPoint slide
III. The evolving focus of gender inequality: still a long way to go
Progress on gender equality has continually been made and differs substantially by country, particularly in relation to their stage of development. Consequently, the focus of gender inequality also varies by country and continue to evolve as some gender gaps are closed while others emerge and attract the attention of the public and policymakers. In general, the focus of gender inequality is shifting from gender gaps that are more explicit and visible to the public and policymakers to those that are more subtle and implicit. Given that gender inequality exists in broad areas, this section focuses on education, labor market, financial access, and legal barriers, as examples.
- A. Education
The focus of gender inequality in education appears to be shifting from access to education (e.g., school enrollment) to quality of education and field of study.
For emerging and developing economies as a group, the gender gaps in access to preprimary, primary and secondary education are being closed, though some countries are still lagging behind; however, there are still gaps for tertiary education ( Appendix Figure 1a-1d ). As a result, many emerging and developing economies are still trying to achieve gender equality in access to education, particularly for tertiary education ( Demery and Gaddis, 2009 ; Duflo, 2012 ; Austen and others, 2013 ; Evans and others, 2021 ).
Advanced economies, instead, have been focusing on gender equality in quality of education, including gender distribution by field of study, as they have largely achieved gender equality in access to preprimary, primary and secondary education decades ago and to tertiary education since mid-2000s. For example, across the OECD, boys outperformed girls in mathematics by an average of eight points in 2015 —equivalent to around one-fifth of a year of schooling—and by 5 points in 2018; on the other hand, girls significantly outperform boys in reading in all countries and economies that participated in PISA 2018 ( OECD, 2017 ; OECD, 2019 ).
One area that has received increasing attention is the large differences in field of study between boys and girls, with girls particularly underrepresented in the fields of science and engineering and overrepresented in social science related fields ( Appendix Figure 2 ). The distributions are remarkably similar between more developed economies and the rest of the world, indicating that this is an issue common for all economies ( Appendix Figure 2a shows the global distribution and Appendix Figure 2b shows the distribution for OECD countries during a similar period). For example, college-educated women in the United States have sorted into majors that systematically lower their potential wages relative to men; to what extent women choose a major in anticipation of future family demands, based on individual preferences, under the burden of restrictive social norms, or for any other reason remains an unanswered question ( Sloane and others, 2021 ).
Women appear to be particularly under-represented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In the United State, in 1970, only 9 percent of all doctorates in the science and engineering fields, including social sciences, were awarded to women; by 2018, that share was nearly 47 percent. A closer look indicates that a large part of this is driven by high shares of women in psychology and social sciences. Despite the progress, persistent barriers to women pursuing degrees in STEM fields abound (Cook and others, 20 21).
- B. Labor market
When it comes to the labor market, while efforts are continued to reduce gender inequality in labor force participation, narrow the gender wage gap, and boost the representation of women in political leadership, increasing attention is given to the large gaps in the sectoral distribution of female and male employment, women’s role in innovation, and women’s share in corporate management positions.
The differences between male and female labor force participation rates remain high, although the gaps have been narrowing over the past decades ( Appendix Figure 3a ). The gaps are smaller and also closing more rapidly in advanced economies. The gender gaps in emerging economies, in fact, have widened over the past two decade, and this is almost entirely driven by the declining female labor force participation in China and India. In China, the likely underlying factors include structural changes in the Chinese economy where households can afford to have only one wage earner, reduction in state childcare support, and rising gender-biased hiring practices; in India, the decline may reflect the declining employment in agriculture, safety concerns and the lack of transportation infrastructure for women to join the urban labor force , and the U-shaped relationship between education and labor force participation as education level improves for women ( Li, 2019 ; Zhang and Huang, 2020 ; Gupta and Bhamoriya, 2020 ; Hare, 2016 ). Excluding China and India, the gender gaps in labor force participation rates in emerging economies are still larger than those in developing economies, which partially reflects the large gaps in emerging MENAP countries. Low labor force participation, particularly for women, has been a major policy concern for many advanced economies and some emerging economies, as they face an aging population. As women in these economies tend to be well educated, it would be a considerable waste if they do not fully engage in economic activities.
There are also large gaps in the sectoral distribution of female and male employment, likely reflecting the differences in field of study. In advanced economies, women are less likely to work in the agriculture and industry sectors and more likely to work in the service sector; but there is a shift in the trend around 2018 from the service sector to the industry sector. Emerging and developing economies share broadly similarly trends over the past decade or so: relatively larger shares of women work in the agriculture sector; and women are moving rapidly from the agriculture and industry sectors to the service sector ( Appendix Figure 3b-3d ). In OECD countries, female employment in the service sector accounts for 80 percent of employed women, compared with 60 percent for men. Within this sector, women fill a disproportionately high share of occupations in health and community services, followed by education ( OECD, 2012 ). ILO (2012) finds that women are overrepresented in sectors characterized by low status and low pay.
Gender gaps in occupations within the science and engineering (S&E) field have been a particular concern. In the United States, by 2019 women made up 29 percent of the S&E workers, but female scientists and engineers are more likely to work in non-S&E occupations than in S&E occupations ( Cook and others, 2021 ). In 2019, 70 percent of psychologists were women, but just 14 percent of engineers and 29 percent of the workforce in computer and mathematical sciences were women. Women often start their careers working in the innovation economy, but then leave for various reasons, including the need to provide childcare, the lack of family-leave policies, and poor workplace climate ( Cook and others, 2021 ).
Increasing attention is also paid to women’s role in innovation, widely viewed as a central driver of productivity and economic growth. Gender inequality persists at every state of innovation, from education and training, to the practice of invention, and to the commercialization of those inventions ( Cook, 2019 ; Cook and others, 2021 ). Women hold only 5.5 percent of commercialized patents and represent just 10 percent of US patent inventors and only 15 percent of inventors in the life sciences. This in part reflects women’s underrepresentation in jobs involving development and design ( Hunt and others, 2013 ). In addition, discriminatory practice leads to inequality in patenting outcomes, even without discriminatory laws. Patent applications by women inventors were found to be more likely to be rejected than those of men, and those rejections were less likely to be appealed by the applicant teams. Conditional on being granted, patent applications by women inventors had a smaller fraction of their claims allowed, on average, than did applications by men. Further, those claims allowed had more words added during prosecution, thus reducing their scope and value. The granted patents of women inventors also received fewer citations than those of men and were less likely to be maintained by their assignees ( Cook and Kongcharoen, 2010 ; Jensen and others, 2018 ).
What has received particular attention is the underrepresentation of women in politics and corporate management positions. Representation of women in politics has improved substantially across all economies, with the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments about doubled over the past two decades, likely due to the high public visibility; the gender gap, however, remains large ( Appendix Figure 4a ). For senior and middle management positions, there has been, however, little progress over the past two decades ( Appendix Figure 4b ). It appears that the success in political leadership has not been trickled down to the corporate world, highlighting the challenges to make changes in less visible areas. Across the 27 EU countries, only 25 percent of business owners with employees are women, and the low share of women had only marginally grown over 2000-2010 in EU27, Canada and United States ( OECD, 2014 ). A number of countries have enacted legislation requiring a set quota of female representation on corporate boards , the effectiveness and efficacy of such policy, however, has been intensely debated ( Kuzmina and Melentyeva, 2021 ; Greene and others, 2020 ; Lleras-Muney and others, 2019 ; Levi and others, 2014 ; Gregory-Smith and others, 2014 ; Strøm and others, 2014 ).
The gender wage gap has declined in most countries where data are available over the past two decades. Significant gap, however, still persist, averaging around 11 percent, and the gap varies substantially across countries ( Appendix Figure 5 ). While a large part of the gender gap in earnings can be explained by women working fewer hours in the labor market than men, women’s work force interruptions, gender differences in occupations and industries, a significant part of the gender pay gap remain unexplained, suggesting that factors such as discrimination and gender differences in psychological attributes and noncognitive skills are also important contributors to the gender pay gap ( OECD, 2017 ; Blau and Kahn, 2017 ). For example, using a personnel dataset from a large Chinese company, Chen and others (2021a) find that the gender wage gap is small in the early stages of careers and becomes increasingly evident when female employees get married and have children. Whereas the short-term peak around childbirth can be explained by women’ reduced working hours, the long-term trend is caused by women’s concentration in lower-level jobs.
- C. Financial access and legal barriers
More attention is gradually drawing to access to credit by female entrepreneurs, as to financial access by females as individuals.
On account ownership at a financial institution/with a mobile-money-service provider, advanced economies have largely closed the gender gap; emerging economies have been making steady progress, with the gap narrowing from 23 percent in 2011 to 7 percent in 2021; little progress, however, has been seen in low-income developing countries over the last decades, with the gap staying at around 27 percent ( Appendix Figure 6a ).
The evidence on whether fintech can help close gender gaps in financial access, particularly in developing and emerging economies, still appears limited. Sahay and others (2020) find that gender gaps are lower on average in digital financial inclusion than in traditional financial inclusion, but there are significant variations across and within geographical regions. Chen and others (2021b) find a large fintech gender gap: while 29 percent of men use fintech products and services, only 21 percent of women do. Various factors contribute to the gender gap in fintech, including financial and digital literacy and socio-culture factors, suggesting that fintech by itself may only have limited impacts in reducing gender inequality in financial access, and policies to address more fundamental drivers of gender inequality are essential ( Khera and others, 2022 ; Chen and others, 2021b ).
On entrepreneurship financing, a significant gender gap still exists, even in advanced economies. Women are less likely than men to report that they can access the financing needed to start a business in all countries except for Mexico and the United States, with an average gap of eight percentage points in OECD countries ( Appendix Figure 6c ).
On legal barriers to gender equality, substantial progress has been made in all country groups, but effective implementation of the enacted laws and regulations remain a challenge in some countries. According to the Women, Business and Law Index, advanced economies have removed almost all the legal barriers to gender equality; significant gaps, however, still exist in emerging and developing economies ( Appendix Figure 6b ). 10 The impact of adopting gender equality legislation, however, would be limited if they are not fully implemented and enforced. For example, there is evidence from Ghana that reforms to inheritance laws led to few positive changes in terms of women’s inheritance ( Gedzi, 2012 ); a positive legal change in Pakistan has not allowed women to claim their entitled inheritances because of factors such as lack of education, patriarchal behaviors, and forced marriages ( Ahmad and others, 2016 ). Furthermore, cultural and economic factors may pose challenges to women exerting their rights, as in the case of reforming gendered land ownership laws in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda ( Djurfeldt, 2020 ).
- D. Policy considerations
The literature suggests that there is still a long way to go to achieve gender equality for most economies:
Gender inequality remains large. While advanced economies have largely closed gender gaps in access to education and individual access to financial services, and removed legal barriers to gender equality, gender gaps in leadership positions, labor force participation, and pay remain sizable. Furthermore, more subtle gender gaps still persistent, such as in quality of education including field of study, sectoral distribution of employment, entrepreneurship financing, and innovation. 11 Emerging and developing economies faces additional challenges to achieve equality in access to tertiary education, individual access to financial services, and legal rights.
Closing the remaining gender inequality will likely be more challenging, as countries move to address gender inequality that is more implicit and subtle. This is because such inequality may be less visible to the public and thus may face less social pressures; with the difficulties in distinguishing preference/comparative advantage between men and women from gender bias/cultural barriers for such inequality, effective and efficient policies may be lacking; and addressing such inequality may require changing people’s mindset, which tends to be more difficult.
The social and economic impact of further reducing gender inequality is likely substantial. The more implicit and subtle nature of gender inequality does not necessarily mean less social and economic benefits from removing such forms of inequality. For example, in the case of United States, 94 percent of doctors and lawyers were white men in 1960; by 2010, the fraction was just 62 percent; similar changes in other high-skilled occupations have occurred throughout the U.S. economy during the last 50 years; given that the innate talent for these professions is unlikely to have changed differently across groups, the change in the occupational distribution since 1960 suggests that a substantial pool of innately talented women and black men in 1960 were not pursuing their comparative advantage ; it is estimated that between 20 and 40 percent of growth in aggregate market output per person during the period can be explained by the improved allocation of talent ( Hsieh and others, 2019 ). In a study of PhDs, GDP per capita could be 0.6 to 4.4 percent higher if women and African Americans were able to participate more fully in the innovation economy ( Cook and Yang, 2018 ).
One potential lesson, particular for emerging and developing economies, is that in addressing gender inequality, it may be more effective and efficient for policy designs to consider the whole spectrum of gender inequality, including both the highly visible ones and the more implicit and subtle ones. For example, in closing the gender gap in access to tertiary education, countries should also be mindful about the gender differences in field of study and actively help remove any barriers that may hinder the ability of female students in pursuing STEM fields. Another example would be to pay full attention to both the adoption and the implementation of gender equality laws.
- IV. The benefits of reducing gender inequality go beyond women
The literature has documented broad social and economic benefits from lowering gender inequality, including the increasing emphasis on its macroeconomic effects ( Kolovich and others, 2020 ). Reducing gender inequality affects not only women, but everyone.
First and foremost, women benefit from lower gender inequality. This includes, for example, better career development, higher pay, and less violence, less discrimination and more equal rights, through improvements in human capital development, job opportunities including in leadership positions and as entrepreneurs, access to finance, and legal and regulatory environment.
Second, children benefit from lower gender inequality and women’s empowerment. Women’s choices appear to emphasize child welfare more than those of men, and children seem to be better off when their mothers control relatively more of their family’s resources. For example, Miller (2008) presents evidence on how suffrage rights for American women helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution, with child mortality declining by 8–15 percent (or 20,000 annual child deaths nationwide), through large increases in local public health spending. Leight and Liu (2020) document that more-educated mothers appear to compensate for differences between their children, investing more in children who exhibit greater noncognitive deficits, while no such effect is found for men. Pitt and others (2003) find that women’s access to credit has a large and statistically significant impact on two of three measures of the child health, but no such effect is found for men.
Third, reducing gender inequality could potentially help increase the productivity of teams and improve the performance of firms and other institutions. This is primarily through the diversity channel, in the sense that mixed-gender teams are more productive and creative and tend to make better decisions ( Rock and Grant, 2016 ; Ozgen, 2021 ). Cook and Kongcharoen (2010) find that all-male and all-female patent teams commercialize their patents less than mixed-gender patent teams, with a similar finding from Østergaard and others (2011 ). Herring (2009) finds that gender diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, and greater relative profits. A number of studies find that gender quotas at corporate board are associated with improvements in firm performances, though there is still no consensus in the literature ( Strøm and others, 2014 ; Levi and others, 2014 ; Kuzmina and Melentyeva, 2021 ; Owen and Temesvary, 2018 ; Green and others, 2020 ). 12
Fourth, lower gender inequality can bring important macroeconomic benefits to everyone, with stronger economic growth and financial stability, more jobs, and less income inequality ( Kochhar and others, 2017 ; Sahay and others, 2015; Sahay and others, 2018 ; Cihak and Sahay, 2020 ).
Better matching female talent to human capital development and employment, including as corporate and political leaders and entrepreneurs, can substantially boost economic growth and strengthen economic and financial stability. For example, higher female labor force participation can substantially boost economic growth ( Kochhar and others, 2017 ; Kolovich and others, 2020 ). As discussed earlier, between 20 to 40 percent of growth in aggregate market output per person between 1960 and 2010 in the United States can be explained by improved allocation of talent ( Hsieh and others, 2019 ). Innovation is widely viewed as a central driver of productivity growth and output, and gender inequality hinders innovation at every state of the process, particularly as a growing literature is showing better outcomes of more diverse and mixed-gender teams ( Rock and Grant 2016 ; Cook, 2019 ; Cook and others, 2021 ). The literature also finds positive association between financial inclusion and economic growth, and reducing gender inequality in financial access, including through fintech, can thus help increase economic growth, particularly in countries with low levels of financial inclusion (Sahay and others, 2015; Sahay and others, 2020 ). There is also evidence that female leadership, including as financial regulators, is associated with financial and political stability ( Sahay and others, 2018 ; Caprioli, 2005 ).
Reducing gender inequality could also help lower income inequality and, in turn, improve social stability and economic growth ( Gonzales and others, 2015b ). Gender wage gaps directly contribute to income inequality. Conversely, policies to address gender inequality benefit females in low-income households the most, also reducing income inequality. For example, reducing gender gaps in school enrollment means that girls from poor households are more likely to receive education , thereby increasing their lifetime earnings potential ( Demery and Gaddis, 2009 ). In addition, financial inclusion of women is found to have a strong link to lower income inequality; this is because, while financial inclusion benefits everybody, the gains for women are quantitatively larger (Aslan and others, 2017; Cihák and Sahay, 2020 ).
V. Policies and their designs matter: general versus targeted policies
There is strong evidence from the literature that government policies and their designs matter for gender gaps and gender inequality. The key question, however, is how government policies can be designed to achieve gender equality while minimizing their efficiency cost (or maximizing the efficiency benefit).
- A. The role of policies in closing gender gaps
A broad range of government policies and programs can affect gender gaps, such as public investment to improve access to education and healthcare, childcare subsides, paid parental leave, eliminating tax penalties for secondary earners, and laws and regulations to ensure women’s rights and opportunities ( Rim, 2021 ; Ruhm, 1998 ; Dustmann and Schönberg, 2012 ; Heath and Jayachandran, 2018 ; Evans and Yuan, 2022 ; Bick and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2017 ; Olivetti and Petrongolo, 2017 ; Gonzales and others, 2015 a; Hyland and others, 2020 ). For example, Rim (2021) finds that banning gender discrimination in admissions was successful in reducing gender disparity in graduate education. Sometimes, the policy interventions involve tradeoffs between different gender gaps. For example, Ruhm (1998) finds that parental leave is associated with increases in women’s employment, but with reductions in their relative wages at extended durations. Lalive and others (2014) find that, for parental leave, a system that combines cash benefits with job protection dominates other designs in generating time for care immediately after birth while maintaining mothers’ medium-term labor market attachment.
In addition to the large variations in gender gaps by level of development as shown in Section III, gender gaps also vary substantially among countries at a similar level of development and in the same region, for several selected gender gap measures ( Appendix Figure 7 ). Assuming countries in the same region have similar gender social norms, this suggests that government policies potentially play an important role in explaining cross-country variations in gender gaps.
As an illustration, here we estimate the effects of laws and regulations that ensure equal opportunities for women (measured by Women, Business and the Law Index) on five gender gaps (these gaps are selected as they are key measures of women’s economic opportunities, tend to present in many countries, and are widely reported). 13 The estimates are based on a fixed effects specification with a time trend and lagged key independent variable. The model uses per capita GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms to control for level of development, country fixed effects to control for time-invariant factors (e.g., social norms), and a time trend to control for global trends. 14 The results suggest that gender laws and regulations are associated with lower gender gaps in some areas (e.g., account ownership at a financial institution /with a mobile-money-service provider and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments). The estimates on gender gaps in labor force participation, female share of senor and middle management, and pay are not statistically significant ( Appendix Table 1 ). One likely explanation is that the introduction of gender equality laws and regulations helps raise awareness and can lead to changes that face relatively less barriers (e.g., financial access) or are highly visible by the public (parliament seats). More fundamental changes, however, may take time (e.g., labor force participation, senior and middle management, and pay).
- B. General versus targeted policies
The effects of government policies on gender inequality and economic efficiency would depend on their specific designs and country-specific social and economic structures and conditions, and thus should be assessed on a policy-by-policy basis. There are, however, also commonalities among government policies, and it would be useful to understand their advantages and disadvantages. For example, gender-sensitive government policies can be broadly classified into two groups: general policies that apply to all genders indiscriminately but affect one gender more than the other and targeted policies at a specific gender.
By definition, nearly all macro policies—including fiscal policies, monetary policies, and exchange rate policies as well as macro-financial and macro-structural policies—belong to general policies, as they are primarily intended to boost economic growth and employment and achieve macro and financial stability. This, however, does not necessarily mean that macro policies are gender neutral. In fact, many of these policies have implications on gender gaps and gender inequality, because they affect different segments of the economy differently, and the distributions of female and male population also differ across these segments of the economy. For example, on fiscal policies, family-based income taxation implicitly raises the marginal tax rate for the income of secondary earners—who tend to be women—and contributes to the gender inequality in labor force participation ( Bick and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2017 ); while public education and health spending on average may still favor boys, the benefits from additional spending tend to be captured more by poor girls, as they are more likely to be still lacking access to education and healthcare ( Demery and Gaddis, 2009 ). On financial sector policies, while financial inclusion benefits everyone, the gains for women are quantitatively larger ( Cihák and Sahay, 2020 ). Monetary, exchange rate policies and macro structural policies have also been found to have gender implications. 15
Micro policies refer to government programs that target specific entities such as firms and households, and thus gender-sensitive micro policies can be either general or targeted policies. This includes a variety of programs such as (un)conditional cash transfers, hygiene promotion and water treatment, educational programs on gender equality for students, legal reforms to enhance women’s rights, conditional cash transfers for dropped out girls, reservation of subway cars exclusively for women, and gender quotas on corporate boards or political seats. Many of these programs have been shown to improve outcomes for women or girls ( Hahn and others, 2018 ; Harari, 2019 ; Beaman and others, 2012 ).
In general, targeted gender policies conceptually are less efficient as they exclude males who may be better suited for the opportunities. However, with the presentence of gender inequality (e.g., gender bias and social norms that hinder women’s rights and opportunities), general programs can also be inefficient in the sense that preference may be given to less qualified males. Because gender gaps can be driven by gender inequality or preference/comparative advantage between men and women or most likely both, and empirically it is difficult to separate the two effects, the key challenge for targeted gender policies is how to set the policy target s, as fully closing gender gaps may not be appropriate. Below are a few considerations:
It is not even clear that targeted gender policies are more effective in closing gender gaps. For example, from 267 educational interventions in 54 low- and middle-income countries, general interventions deliver average gains for girls that are comparable to girl-targeted interventions in improving access and learning ( Evans and Yuan, 2022 ). However, the most effective programs may not be the most cost-effective. Due to the lack of cost data, the cost-effectiveness of the programs could not be assessed.
There is evidence that some gender targeted policies may have unintended consequences or lead to inefficiencies. For example, the findings from a program that reserves subway cars exclusively for women in Mexico City suggest that while the program seems to be successful at reducing sexual harassment toward women, it also increases aggression incidents among men ( Aguilar and others, 2021 ). While the policy of setting gender quotas on corporate boards is still intensely debated, some studies find that the policy is associated with negative returns, and the negative effect is less severe for firms with a greater supply of female candidates, and for those that can more easily replace male directors or attract female directors ( Green and others, 2020 ). This appears to indicate that this policy may indeed lead to less qualified women being selected in some circumstances. Furthermore, there is also evidence that the policy has very little discernible impact on women in business beyond its direct effect on the women who made it into boardrooms ( Bertrand and others, 2019 ). This suggests that the policy may be more of ticking a box exercise. Afridi and others (2017) find short-term costs of gender-affirmative action policies for political leadership positions, but that once initial disadvantages recede, women leaders are neither more nor less effective local politicians than men. 16 While this does not mean that these policies should not be pursued, it does raise the need for careful designing such programs, particularly as its long-run or economy-wide impact may be difficult to identify in the studies. 17
For some policies, there is less ambiguity on their efficiency implications. For example, legal reforms to provide equal rights to women, by definition, is addressing gender inequality directly. This may be one potential reason for the rapid progress in removing legal gender barriers. Another example is educational programs on gender inequality, it is in fact more effective to be targeted to both genders , as reducing gender inequality requires the active participation by men as well ( Dhar and others, 2022 ). In some instances, preference/comparative advantage between men and women are expected to play a limited role, such as access to basic education (e.g., preprimary, primary and secondary) and healthcare. In such cases, fully closing the gender gaps would unlikely introduce any major distortions.
General policies tend to introduce less gender-specific distortions, although they can only address gender inequality, often in a more gradual manner. For example, conditional cash transfer programs can help improve school attendance of both boys and girls and benefit girls more than boys because more girls lack access to education in the absence of the programs. However, on the margin, boys are likely still less qualified than girls, even if the programs have helped narrow the gap. With this in mind, general policies may be particularly useful in circumstances where it is difficult to assess to what extent that the gender gaps are due to gender inequality. One potential area is formal labor force participation for which it is unclear how much of the lower labor force participation for women is due to gender inequality and how much is due to preference. In such a case, targeted policies such as wage subsidies for women may not be advisable, while general policies such as childcare subsidies may be more appropriate. 18
In areas where only targeted gender policies may be effective (e.g., in situations where men and women compete with each other), it would make sense to be conservative, by setting the gender quotas low initially and gradually increase them as more evidence becomes available. For example, only targeted gender policies are likely effective in promoting female leadership (e.g., gender quotas on corporate boards), as the number of leadership positions is fixed, and more female leaders mean fewer male leaders. This appears to be the case in some countries that have adopted policies to set gender quotas on corporate boards, through it is unclear if the design is indeed driven by such a consideration. For example, Malaysia’s publicly traded firms must have at least one-woman director on their boards from September 1, 2022; and California requires public companies headquartered in California to have at least one female director by the end of 2019 and at least two (three) female directors on five (six or more) member boards by the end of 2021.
- VI. Policy actions do not have to start with those targeted at the root causes
As discussed in Section II, the root causes of gender inequality are gender bias/social norms that restrict women’s rights and opportunities. Only until the root causes are eliminated, gender equality can be fully achieved; some gender gaps may still remain but are driven by preference /comparative advantage between men and women. Before that, it is unlikely that gender inequality in different areas such as education, labor market, and financial access can be fully removed. With the difficulties in separating gender inequality from efficient allocation, general policies may have difficulties in fully eliminating gender inequality, while targeted gender policies run the risk of either not fully addressing gender inequality or introducing additional gender distortions. With these constraints, how should policies be designed? Should policies only focus on those that are directly targeted at gender inequality (e.g., removing legal barriers) and its root causes (e.g., educational programs and information campaigns)?
This paper argues that addressing gender inequality does not have to solely rely on policies that are targeted at gender inequality and its root causes, and other general and targeted policies can still play a key role in addressing gender inequality, for several reasons:
First, while social norms evolve as countries develop (e.g., higher income, better education, and technological advances), this is often slow, almost by definition. There is evidence that some interventions can help change social norms. This includes educational programs on gender inequality and exposure to (female) role models. For example, an intervention in India that engaged adolescent girls and boys in classroom discussions about gender equality for two years, aiming to reduce their support for societal norms that restrict women ’s and girls’ opportunities, is shown to have persistent effects and leads to shifts in behavior, more so for boys than girls ( Dhar and others, 2022 ). The findings from Bell and others (2019 ) suggest that if girls were as exposed to female inventors as boys are to male inventors in their childhood commuting zones, the current gender gap in innovation would shrink by half. 19 The scope for policies directly targeting gender inequality (e.g., removing legal barriers) also appears limited.
Second, policies to reduce gender inequality in different areas such as education and labor market can be effective, with substantial immediate benefits for women and for the entire society, as discussed throughout the paper and particularly in Section IV. Examples include general policies and targeted gen der policies to improve access to education (e.g., public investment in education and conditional cash transfers for girls) and boost labor force participation (e.g., childcare subsidies and eliminating tax penalties for secondary earners).
Third, policies to address gender inequality in different areas can also indirectly influence gender bias and social norms, the root causes of gender inequality. For example, policies that help narrow the gender inequality in education in turn also help shape gender attitude, as it increases women’s income and bargaining power at home ( Le and Nguyen, 2021 ). Gender quotas in political leadership can help influence adolescent girls’ career aspirations and educational attainment—reflecting primarily a role model effect of female leadership—and reduce gender discrimination in the long-term ( Beaman and others, 2012 ; Pande and Ford, 2012 ). A program to enhance financial inclusion of women—under which rural Indian women received bank accounts, training in account use, and direct deposit of public sector wages into their own (versus husbands ’) accounts— incentivizes women to work and helps liberalize women’s own work-related norms and shift perceptions of community norms ( Field and others, 2021 ).
While addressing gender inequality does not have to start with and solely focus on policies that are targeted at the root causes of gender inequality, it would need to end there, as fully eliminating gender inequality would require addressing the root causes of gender inequality, and policies aiming at reducing gender inequality in different areas can only go so far. Only then, while some gender gaps may still exist, the allocation of human capital would be fully efficient, reflecting preference /comparative advantages between men and women.
- VII. Discussions
This paper identifies five key issues that are particularly important for the continued efforts to tackle gender inequality:
It is critical to clearly define gender inequality and distinguish it from gender gaps. This has important implications on the policy designs to address gender inequity. However, the literature has paid little attention to this issue, often using gender inequality and gender gaps interchangeably. This paper defines gender gaps as the observed differences between men and women or between boys and girls in the various social and economic indicators, and gender inequality refers to the part that is driven by gender bias and unequal gender rights and opportunities. However, empirically estimating the corresponding gender inequality for each gender gap remains a challenge and requires more efforts on data collection and methodological developments.
The focus of gender inequality has been evolving over time. As some gender gaps are closed, other gender gaps are emerging (not necessarily new, but attracting the attentions of the public and policymakers). This suggests that there is still a long way to go to fully addressing gender inequality. Particularly, gender inequality is getting more subtle and implicit, though the social and economic benefits from addressing the remain gender inequality is still likely to be substantial. This highlights the need to apply a gender lens to a broad range of policies and practices to understand their potential implications on gender inequality. Such efforts help develop a comprehensive strategy, instead of a piece-meal approach with which only some gender inequality is addressed at a time.
Addressing gender inequality benefits everyone, not just women. Thus, the entire society should work together, even for each individual’s own interest. Lower gender inequality not only benefits women, but also benefits children—as women trend to emphasize child welfare more than men—and the entire economy through the positive productivity externality from more balanced gender roles, and improved economic growth, financial stability, and income inequality. In addition to further strengthening the empirical evidence in these areas, there is an urgent need for the findings to be incorporated into policy designs and decision-making.
Policies and their designs can help accelerate the decline of gender inequality from economic development and technological advances. Both general policies and targeted gender policies can play a role, and the pros and cons of such policies should be carefully assessed. As gender inequality becomes more subtle and implicit (e.g., in field of study, the distribution of employment across sectors, and mid-level management positions), general policies will typically not work, unlike for school enrollments and labor force participation. Thus, targeted gender policies will need to play a bigger role. More analytical work is needed on what programs work and under what conditions. Also, this means that analytical work geared at separating gender inequality from gender gaps is all that more important.
While fully addressing gender inequality requires the elimination of the root cause s of gender inequality (e.g., gender bias and social norms), this does not mean that policies are not targeted at the root causes of gender inequality do not have a role. In fact, they can still be effective, as they can generate immediate social and economic benefits and indirectly affect gender bias and social norms. Policies directly targeted at the root causes of gender inequality would be generally preferred but appear limited, and research to expand the policy toolkit would be particularly useful.
One general issue in the efforts to address gender inequality is the lack of gender disaggregated data. Great progress has been made. For example, The IMF’s Financial Access Survey (FAS) is a unique source of annual supply-side data on access to and use of basic financial services by gender. The World Development Indicators (WDI) from the World Bank now present many statistics by male and female separately. Missing data, however, are still widespread, particularly in low-income countries. Therefore, continued efforts are still needed to further expand data availability in terms of both coverage and quality.
Another important issue the paper only marginally touches upon is the challenge of turning policy designs into practices. The analysis of Women, Business, and the Law index on several gender gaps suggests that it is not automatic that laws and regulations to promote gender equality will lead to immediate improvements in gender outcomes. Implementation remains a challenge for many countries, particularly developing economies with limited administrative capacity. For example, as reported in Evans and Yuan (2022) , many similar policy interventions have substantially different impacts across countries. Conditional cash transfer in South Africa is the best intervention among the 267 educational interventions in 54 low- and middle-income countries, while conditional cash transfer in the Philippines is one of the ten worst interventions. Thus, the importance of effective implementation cannot be overstated.
Gender Gaps in Education
Gender Gaps in Field of Study
Gender Gaps in Labor Force Participation and Employment by Sector
Gender Gaps in Leadership Positions
Gender Wage Gap in Selected Economies
Gender Gaps in Financial Access and Legal Barriers to Gender Equality
Large Variations in Gender Gaps across Countries
Alternative Specifications on the Effects of Laws and Regulations on Selected Gender Gaps
| Log of | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account ownership at a financial institution or with a mobile-money-service provider: female-to-male ratio | Labor force participation rate: female-to-male ratio | Female share of senior and middle management (percent) | Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (percent) | Gender wage gap (percent) | |||||||||||
| Log women business and the law index (one lag) | 0.482*** | 0.543*** | 0.415*** | -0.018 | 0.202*** | -0.003 | 0.129 | 0.476*** | 0.282* | 0.506** | 1.398*** | 0.610*** | -0.080 | -0.832 | -0.131 |
| (0.105) | (0.103) | (0.075) | (0.039) | (0.039) | (0.039) | (0.181) | (0.166) | (0.158) | (0.214) | (0.219) | (0.187) | (0.639) | (0.731) | (0.571) | |
| Log GDP per capita in PPP | -0.065 | -0.003 | 0.065*** | -0.051** | 0.034* | -0.049** | -0.058 | 0.135 | 0.045 | 0.119 | 0.603*** | 0.096** | 0.190 | -0.367 | 0.265 |
| (0.090) | (0.075) | (0.011) | (0.021) | (0.019) | (0.020) | (0.131) | (0.116) | (0.042) | (0.090) | (0.095) | (0.048) | (0.414) | (0.394) | (0.269) | |
| Time trend | 0.003 | 0.001 | 0.007*** | 0.007*** | 0.011*** | 0.008*** | 0.032*** | 0.031*** | -0.023*** | -0.024*** | |||||
| (0.002) | (0.002) | (0.001) | (0.001) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.003) | (0.004) | (0.003) | ||||||
| Constant | -1.710* | -2.472*** | -2.595*** | 0.046 | -1.528*** | -0.032 | 3.113** | -0.082 | 1.511** | -1.177 | -8.769*** | -1.416* | 1.411 | 10.168*** | 0.764 |
| (0.969) | (0.812) | (0.335) | (0.218) | (0.170) | (0.206) | (1.358) | (0.980) | (0.644) | (1.141) | (0.866) | (0.826) | (2.418) | (1.807) | (1.616) | |
| Fixed/Random effects | FE | FE | RE | FE | FE | RE | FE | FE | RE | FE | FE | RE | FE | FE | RE |
| Number of observations | 527 | 527 | 527 | 4,826 | 4,826 | 4,826 | 1,312 | 1,312 | 1,312 | 4,038 | 4,038 | 4,038 | 632 | 632 | 632 |
| Adjusted R | 0.090 | 0.085 | 0.083 | 0.337 | 0.186 | 0.337 | 0.117 | 0.084 | 0.113 | 0.423 | 0.338 | 0.423 | 0.195 | 0.132 | 0.195 |
Afridi Farzana , Vegard Iversen , and M. R. Sharan , 2017 , “ Women Political Leaders, Corruption, and Learning: Evidence from a Large Public Program in India ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 66 , Number 1 : 1 – 30 .
- Search Google Scholar
- Export Citation
Aguilar , Arturo , Emilio Gutiérrez , and Paula Soto Villagrá n, 2021 , “ Benefits and Unintended Consequences of Gender Segregation in Public Transportation: Evidence from Mexico City’s Subway System ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 69 , Number 4 : 1379 –1410.
Ahmad , Mahtab , Moazma Batool , and Sophia Dziegielewski , 2016 , “ State of Inheritance Rights: Women in a Rural District in Pakistan ,” Journal of Social Service Research 42 ( 5 ): 622 – 29 .
Albanesi , Stefania , and Jiyeon Kim , 2021 , “ Effects of the COVID-19 Recession on the US Labor Market: Occupation, Family, and Gender ,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 35 , No. 3 : 3 - 24 .
Alesina , Alberto , Paola Giuliano , and Nathan Nunn , 2013 , “ On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 : 469 – 530 .
Alonso , Cristian , Mariya Brussevich , Era Dabla-Norris , Yuko Kinoshita , and Kalpana Kochhar , 2019 , “ Reducing and Redistributing Unpaid Work: Stronger Policies to Support Gender Equality ,” IMF Working Paper WP/19/225 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Alonso-Albarran , Virginia , Teresa Curristine , Gemma Preston , Alberto Soler , Nino Tchelishvili , and Sureni Weerathunga , 2021 , “ Gender Budgeting in G20 Countries ,” IMF Working Paper WP/21/269 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Austen , Siobhan , Monica Costa , Rhonda Sharp , and Diane Elson , 2013 , “ Expenditure Incidence Analysis: A Gender-Responsive Budgeting Tool for Educational Expenditure in Timor-Leste? ” Feminist Economics 19 : 1 – 24 .
Beaman , Lori , Esther Duflo , Rohini Pande , and Petia Topalova , 2012 , “ Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India ,” Science , 335 ( 6068 ): 582 - 586 .
Becker , Charles , Cecilia Elena Rouse , Mingyu Chen , 2016 , “ Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes ,” Economics of Education Review , Volume 53 : 46 - 71 .
Bell , Alex , Raj Chetty , Xavier Jaravel , Neviana Petkova , and John Van Reenen , 2019 , “ Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation ,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 134 ( 2 ): 647 - 713 .
Bergman , Nittai , David Matsa , and Michael Weber , 2022 , “ How Tight Labor Markets Facilitate Broad-Based Employment Growth ”, NBER Working Paper 29651, National Bureau of Economic Research .
Bernhardt , Arielle , Erica Field , Rohini Pande , Natalia Rigol , Simone Schaner , and Charity Troyer-Moore , 2018 , “ Male Social Status and Women’s Work ,” AEA Papers and Proceedings , 108 : 363 - 67 .
Bharadwaj , Prashant , Giacomo De Giorgi , David Hansen , and Christopher A. Neilson , 2016 , “ The Gender Gap in Mathematics: Evidence from Chile ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 65 , Number 1 : 141 – 166 .
Bick , Alexander , and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln , 2017 , “ Quantifying the Disincentive Effects of Joint Taxation on Married Women’s Labor Supply ,” American Economic Review , 107 ( 5 ): 100 - 104 .
Blau , Francine , and Lawrence Kahn , 2017 , “ The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations ,” Journal of Economic Literature , 55 ( 3 ): 789 - 865 .
Bluedorn , John , Francesca Caselli , Niels-Jakob Hansen , Ippei Shibata , and Marina Tavares , 2021 , “ Gender and Employment in the Covid-19 Recession: Evidence on She-cessions ,” IMF Working Paper WP/21/95 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Buehren , Niklas , Markus Goldstein , Kenneth Leonard , Joao Montalvao , and Kathryn Vasilaky , 2022 , “ Spillover Effects of Girls’ Empowerment on Brothers’ Competitiveness: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Uganda ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 70 , Number 2 : 653 – 670 .
Cabral , Marika , and Marcus Dillender , 2021a , “ Disparities in Health Care and Medical Evaluations by Gender: A Review of Evidence and Mechanisms .” AEA Papers and Proceedings , 111 : 159 - 63 .
Cabral , Marika and Marcus Dillender , 2021 b, “ Gender Differences in Medical Evaluations: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Doctors ,” NBER Working Paper 29541 , National Bureau of Economic Research .
Caprioli , Mary , 2005 , “ Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal Conflict ,” International Studies Quarterly , Vol. 49 , No. 2 : 161 - 178 .
Carranza , Eliana , 2014 , “ Soil Endowments, Female Labor Force Participation, and the Demographic Deficit of Women in India ,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 6 ( 4 ): 197 - 225 .
Chen , Yi , Hong Zhang , and Li-An Zhou , 2021a , “ Motherhood and Gender Wage Differentials within a Chinese Firm ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 70 , Number 1 : 283 –320.
Chen , Sharon , Sebastian Doerr , Jon Frost , Leonardo Gambacorta , and Hyun Song Shin , 2021b , “ The Fintech Gender Gap” , BIS Working Paper No. 931 , Bank for International Settlements (Basel) .
Cihák , Martin and Ratna Sahay , 2020 , “ Finance and Inequality ,” IMF Staff Discussion Note, SDN/20/01 , International Monetary Fund , Washington, DC .
Cook , Lisa , Janet Gerson , and Jennifer Kuan , 2021 , “ Closing the Innovation Gap in Pink and Black ,” NBER Working Paper 29354 , National Bureau of Economic Research .
Cook , Lisa , 2019 , “ The Innovation Gap in Pink and Black ,” in Wisnioski , Hintz , and Stettler Kleine , eds. Does America Need More Innovators? Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press .
Cook , Lisa , and Yanyan Yang , 2018 , “ Missing Women and Minorities: Implications for Innovation and Growth ,” Presentation ( http://www.yanyanyang.com/uploads/5/6/5/2/56523543/aeapinkblack_cookyang.pdf ).
Cook , Lisa , and Chaleampong Kongcharoen , 2010 , “ The Idea Gap in Pink and Black ,” NBER Working Paper 16331 , National Bureau of Economic Research .
Cordoba , Juan , Anni Isojarvi , and Haoran Li , 2021 , “ Equilibrium Unemployment: The Role of Discrimination ,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-080 . Washington : Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System .
Dhar , Diva , Tarun Jain , and Seema Jayachandran , 2022 , “ Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India ,” American Economic Review , 112 ( 3 ): 899 - 927 .
Daher , Marilyne , Mahmoud Rifai , Riyad Kherallah , Fatima , Rodriguez , Dhruv Mahtta , Erin Michos , Safi Khan , Laura Petersen , and Salim Virani , 2021 , “ Gender Disparities in Difficulty Accessing Healthcare and Cost-related Medication Non-adherence: The CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Survey ,” Preventive Medicine , Volume 153 .
Dang , Hai-Anh , Trung Hoang , and Ha Nguyen , 2021 , “ The Long-Run and Gender-Equalizing Impacts of School Access: Evidence from the First Indochina War ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 70 , Number 1 : 453 - 484 .
Dasgupta , Shatanjaya , 2016 , “ Son Preference and Gender Gaps in Child Nutrition: Does the Level of Female Autonomy Matter? ” Review of Development Economics , Volume 20 , Issue 2 : 375 - 386 .
Demery , Lionel , and Isis Gaddis , 2009 , “ Social Spending, Poverty, and Gender Equality in Kenya: A Benefit Incidence Analysis ,” Deutsche Gesellschaft for Technische Zusammenarbeit , Nairobi .
Demirgüç-Kunt , Asli , Leora Klapper , Dorothe Singer , and Peter Van Oudheusden , 2015 , “ The Global Findex Database 2014: Measuring Financial Inclusion around the World ,” Policy Research Working Paper No. WPS 7255 , World Bank , Washington DC .
Dinkelman , Taryn , 2011 , “ The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa ,” American Economic Review , 101 ( 7 ): 3078 - 3108 .
Djurfeldt , Agnes Andersson , 2020 , “ Gendered Land Rights, Legal Reform and Social Norms in the Context of Land Fragmentation—A Review of the Literature for Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda ,” Land Use Policy 90 : 104305 .
Downes , Ronnie , and Scherie Nicol , 2020 , “ Designing and Implementing Gender Budgeting – a Path to Action ,” OECD Journal on Budgeting , Volume 2020 Issue 2 : 67 - 96 .
Duflo , Esther , 2012 , “Women Empowerment and Economic Development”, Journal of Economic Literature , 50 ( 4 ): 1051 – 79 .
Dustmann , Christian , and Uta Schönberg , 2012 , “ Expansions in Maternity Leave Coverage and Children’s Long-Term Outcomes .” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 4 ( 3 ): 190 - 224 .
Erten , Bilge , and Martina Metzger , 2019 , “ The Real Exchange Rate, Structural Change, and Female Labor Force Participation ,” World Development , Vol. 117© : 296 - 312 .
Evans , David , Akmal Maryam , and Jakiela Pamela , 2021 , “ Gender Gaps in Education: The Long View ,” IZA Journal of Development and Migration, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA) , vol. 12 ( 1 ): 1 - 27 .
Evans , David , and Fei Yuan , 2022 , “ What We Learn about Girls’ Education from Interventions That Do Not Focus on Girls ,” The World Bank Economic Review , 36 ( 1 ), 2022, 244 – 267 .
Fabrizio , Stefania , Diego Gomes , and Marina Mendes Tavares , 2021 , “ COVID-19 She-Cession: The Employment Penalty of Taking Care of Young Children ,” IMF Working Paper WP/21/58 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Fernandez , Raquel , and Alessandra Fogli , 2009 , “ Culture: An Empirical Investigation of Beliefs, Work, and Fertility ,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 1 : 146 – 77 .
Field , Erica , Seema Jayachandran , Rohini Pande , 2010 , “ Do Traditional Institutions Constrain Female Entrepreneurship? A Field Experiment on Business Training in India ,” American Economic Review 100 ( 2 ): 125 - 29 .
Field , Erica , Rohini Pande , Natalia Rigol , Simone Schaner , and Charity Troyer Moore , 2021 , “ On Her Own Account: How Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Impacts Labor Supply and Gender Norms .” American Economic Review , 111 ( 7 ): 2342 - 75 .
Galor , Oded , and David Weil , 1996 , “The Gender Gap, Fertility and Growth, American Economic Review, 86 ( 3 ): 374 – 387 .
Gedzi , Victor Selorme , 2012 , “ Women’s Property Relations after Intestate Succession PNDC Law 111 in Ghana ,” Research on Humanities and Social Sciences 2 ( 9 ): 211 – 219 .
Gonzales , Christian , Sonali Jain-Chandra , Kalpana Kochhar , and Monique Newiak , 2015 a, “ Fair Play: More Equal Laws Boost Female Labor Force Participation ,” IMF Staff Discussion Note, SDN/15/02 .
Gonzales , Christian , Sonali Jain-Chandra , Kalpana Kochhar , Monique Newiak , and Tlek Zeinullayev , 2015b , “ Catalyst for Change: Empowering Women and Tackling Income Inequality ,” IMF Staff Discussion Note 15/20 , International Monetary Fund , Washington, DC .
Greene , Daniel , Vincent Intintoli , and Kathleen Kahle , 2020 , “ Do Board Gender Quotas Affect Firm Value? Evidence from California Senate Bill No. 826 ,” Journal of Corporate Finance 60 ( 101526 ).
Greenwood Jeremy , Ananth Seshadri , and Mehmet Yorukoglu , 2005 , “ Engines of Liberation ,” Review of Economic Studies , 72 : 109 – 33 .
Gregory-Smith , Ian , Brian Main , Charles O’Reilly III , 2014 , “ Appointments, Pay and Performance in UK Boardrooms by Gender ,” The Economic Journal . 124 ( 574 ): F109 –F128.
Gupta , Rajesh , and Vaibhav Bhamoriya , 2020 , “ ’Give Me Some Rail’: An Enquiry into Puzzle of Declining Female Labour Force Participation Rate ,” Management and Labour Studies , Volume 46 , issue 1 : 7 - 23 .
Hadley , Craig , David Lindstrom , Fasil Tessema , and Tefara Belachew , 2007 , “ Gender Bias in the Food Insecurity Experience of Ethiopian Adolescents ,” Social Science and Medicine 66 ( 2 ): 427 – 438 .
Hafeez , Naima , and Climent Quintana-Domeque , 2018 , “ Son Preference and Gender-Biased Breastfeeding in Pakistan ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 66 , Number 2 : 179 - 215 .
Hahn , Youjin , Asadul Islam , Kanti Nuzhat , Russell Smyth , and Hee-Seung Yang , 2018 , “ Education, Marriage, and Fertility: Long-Term Evidence from a Female Stipend Program in Bangladesh ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 66 , Number 2 : 383 - 415 .
Harari , Mariaflavia , 2019 , “ Women’s Inheritance Rights and Bargaining Power: Evidence from Kenya ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 68 , Number 1 : 189 - 138 .
Hare , Denise , 2016 , “ What Accounts for the Decline in Labor Force Participation among Married Women in Urban China, 1991–2011? ” China Economic Review , Volume 38© : 251 - 266 .
Heath , Rachal , and Seema Jayachandran , 2018 , “ The Causes and Consequences of Increased Female Education and Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries ,” In: Susan Averett , Laura Argys , and Saul Hoffman (eds), The Oxford handbook of women and the economy, Oxford University Press , New York , page: 395 – 424 .
Herring , Cedric , 2009 , “ Does Diversity Pay?: Race, Gender, and the Business Case for Diversity ,” American Sociological Review , Vol. 74 , No. 2 : 208 - 224 .
Holden , Livia , and Azam Chaudhary , 2013 , “ Daughters’ Inheritance, Legal Pluralism, and Governance in Pakistan ,” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 45 ( 1 ): 104 –23
Hsieh , Chang-Tai , Erik Hurst , Charles Jones , and Peter Klenow , 2019 , “ The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth ,” Econometrica , Vol. 87 , No. 5 : 1439 – 1474 .
Hunt , Jennifer , Jean-Philippe Garant , and Hannah Herman , and David Munroe , 2013 , “ Why Are Women Underrepresented amongst Patentees? ” Research Policy , Elsevier , vol. 42 ( 4 ): 831 - 843 .
Hyland , Marie , Simeon Djankov , and Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg , 2020 , “ Gendered Laws and Women in the Workforce ,” American Economic Review: Insights , 2 ( 4 ): 475 – 490 .
Hyland , Marie , Simeon Djankov , and Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg , 2021 , “ Do Gendered Laws Matter for Women’s Economic Empowerment? ” PIIE Working Paper .
International Labour Organization (ILO) , 2012 , “ Employment and Gender Differences in the Informal Economy .” PowerPoint presentation , Geneva .
Jensen , Kyle , Balazs Kovacs , and Olav Sorenson , 2018 , “ Gender Differences in Obtaining and Maintaining Patent Rights ,” Nature Biotechnology 36 : 307 - 309 .
Jayachandran , Seema , 2015 , “ The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries ,” Annual Review of Economics , Vol. 7 : 63 - 88 .
Jayachandran , Seema , 2021 , “ Social Norms as a Barrier to Women’s Employment in Developing Countries ,” IMF Economic Review , 69 ( 3 ): 576 - 595 .
Khera , Purva , Sumiko Ogawa , Ratna Sahay , and Mahima Vasishth , 2022 , “ Women in Fintech: As Leaders and Users ,” IMF Working Paper WP/22/140 , International Monetary Fund , Washington, DC .
Kim , Jin Ho and Benjamin Williams , 2021 , “ Minimum Wage and Women’s Decision-Making Power within Households: Evidence from Indonesia ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 70 , Number 1 : 359 - 414 .
Kochhar , Kochhar , Sonali Jain-Chandra , and Monique Newiak , 2017 , Women, Work, and Economic Growth: Leveling the Playing Field , International Monetary Fund , Washington, DC .
Kolovich , Lisa , Vivian Malta , Monique Newiak , and David Robinson , 2020 , “ Gender Equality and Macroeconomic Outcomes: Evidence and Policy Implications ,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy , Volume 36 , Number 4 : 743 – 759 .
Kuzmina , Olga , and Valentina Melentyeva , 2021 , “ Gender Diversity in Corporate Boards: Evidence from Quota-Implied Discontinuities ,” ZEW – Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 21-023 .
Lalive , Rafael , Analía Schlosser , Andreas Steinhauer , Josef Zweimüller , 2014 , “ Parental Leave and Mothers’ Careers: The Relative Importance of Job Protection and Cash Benefits ,” The Review of Economic Studies , Volume 81 , Issue 1 : 219 – 265 .
Le , Kien , and My Nguyen , 2021 , “ How Education Empowers Women in Developing Countries ,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy , Vol. 21 , No. 2 : 511 - 536 .
Leight , Jessica and Elaine Liu , 2020 , “ Maternal Education, Parental Investment, and Noncognitive Characteristics in Rural China ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 69 , Number 1 : 213 - 251 .
Levi , Maurice , Kai Li , and Feng Zhang , 2014 , “ Director Genders and Mergers and Acquisitions ,” Journal of Corporate Finance . 28 : 185 – 200 .
Li , Cindy , 2019 , “ Falling Female Labor Force Participation in China and India ,” Pacific Exchang e Blog, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco ( https://www.frbsf.org/banking/asia-program/pacific-exchange-blog/falling-flpr-china-and-india/ ).
List , John , 2004 , “ The Nature and Extent of Discrimination in the Marketplace: Evidence from the Field ,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Vol. 119 , No. 1 : 49 - 89 .
Lleras-Muney , Adriana , Sissel Jensen , Sandra Black , and Marianne Bertrand , 2019 , “ Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labour Market Outcomes in Norway ,” The Review of Economic Studies . 86 ( 1 ): 191 – 239 .
Low , Hamish , and Luigi Pistaferri , 2019 , “ Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences ,” NBER Working Paper 26513 , National Bureau of Economic Research .
Maity , Bipasha , 2020 , “ Consumption and Time-Use Effects of India’s Employment Guarantee and Women’s Participation ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 68 , Number 4 : 1185 - 1231 .
Miller , Grant , 2008 , “Women’s Suffrage, Political Responsiveness, and Child Survival in American History”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Volume 123 , Issue 3 : 1287 –1327.
NSF , 2021 . \ Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering .” Arlington VA : National Science Foundation .
Olivetti , Claudia , and Barbara Petrongolo , 2017 , “ The Economic Consequences of Family Policies: Lessons from a Century of Legislation in High-Income Countries ,” Journal of Economic Perspectives , 31 ( 1 ): 205 - 30 .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2012 , Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now , OECD , Paris .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2014 , “ Gender Equality: Gender Equality in Entrepreneurship ,” OECD Social and Welfare Statistics database , Paris .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2017 , “ The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle ,” OECD , Paris .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2019 , “ PISA 2018 Results (Volume II): Where All Students Can Succeed ,” OECD , Paris .
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2020 , “ All Hands In? Making Diversity Work for All ,” OECD , Paris .
Østergaard, Christian, Bram Timmermans, and Kari Kristinsson, 2011 , “ Does a Different View Create Something New? The Effect of Employee Diversity on Innovation ,” Research Policy , 40 , 500 – 509 .
Owen , Ann , and Judit Temesvary , 2018 , “ The Performance Effects of Gender Diversity on Bank Boards ,” Journal of Banking and Finance , 90 : 50 - 63 .
Ozgen , Ceren , 2021 , “ The Economics of Diversity: Innovation, Productivity and the Labour Market ,” Journal of Economic Surveys , Volume 35 , Issue 4 : 1168 - 1216 .
Pacheco , Jorge , Francisca Crispi , Tania Alfaro , María Soledad Martínez , and Cristóbal Cuadrado , 2021 , “ Gender Disparities in Access to Care for Time-sensitive Conditions during COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile ,” BMC Public Health , 21 ( 1 ): 1802 .
Pathak , Yuvraj and Karen Macours , 2017 , “ Women’s Political Reservation, Early Childhood Development, and Learning in India ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 65 , Number 4 : 741 - 766 .
Pitt , Mark , Shahidur Khandker , and Jennifer Cartwright , 2006 , “ Empowering Women with Micro Finance: Evidence from Bangladesh ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 54 ( 4 ): 791 –831.
Pitt , Mark , Shahidur Khandker , Omar Haider Chowdhury , and Daniel Millimet , 2003 , “ Credit Programs for the Poor and the Health Status of Children in Rural Bangladesh ,” International Economic Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 : 87 - 118 .
Pitt , Mark , Mark Rosenzweig , and Mohammad Nazmul Hassan , 2012 , “ Human Capital Investment and the Gender Division of Labor in a Brawn-Based Economy ,” American Economic Review , 102 ( 7 ): 3531 - 60 .
Profeta , Paola , Livia Amidani Aliberti , Alessandra Casarico , Marilisa D’Amico , and Anna Puccio , 2014 , “ Quotas on Boards: Evidence from the Literature ,” In Women Directors . Palgrave Macmillan , London .
Pal , Sarmistha , 1999 , “ An Analysis of Childhood Malnutrition in Rural India: Role of Gender, Income and Other Household Characteristics ,” World Development 27 ( 7 ): 1151 – 1171 .
Pande , Rohini , and Deanna Ford , 2012 , “ Gender Quotas and Female Leadership ,” World Bank , Washington, DC .
Qian Nancy , 2008 , “ Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics , 123 : 1251 – 85 .
Rendall , Michelle , 2017 , “ Brain versus Brawn: The Realization of Women’s Comparative Advantage ,” Working Paper No. 491 , Institute for Empirical Research in Economics , University of Zurich .
Rim , Nayoung , 2021 , “ The Effect of Title IX on Gender Disparity in Graduate Education ,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management , Vol. 40 , No. 2 : 521 – 552 .
Rock , David , and Heidi Grant , 2016 , “ Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter ,” Harvard Business Review, November 4: https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter , last accessed October 27 , 2021 .
Rubolino , Enrico , 2022 , “ Taxing the Gender Gap: Labor Market Effects of a Payroll Tax Cut for Women in Italy ,” CESifo Working Paper No. 9671 .
Ruhm , Christopher , 1998 , “ The Economic Consequences of Parental Leave Mandates: Lessons from Europe ,” Quarterly Journal of Economics , 113 ( 1 ): 285 – 317 .
Sahay , Ratna , Martin Cihák , and other IMF Staff, 2018 , “ Women in Finance: A Case for Closing Gaps ,” IMF Staff Discussion Note, SDN/18/05 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Sahay , Ratna , Ulric Eriksson von Allmen , Amina Lahreche , Purva Khera , Sumiko Ogawa , Majid Bazarbash , and Kimberly Beaton , 2020 , “ The Promise of Fintech; Financial Inclusion in the Post COVID-19 Era ,” IMF Working Paper WP/20/09 , International Monetary Fund , Washington DC .
Sloane , Carolyn , Erik Hurst , and Dan Black , 2021 , “ College Majors, Occupations, and the Gender Wage Gap ,” Journal of Economic Perspectives , Volume 35 , Number 4 : 223 – 248 .
Socías , Eugenia , Mieke Koehoorn , and Jean Shoveller , 2015 , “ Gender Inequalities in Access to Health Care among Adults Living in British Columbia, Canada ,” Women’s Health Issues , Volume 26 , Issue 1 : 74 - 79 .
Strøm , Reidar , Bert D’Espallier , and Roy Mersland , 2014 , “ Female Leadership, Performance, and Governance in Microfinance Institutions .” Journal of Banking and Finance 42 : 60 –75.
Tewari , Ishani , and Yabin Wang , 2021 , “ Durable Ownership, Time Allocation, and Female Labor Force Participation: Evidence from China’s “Home Appliances to the Countryside” Rebate ,” Economic Development and Cultural Change , Volume 70 , Number 1 : 87 - 127 .
World Economic Forum (WEF) , 2021 , “ Global Gender Gap Report 2021 ,” World Economic Forum , Geneva .
World Bank , 2006 , “ Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development: A Strategy for Large Scale Action ,” World Bank , Washington DC .
World Bank , 2021 , Women, Business and the Law 2021 , World Bank , Washington DC .
Xiao , Pengpeng , 2021 , “ Wage and Employment Discrimination by Gender in Labor Market Equilibrium ,” Working Paper 144 , VATT Institute for Economic Research .
Zhang , Eva , and Tianlei Huang , 2020 , “ The Gender Gap in Labor Force Participation Is Widening in China While Narrowing in Other Parts of the World ,” PIIE Charts , Peterson Institute for International Economics ( https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/gender-gap-labor-force-participation-widening-china-while-narrowing-other-parts ).
In the rest of the paper, the discussions typically center around gender inequality against women, but the same arguments can be made for gender inequality against men when applicable.
The global commitment to achieving gender equality an d accelerating efforts to end gender inequality is reflected in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 5 , which includes nine targets covering discrimination and violence against women, child marriage, unpaid care and domestic work, leadership role, access to reproductive health, rights to economic resources, and technology use to promote women empowerment. In addition, achieving other SDGs could also have important implications for gender equality, for example, under Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education .
For example, a number of countries have mandated gender diversity on corporate boards of directors, including Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, Quebec of Canada, and California of United States. Malaysia is one recent case and mandates its publicly traded firms to have at least one-woman director on their boards from September 1, 2022.
This includes both taste-based and statistical discrimination; taste-based discrimination refers to less favorable attitudes and prejudice towards women, while statistical discrimination refers to the use of perception or statistics on women as a group in decision-making when information on a specific woman is lacking; for example, firms may make employment and pay decisions, based on average leave days taken and average job turnover rates for women and men; studies have found that statistical discrimination plays an important role in gender gaps , such as in wages and employment ( List, 2004 ; Xiao, 2020; Cordoba and others, 2021 ).
It should be noted that preference here refers to choices made in the absence of gender inequality. This is important as gender inequality and the associated social norms often operate through affecting the willingness of men and women in making certain choices.
For example, the comparative advantage of women often refers to the innate advantage of women in brain versus brawn jobs in the literature.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 13 percent of registered nurses in the United States are male in 2021.
The empirical observation of U-shaped female labor force participation over the course of economic development reflects other factors that also influence the decision of women entering the labor market ( Jayachandran, 2021 ). This includes the less need for a second income earner in a household, women’s comparative advantage in rearing children, the need to balance employment with household responsibilities, and social/cultural norms on “suitable” jobs for women, for example, between manufacturing jobs and service sector jobs.
While there is little empirical evidence on to what extent unpaid work is driven by preference and social norms, it is generally recognized that both play a role ( Alonso and others, 2019 ).
The index measures laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunities, based on eight indicators structured around women’s interactions with the law as they move through their careers: mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension. Although it is critical to ensuring women’s economic inclusion, implementation of laws is not currently measured. Instead, Women, Business and the Law identifies legal differences between men and women as one step toward a better understanding of where women’s economic rights may be restricted in practice ( World Bank, 2021 ).
While the paper focuses on education, labor market, financial access and legal barriers, similar patterns are also observed in other areas. For example, in advanced economies, while there are little gender differences in health insurance and the ability to seek healthcare, a growing body of evidence suggests that female patients—relative to male patients—receive less healthcare for similar medical conditions and are more likely to be told by providers that their symptoms are emotionally driven rather than arising from a physical impairment; recent evidence also shows that there are large gender gaps in receiving benefits from social insurance programs that rely on medical evaluations ( Cabral and Dillender, 2021a ). For example, Low and Pistaferri (2019) show that female applicants for Social Security Disability Insurance are 20 percentage points more likely to be rejected than similar male applicants. The gender imbalance in the physician workforce can explain a large part of the gap ( Cabral and Dillender, 2021b ).
The literature of broad diversity (e.g., gender, race, and age) on firm productivity and team performance also yields mixed effects (see OECD (2020) for a review).
The study sample covers all countries between 1990 and 2019, when data are available.
Please see Appendix Table 1 for alternative specifications. Without including a time trend, the estimates are larger, more statistically significant, and have the expected signs for all five gender gaps, including labor force participation. Gonzales and others (2015a) and Hyland and others (2020 ; 2021) do not include a time trend and show similar results. The results from a random effects specification often lie somewhere in between.
See, for example, Bergman and others (2022) on the gender employment implication of the Federal Reserve’s recent move from a strict to an average inflation targeting framework; Erten and Metzger (2019) on currency undervaluation and female labor force participation ; and Kim and Williams (2021) on the effects of the minimum wage on women’s intrahousehold bargaining power.
Beaman and other (2012) , however, find that quota policies for female leadership helps improve adolescent girls’ career aspirations and educational attainment.
For example, the studies typically do not consider the impact of gender quotas on reducing gender bias in the broad society.
One example of targeted policies at gender inequality in employment is a payroll tax cut for female hires, introduced in 2012 in Italy to spur female employment and to stimulate business activity by reducing labor costs. The preferential tax rate is only available in occupations with large gender employment gap and has requirement for length in unemployment, which varies by age, whether in economically disadvantaged areas, and occupation. In addition, the preferential payroll tax scheme is valid for up to 12 months for temporary jobs and 18 months for permanent jobs. Firms can use the payroll tax cut only if overall employment would not decrease with respect to past employment. The complex eligibility criteria highlight the challenges in designing targeted gender policies while limiting their efficiency cost. Rubolino (2022) finds that payroll tax cut generates long-lasting growth in female employment with little effect on net wages and without crowding out male employment. However, the efficiency implication of the reform is not fully analyzed, as it is unclear what would have happened had the tax cut not been gender targeted,
See also Cook and others (2021) and Becker and others (2016) , which show that targeted mentoring programs can have significant and long-lasting effects on inclusion in STEM careers, where income, race, and gender gaps in acquiring education have been due to a lack of mentoring and exposure to science and innovation careers rather than differences in ability.
- Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter
Table of Contents
- View raw image
- Download Powerpoint Slide
International Monetary Fund Copyright © 2010-2021. All Rights Reserved.
- [185.80.149.115]
- 185.80.149.115
Character limit 500 /500
Gender issues in India: an amalgamation of research
Subscribe to global connection, shamika ravi and shamika ravi former brookings expert, economic advisory council member to the prime minister and secretary - government of india nirupama jayaraman nj nirupama jayaraman.
March 10, 2017
Content from the Brookings Institution India Center is now archived . After seven years of an impactful partnership, as of September 11, 2020, Brookings India is now the Centre for Social and Economic Progress , an independent public policy institution based in India.
The views are of the author(s).
Forty-two years have passed since the United Nations first decided to commemorate March 8 th as International Women’s Day, marking a historical transition in the feminist movement. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world. On this past occasion of International Women’s Day 2017, here is an amalgamation of gendered learning outcomes across various crucial themes for public policy in India, emerging from Brookings India’s past research on political economy, financial inclusion and health.
Political Economy
In 2016, India ranked 130 out of 146 in the Gender Inequality Index released by the UNDP. It is evident that a stronger turn in political discourse is required, taking into consideration both public and private spaces. The normalization of intra-household violence is a huge detriment to the welfare of women. Crimes against women have doubled in the period between 1991 and 2011. NFHS data reports that 37 per cent of married women in India have experienced physical or sexual violence by a spouse while 40 per cent have experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence by a spouse. While current policy discourse recommends employment as a form of empowerment for women, data presents a disturbing correlation between female participation in labour force and their exposure to domestic violence. The NFHS-3 reports that women employed at any time in the past 12 months have a much higher prevalence of violence (39-40 per cent) than women who were not employed (29 per cent). The researchers advocate a multi-faceted approach to women’s empowerment beyond mere labour force participation, taking into consideration extra-household bargaining power.
Read more at: “ Beginning a new conversation on Women ”.
Gender inequality extends across various facets of society. Political participation is often perceived as a key factor to rectify this situation. However, gender bias extends to electoral politics and representative governance as well. The relative difference between male and female voters is the key to understanding gender inequality in politics. While the female voter turnout has been steadily increasing, the number of female candidates fielded by parties has not increased. More women contest as independents, which does not provide the cover for extraneous costs otherwise available when they are part of a political party.
However, women also act as agents of political change for other women. In the Bihar elections in 2005, when re-elections were held, the percentage of female voters had increased from 42.5 to 44.5 per cent while those of male voters declined from 50 to 47 per cent in the interim period of eight months. As a direct result, 37 per cent of the constituencies saw anti-incumbency voting. The average growth rate of women voters was nearly three times in those constituencies where there was a difference in the winning party. District-wise disaggregation of voter registration also supports this hypothesis in the case of Bihar indicating the percolation of the winds of change. This illustration proves that women are no longer under the complete control of the men in their family in terms of electoral participation. The situation is only bound to improve from here. With the introduction of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), vulnerable sections like women now have more freedom of choice in their vote. Further, poll related incidents of violence against women have significantly decreased since the phased introduction of EVMs across multi-level elections in India.
Read more at:
- Interview on Gender Inequality in Politics
- Women voters can tip the scales in Bihar
- Using technology to Strengthen Democracy
Related Content
Shamika Ravi
March 8, 2019
Mudit Kapoor, Deepak Agrawal, Shamika Ravi, Ambuj Roy, S V Subramanian, Randeep Guleria
August 8, 2019
Geetika Dang
September 4, 2019
Extending the conversation to political representation is the next phase in the conversation. Women make up merely 22 per cent of lower houses in parliaments around the world and in India, this number is less than half at 10.8 per cent in the outgoing Lok Sabha. A steady increase in female voter participation has been observed across India, wherein the sex ratio of voters (number of female voters vis-à-vis male) has increased from 715 in the 1960s to 883 in the 2000s. Our studies have shown that women are more likely to contest elections in states with a skewed gender ratio. In the case of more developed states, they seek representation through voting leading to an increase in voter participation.
The situation can be rectified by providing focused reservation for those constituencies with a skewed sex ratio. Reducing the entry costs (largely non-pecuniary in nature – cultural barriers, lack of exposure) for women in order to create a pipeline of female leaders is another solution. These missing women, either as voters or leaders point to the gross negligence of women at all ages.
Read more at: Missing Women in Indian Democracy
Financial Inclusion
In the developing world, women have traditionally been the focus of efforts of financial inclusion. They have proved to be better borrowers (40 per cent of Grameen Bank’s clients were women in 1983. By 2000, the number had risen to 90 per cent) – largely attributed to the fact that they are less mobile as compared to men and more susceptible to peer pressure. However, institutions in microfinance are exposed to the trade-off between market growth and social development since having more female clients lead to the inevitable drip-down of social incentives. As an attempt to overcome this hurdle, a larger role can be played by donors with a gender driven agenda, for the financial inclusion sector will drive the idea further.
Gendered contextualisation of products is highly necessary for microfinance institutions (MFIs) – men and women do not ascribe to choices in a similar fashion. Trends emerging from prior research indicates that when health insurance coverage was held under the MFI sector, by both men and women, women benefited from the coverage only so far as they were the holders and not using spousal status (if their husbands were insured). Thus healthcare seeking behaviour becomes an important factor to be considered in insurance coverage under the MFIs.
The JAM trinity – Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhar, Mobile – can be used to improve financial inclusion from a gender perspective as well. The metrics to consider would be the number of Jan Dhan accounts held by women, percentage of women holding Aadhar cards and access to mobile connectivity for women.
Read more at: A trade-off between Growth and Social Objectives Exists for Microfinance Institutions
In terms of healthcare focusing on women, the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) and National Health Mission are vital to the policy landscape. The JSY has improved maternal healthcare in India through the emphasis on institutional deliveries. Increase of 22 per cent in deliveries in government hospitals, was mirrored by an 8 per cent decline in childbirth at private hospitals and a 16 per cent decline in childbirth at home. The National Health Mission’s ASHA led to greater awareness and education of pregnant women as well as an increase in institutional maternal and neonatal healthcare. Improved infrastructure for maternal and neo-natal has been observed in community hospitals, in addition to the introduction of ambulance services.
A gendered increase in seek care is observed with a large 13 per cent increase in the number of women who report being sick in the last 15 days, driving the overall reportage. Further, an eight per cent decline in rural women seeking private healthcare, has been reported, while a 58 per cent increase in women seeking hospitalization has been reported. Further disaggregated, the data shows a 75.7 per cent increase for rural women seeking healthcare. The overall increase in usage of public hospitals is almost entirely driven by rural women who saw an increase of 24.6 per cent in utilisation of public hospitals over the 10 years (2004-2014). Our results show that the JSY had a significant, positive impact on overall hospitalisation of women in India. It increased the probability of a woman being hospitalised by approximately 1.3 per cent.
Read more at: Health and Morbidity in India
The healthcare sector in India has largely focused on maternal healthcare for women. The importance of research on mental health has been ignored in policy discourse. The significant relationship that mental health bears on violence has also been explored in further research. Every fifth suicide in India is that of a housewife (18 per cent overall) – the reportage of suicide deaths has been most consistent among housewives as a category, than other categories. India is the country with the largest rate of female deaths due to ‘intentional violence’.
Our work on childhood violence shows that girls are twice more likely to face sexual violence than boys before the age of 18. Larger the population of educated females in the country, lesser is the incidence of childhood violence at home – including lesser violent discipline, physical punishment as well as psychological aggression. Additionally, the lifetime experience of sexual violence by girls is strongly correlated with the adolescent fertility rate in a country. Further, a strong relationship is observed between female experience of sexual violence and female labour force participation within a country. The results show that the higher the labour force participation by women in a country, the higher is the incidence of sexual violence against them. This could be indicative of adverse working conditions within labour markets, and the difficulty of access to labour markets by young women in a country.
- Over the Past two decades, every fifth suicide in India is by a housewife
- What Explains Childhood Violence
Related Books
Robert E. Litan, Paul R. Masson, Michael Pomerleano
September 1, 2001
Richard N. Haass
May 1, 1999
Michael E. O’Hanlon
January 21, 2003
Global Economy and Development
Rahul Tongia, Anurag Sehgal, Puneet Kamboj
Online Only
3:00 am - 4:40 am IST
Saneet Chakradeo
August 18, 2020
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
Full Topic List
Regions & Countries
- Publications
- Our Methods
- Short Reads
- Tools & Resources
Read Our Research On:
In India and many other countries, there is little gap between men and women in attitudes on gender issues
Most Indians support gender equality, but a new Pew Research Center survey finds that traditional gender norms still hold sway for many people in the country. And even though traditional norms tend to give men, rather than women, more prominent roles in several aspects of family and public life, women do not differ substantially from men in their opinions on these issues.
One example is how Indians view interactions between husbands and wives. Asked if they agree with the statement that “a wife must always obey her husband,” women in India (86%) are only slightly less likely than Indian men (89%) to say they either completely or mostly agree.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to find out how men and women in India differ – or don’t – in their views toward gender roles. It is based primarily on the March 2022 report “ How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society ,” part of the Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of Indian public opinion to date. For this report, we surveyed 29,999 Indian adults ages 18 and older living in 26 Indian states and three union territories. Many findings from the survey in India were previously published in “ Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation ,” which looked in detail at religious and national identity, religious beliefs and practices, and attitudes among religious communities. Interviews for this nationally representative survey were conducted face-to-face in 17 languages from Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020.
Respondents were selected using a probability-based sample design, and data was weighted to account for the different probabilities of selection among respondents, and to align with demographic benchmarks for the Indian adult population from the 2011 census.
We also relied on a 2019 survey of 34 countries to provide a global context for the India findings.
For more information on the India survey, read its methodology . Here are the questions used in this analysis.
Here are the questions used for the 34-nation survey, along with its methodology .
This phenomenon, where women are either as likely as or only modestly less likely than men to express traditional attitudes about gender, is not unique to India. In a different survey of 34 countries conducted by Pew Research Center in the spring and summer of 2019, only 11 countries had statistically significant differences between men and women in the shares who say that if jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to employment than women. This included India, where Indian women (76%) were only somewhat less likely than Indian men (81%) to hold this view. In other words, in most of the countries surveyed, women were about as likely as men to favor job preferences for men in times of high unemployment.
Another question on the same 34-country survey asked respondents how important it is for women to have the same rights as men in their country. In most countries surveyed, women are more likely than men to voice support for gender equality, but this pattern is far from universal. In 14 countries, including Brazil and Poland, roughly the same shares of men and women say equal rights for women are very important, and in an additional seven countries, gender gaps on this question are 10 percentage points or less. In India, women (75%) are only modestly more likely than men (70%) to support equal rights for both genders.
Gender differences also are muted when it comes to Indians’ views about relationships between children and their parents. In Indian society, sons historically have been the primary caregivers for aging parents and the main beneficiaries of inheritance. In line with these and other traditions, families have tended to place higher value on – and provide more support to – their sons than their daughters, a set of attitudes and practices known as “ son preference .”
Today, while most Indian adults believe that sons and daughters should have equal responsibility to care for parents as they age, women (37%) are almost as likely as men (40%) to say it is sons who should have the primary responsibility for this. And when asked whether sons or daughters should be primarily responsible for a parent’s last rites or burial rituals, women (62%) are nearly as likely as men (64%) to say it should be sons. In addition, most Indians say sons and daughters should have equal rights to inheritance from their parents, but about a third of both women (33%) and men (34%) say that sons should have greater inheritance rights than daughters.
Against the backdrop of violence against women in India that has attracted both national and international attention, three-quarters of Indian men and women say violence against women is a “very big problem” in their country. The survey also asked respondents whether, to improve the safety of women in their community, it is more important to teach boys to respect all women or to teach girls to behave appropriately.
Around half of the Indian population – including 53% of women and 48% of men – says teaching boys to respect women is more important. But women (24%) are almost as likely as men (27%) to put the onus on women’s own behavior, saying that teaching girls to behave appropriately is the better way to improve women’s safety. Roughly a quarter of both men and women don’t take a clear position on the issue, with some saying both approaches are important, that women are already safe, or that the issue is one of law and order rather than gender norms.
- Economics, Work & Gender
- Gender & Leadership
- Gender Equality & Discrimination
- Gender Roles
Jeff Diamant is a senior writer/editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center .
Among young U.S. workers without a college degree, men and women hold very different types of jobs
Half of latinas say hispanic women’s situation has improved in the past decade and expect more gains, a majority of latinas feel pressure to support their families or to succeed at work, for women’s history month, a look at gender gains – and gaps – in the u.s., women have gained ground in the nation’s highest-paying occupations, but still lag behind men, most popular.
901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries
Research Topics
- Email Newsletters
ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .
© 2024 Pew Research Center
Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
A Study of Gender Inequality in India
This study considers the gender inequality that exists among every region, social class and prevents the growth of Indian economy from improving the lives of Indian people. The reality of gender inequality in India is very complex and diversified, because it exists in every field like education, employment opportunities, income, health, cultural issues, social issues, economic issues etc. An attempt has been made to find out those factors which are responsible for this problem in India. So, this paper highlights the multi-dimensional context of gender inequalities prevalent in India. Overall, the study indicates the inequality in economic, social, cultural and legal biasness which are of a great challenge for policy-makers and social scientists to establish proper equality in the entire social field. The researchers have tried to suggest some relevant strategies and policies implication for reducing this gender inequality and to promote the dignified position for Indian women. After the World War II, in the post modernization era, one of the issues which had attracted the attention of the policy makers and social scientists was gender issues and concerns. Gender issues mean the discussion on both men and women, though women who suffer from gender inequality. From all gender issues, gender inequality is the most prevalent in India. Consideration of gender inequality is now common in Government, Non-Government organizations, and in the politics in India. The policy makers are strongly believed that a positive commitment to gender equality and equity will strengthen every area of action to reduce poverty because women can bring new energy and new sights. A lot of debates are going on women and their development since last few decades. Thus, several national and international organizations are trying to promote the advancement of women & their full participation in developmental process & trying to eliminate all forms of inequality against women. The importance of feminism has been steadily growing and gaining intellectual legitimacy. GENDER INEQUALITY:-Gender Inequality means disparity between men and women in different social, economical & political, cultural and legal aspects.
Related Papers
Sachin Kashyap
Monalisa Chakraborty
Miftah Arif
Prerna Talwar
India is a country of people from diverse religions and backgrounds. As there are many religions, so there are numbers of religious laws too, that governs the people of different religions. Every religion has its own personal laws relating to marriage, divorce, maintenance, guardianship and succession governing the Hindus, Muslims and Christians, etc. There is no uniform civil code in India. The women have fewer rights than the men under the religious personal laws. The religious personal laws give birth to many taboos; for instance patriarchy, early marriage, dowry, domestic violence etc. The society has plonked verdicts on the women. The women not only feel inferior but also helpless because the upbringing of the girls has been done in such a way that they do not raise their voices against such discriminations. Though the government has made the efforts to lift the status of women via implementing civil code, yet there is need to change the thinking pattern of people to give sense of credence to women about their potential. The present paper is highlighting the status of women in Hindu and Muslim religious personal laws and providing the glimpses regarding the effects of such religious personal laws on the lives of women. Introduction There are various religious personal laws in India. But the status of women is of great concern as the religious personal laws portray women in subordinate position to men. Women have to encounter with so many disparities which lead to so many stumbling blocks in their journey. The present paper is focusing on the disparities which a woman faces through the religious personal laws. Due to such disparities there are lots of difficulties to live a life with self respect and dignity to a woman. These disparities and inequalities hinder the path of woman in the backward direction. Women have to fight against these inequalities to attain something. Things change with the time, but the mind sets of people regarding women is next to impossible to change. Though enough efforts have been made in the civil laws yet existence of personal laws don't let the women to come out of that to live a life with their own terms and conditions.
Vijaykumar Sarabu
The main message of the World development report (2012) is gender equality and inclusive development. Greater gender equality enhances productivity and improves other development outcomes, including prospects for the next generation and for the quality of societal policies and institutions. Economic development is not enough to shrink all gender disparities-corrective policies that focus on persisting gender gaps are essential. This report points to four priority areas for policy going forward. First, reducing gender gaps in human capital-specifically those that address female mortality and education. Second, closing gender gaps in access to economic opportunities, earnings, and productivity. Third, shrinking gender differences in voice and agency within society. Fourth, limiting the reproduction of gender inequality across generations. (2) These are all areas where higher incomes by themselves do little to reduce gender gaps, but focused policies can have a real impact. Gender equality is at the heart of development. It's the right development objective, and it's smart economic policy.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History
Ravinder Kaur
China and India together account for over one-third of the world's population and both countries have considerably fewer women than men.. With long histories of skewed sex ratios and gender discrimination, these two countries have experienced a sharp decline in the birth of girls since the late 20th century. The unfolding and intimate relationship between gendered social structures, son preference, fertility decline, and new sex determination technologies has had serious demographic and social consequences, resulting in millions of "missing" girls, surplus males, bride shortages, and possibly, rising levels of gender violence. Even as women's socioeconomic indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, education, and fertility have improved, families continue to show a preference for sons raising questions between the tenuous relationship between development and gender equality. The advantages of raising sons over daughters, supported by traditional kinship, family, and marriage systems, appear to have got further entrenched in the era of neoliberal economies. Family planning policies of both nations, advocating small families, and the advent of pre-natal sex selection technologies further set the stage for the prevention of birth of daughters. Governments in both countries have since banned sex determination and launched policies and schemes to redress the gender imbalance and improve the value of the girl child. While these policies have not been highly successful, other social forces such as urbanization and rising educational levels are beginning to transform the way girls are perceived. A kernel of hope seems to be emerging at the beginning of the 21st century, as some improvement is visible in the sex ratio at birth in some of the worst affected regions in the two countries.
Vidya Rawat
United Nation in its Millennium Summit in 2000 declared 'Gender Equality and Women Empowerment' as one among the eight 'Millennium Development Goal' to be achieved by the year 2015. However these goals are far from being realized in a country like India. Infact often women in India are deprived of their fundamental right to dignity also, leave alone the question of gender parity. The present paper explores the questions central to women's right in India that is fundamentally patriarchal in nature. The article attempts to grapple with the few challenges faced by the women in India like the dowry, female foeticide, denial of inheritance rights, sale and trafficking of girls etc. The objective of the paper is to evolve strategies to empower women uniformly like the men.
Anan Pictures
IAEME PUBLICATION
IAEME Publication
.The aim of the study is to determine the factors affecting women empowerment and the issues faced by them. The paper also reveals the status of women empowerment in India and how factors are affecting the current status of women in India. The chosen factors for this research are status, health, access to education opportunities, exposure to media, decision making power social, freedom of movement, economic and legal rights as men, adopted from past literatures and various reports. The urge for equality on the part of Indian women started getting momentum during the colonial times. Empowering women means one family is moving forward with that one village moves and the nation moves simultaneously. It is found that women in India are not empowered and treated lower status relatively to men. To overcome all the prevalent issues, many efforts have been done by government to empower women at national level across India by implementing various schemes and initiatives. This paper tries to postulates potentialities of women in various fields and initiatives undertaken by Government of India.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
RELATED PAPERS
GENDER GAP -SPECIAL REFERENCE TO INDIA
Vijay Kumar Sarabu
Dipanjan Roychoudhary
Shalu Nigam
Rajni Palriwala
International Res Jour Managt Socio Human
UNRISD, Geneva
hussain dilshi
Rahul Chawla
Dr.SUBATHRA CHELLADURAI
Dr.Samrendra Sharma
Publisher ijmra.us UGC Approved
Natasha Segal
Owais FAROOQ pimt
IP Innovative Publication Pvt. Ltd.
Kumkum Bhattacharya
Bhimrao Bandgar
The Criterion: An International Journal in English - ISSN: 0976-8165
Richa Tripathi
Mary E John
Journal of Comparative Family Studies
Michelle Hackett
Sajjad Jamali
APH Publishing Corporation
Dr.Tapas Barman, Ph.D
PRAGATI : Journal of Indian Economy
Rajeshwari Malik
Debditi Chakraborty
International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences
Kapil Singh
Dr Ambika Kohli
Contemporary South Asia
Patricia Jeffery
Vibhuti Patel
Masters Thesis, University of Adelaide
Identities in South Asia
Queeny Pradhan
OMKAR PUBLISHERS
OMKARESHWARA PUBLISHERS
Business and Management Research
Navnath Tupe
Irudaya Rajan
Basic Needs India
Subrat Mishra
AAS working papers in social anthropology
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
- Find new research papers in:
- Health Sciences
- Earth Sciences
- Cognitive Science
- Mathematics
- Computer Science
- Academia ©2024
Disparity in Gender Equality at Workplace in India
- 6(3):567 - 574
- University of Delhi
Discover the world's research
- 25+ million members
- 160+ million publication pages
- 2.3+ billion citations
- Purnima Mohapatra
- Thomas H. Jerdee
- Adv Develop Hum Resour
- Reshma Thomas
- EUR ECON REV
- Meghnad Desai
- Brian J. Surette
- Recruit researchers
- Join for free
- Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up
Gender, Social Inclusion and Union Budget 2024-25
- July 31, 2024
- Event Reports , Gender Impact Studies Center , Insights
Event Report Sana Ansari
The 5th Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of the Union Budget 2024-25 , organized by the Gender Impact Studies Center at IMPRI, included a discussion on “ Gender, Social Inclusion, and the Union Budget 2024-25. ” The session was introduced by Ms Reet Lath, a researcher at IMPRI, and chaired by Prof. Vibhuti Patel. The expert panel comprised Dr Sanghamitra Dhar, Prof. N. Manimekalai, Shri Shailesh Mishra, Ms Deepa Pawar, Dr Neha Shah, Prof. Paramita Saha, Dr Aditi Kapoor, and Dr Aditi Sawant.
Prof. Vibhuti Patel ji began the session by highlighting the budget’s promises in agriculture, employment, skilling, inclusive human resource development, social justice, MSMEs, urban development, energy security, infrastructure, and R&D. These areas are crucial for gender equity and social inclusion, especially for marginalized populations facing intersecting disadvantages of class, caste, ethnicity, religion, location, ability, and gender. Prof. Vibhuti ji stressed the need for intersectional, participatory, decentralised, and outcome-based gender-responsive budgeting. The budget is divided into three parts: Part A for schemes 100% targeted at women, Part B for schemes with 33-99% allocation for women, and Part C for schemes with less than 30% allocation. However, it has a binary approach to gender, neglecting the transgender community’s needs in education, employment, health, shelter, and decision-making. Additionally, allocations for women’s initiatives often lack clear timelines and strategies, and schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao frequently divert funds to advertisements instead of directly empowering girls.
Prof. Paramita Saha ji discussed the budget’s focus on “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas, and Sabka Vishwas,” aiming for social inclusion across all societal strata and geographical regions. Despite robust GDP growth of around 8%, issues like food inflation, inequality, and a shrinking budget relative to GDP pose risks to those dependent on public expenditure and social security. Employment and skilling are key areas, with incentives for corporate first-time job seekers expected to benefit 210 lakh youth. Plans for women’s workforce participation through working women hostels and skilling initiatives lack specific implementation details. The budget allocation for SC and ST communities has seen a slight increase, but the Ministry of Tribal Affairs ’ budget has decreased from 12,938.32 crores in 2023 to 12,386 crores in 2024. For the Northeast, the allocation stands at 10,893 crores, a 9.9% increase, but key projects have stagnant allocations.
Prof. N. Manimekalai ji highlighted trends in budget allocation across sectors, noting that economic liberalization since 1990 has exacerbated both economic and gender inequalities. She emphasized the importance of decent employment, pointing out that government internship schemes in corporates often lack proper training and permanent employment. The budget’s focus on capital expenditures is expected to generate income that should benefit marginalized populations, but this is not happening. Inflation and the rising cost of living disproportionately affect the poor, who need support in education, food, and security. Sustainable development and gender equality are crucial for achieving “Vishit Bharat” by 2047. The Gender Economic Forum’s report shows fluctuating progress in gender equality, emphasizing the need to address inequalities across all genders and recognize the diversity among women. The budget should prioritize employability, education, and skill development to improve gender equality and social inclusion in India.
Dr. Aditi Kapoor ji discussed the misconception that climate change is solely about increased pollution. She emphasized the rapid urbanization in India and the lack of attention to pollution in growing towns and cities. The budget’s focus on productivity and resilience should address air, water, and noise pollution, especially for vulnerable populations like street vendors, construction workers, slum dwellers, and traffic police. Despite the availability of LPG, indoor pollution from cooking remains a significant issue for women in slums. The budget’s allocation for the Central Pollution Control Board increased by 6.5%, but without clear plans for new equipment or mitigation efforts. Climate resilience is also underfunded, with minimal focus on disaster and climate change resilience for low-income and marginalized communities. The informal sector, including small producers and fisherfolk, significantly contributes to the GDP but is underrecognized. Investments in rooftop solar panels and the PM Awas Yojna promoting female house ownership are positive steps, but subsidies should target female-owned houses. The budget lacks specific targets for women’s participation in agriculture and overlooks skill-building and labor-saving devices crucial for women in rural areas.
Ms Aditi Sawant ji explained that the budget is a financial statement reflecting the government’s priorities across different sectors in the process of economic development. Although India is among the top five GDPs in the world, with over 17% of its GDP derived from agriculture, there is a significant mismatch between the agricultural sector’s GDP contribution and its share in budget allocation. Agriculture and rural development receive only 3% of the budget despite their critical roles in consumption and employment. Aditi Sawant ji highlighted three main areas of concern: women’s participation and empowerment in agriculture, social inclusion and technology penetration, and budget allocation for research and development.
The speaker emphasized that studies in Maharashtra reveal only 5% of women participate in significant household financial decisions. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare reported that the number of female cultivators and workers is significantly lower than their male counterparts, reflecting poor land ownership among women. Despite initiatives like PM AWAS YOJNA, which promotes women’s property rights, many states still lag in implementation. Moreover, official records often do not accurately reflect the number of female agricultural workers, exacerbating the issue of gender disparity in this sector.
Self-help groups, often involved in activities like stitching, pickle making, and candle making, do not provide long-term professional growth for women. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of digital devices in agriculture, yet many farmers with smartphones do not use them for agricultural purposes. Sawant stressed the need for government investment in professional and vocational training for farmers, as outlined in the new education policy, which proposes agriculture as a vocational course from the 9th grade. However, the implementation of this course has been insufficient. Sawant criticized the budget as a temporary fix rather than a fundamental solution to the agricultural sector’s issues.
Shri.Shailesh Mishra ji began by quoting that aging is not the loss of youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength. He questioned whether this belief is genuinely held, noting that the 2024-25 budget omits mention of senior citizens. According to a recent government economic survey, there is an urgent need for a structured elder care policy in India. Despite the NITI Aayog’s 2023 report on age care welfare highlighting issues like social engagement, financial stability, security, and digital well-being, the budget does not adequately address the needs of senior citizens. Mishra pointed out that the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment’s budget is around Rs 13,500 crore, but only Rs 279 crore is allocated for aging, which is just 2% of the department’s budget. This allocation is insufficient for a population that constitutes 10% of the country.
Shailesh ji emphasised the need for healthcare, security, independence, and financial stability for seniors. He advocated for the restoration of senior citizen railway concessions, which were withdrawn during the pandemic, and the removal of the 18% GST on essentials for seniors, arguing that most seniors do not have a steady income or social security. He called for a pension system to support these individuals. Mishra stressed that senior citizens require security, mental health provisions, safety, and elder care services.
Dr. Neha Shah ji discussed income inequality, referencing the Paris-based World Inequality Report 2024, which indicates that the top 1% of income and wealth shares in India are at their highest historical levels. The report reveals that India’s top 1% holds a significant portion of income and wealth, among the highest in the world. The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) aims to cover 81 crore people over the next five years, highlighting the widespread poverty in the country. Neha ji emphasised the importance of discussing the budget because fiscal policy plays a crucial role in achieving distributive justice through income redistribution.
Neha ji pointed out that 48.5% of tax revenue comes from indirect taxes, which are regressive in nature. In contrast, direct taxes, which are supposed to be progressive, account for only 17% from corporate taxes and 19% from personal taxes. This fiscal structure is not supportive of the sections of society that need assistance. Shah noted that the budget’s acknowledgment of unemployment is a positive step, but the support for social welfare sectors remains inadequate.
Neha ji also discussed gender budgeting, noting that women’s participation in the economy is low due to poor skills and the constraints of the care economy. She stressed the need for investment in both STEM and the care economy to increase women’s participation. Investment in the care economy is crucial in rural areas where women face constraints that prevent them from participating in the workforce.
Ms. Deepa Pawar ji raised concerns about the lack of provisions for nomadic and denotified tribes in the budget. With only Rs 5 crore allocated for these communities, She criticised the budget for favouring capitalists and lacking social justice. She questioned the government’s political stance and for whom the budgetary provisions are intended. Deepa ji called for the government to promote intersectional, inclusive, and empowering ideas. She highlighted the need for clarity and focus on grassroots communities, rather than a capitalist-driven budget.
Deepa ji pointed out that schemes like Support for Marginalised Individual Livelihood Enterprises are supposed to rehabilitate marginalised communities, but the budget’s approach seems more geared towards profit-driven enterprises rather than social justice. She strongly criticised the government for not addressing the needs of marginalized communities and urged a rethinking of their budgetary priorities.
Way forward
In conclusion, the budget reflects the government’s priorities and should emphasize agriculture and employment while addressing gaps in the informal and unorganized sectors. The education system needs reform with more vocational and professional training. The government should act as a welfare state, generating jobs and facilities, and providing empathy and constructive action plans for senior citizens. A focus on sustainable development and gender inclusion is essential for a more equitable budget. This decade is crucial for India; failing to look beyond youth could turn potential assets into liabilities, as seen in Japan and China, which are struggling to support their aging populations.
Acknowledgement: Sana Ansari a researcher at Impri pursuing masters in public policy at St Xavier’s College Mumbai.
IMPRI, a startup research think tank, is a platform for pro-active, independent, non-partisan and policy-based research. It contributes to debates and deliberations for action-based solutions to a host of strategic issues. IMPRI is committed to democracy, mobilization and community building.
Share this:
Related posts.
Rural Realities and Union Budget 2024-25
Population, Health, and Union Budget 2024-25
Cities, Local Governance and Union Budget 2024-25
WhatsApp us
- E-mail the Help Desk
- User's Guide for H-Announce
International Conference on Navigating Inequality, Development, and Sustainability in the Global South
Context and Rationale
The burgeoning discourse surrounding the Global South has been attracting scholarly attention worldwide lately. To delve into this emerging domain of research, one needs to understand the inherent paradox the region exhibits. While the region has many rapidly growing economies, the concerns pertaining to inequality, social and economic development, environmental vulnerabilities, and sustainability in the Global South pose a serious challenge in ensuring the basic standard of living and sustenance. These issues are particularly pressing in regions such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While such nations display a substantially increasing GDP and a booming technological sector, they also contend with severe poverty, gender disparities, and rural-urban divides. Concerning social disparity and intersectionality especially in South-Asian countries such as India, where caste, community, and religion take precedence in discourses rendered to counter inequality, this conference in its critical endeavour raises questions on the prevalent established norms. Furthermore, environmental sustainability poses a significant challenge with issues such as air pollution, water scarcity, and the harrowing impacts of climate change, consequential in the overall development of the region.
This conference aims to explore these intersections through critical and scholarly deliberations, offering a platform for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss and develop actionable strategies and praxis. Addressing these issues requires a nuanced understanding of this complex interplay of domains merging times and spaces, both geographical and otherwise. Social and economic development must be inclusive and sustainable to ensure long-term benefits. This conference will also focus on how countries from the Global South can navigate these complex challenges, promoting an equitable and sustainable development model thereby ensuring a much habitable ecosystem of balanced development and resources for all.
Thrust Areas
We invite abstracts of about 250 words for paper presentations that deliberate on the following sub-themes listed below (but are not limited to), and may be sent to [email protected] on or before 10 August 2024 (extended) . Authors are also requested to send a brief bio note of about 100 words specifically mentioning their designation and affiliation. The sub-themes are as follows:
- Inequality, Inclusive Growth, and Equity
- Policies and Praxis: Governance, Polity, and Public Administration
- Literature, Media, and Dialogue: Narrative Responses from the Global South
- Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development Goals
- Science, Technological Progress, and the Digital Divide
- Marginalities, Representation, and Socio-cultural Movements
- Intersectionality in the Global South: Gender, Caste, and Religion
- Demography, Migration, and Diaspora
- Development Indicators, Measurements, and Critique
- Subjective Wellbeing and Social Dynamics: Dimensions from the Global South
Registration Fee
The registration fee for participation is as follows for each individual participant and is to be paid after the intimation of acceptance, the details of which will be communicated soon. In the case of co-authors, each author must pay the registration fee individually. Participants from the SAARC countries will be eligible for the same registration fee as participants from India. Please refer to the attachment for fee details.
Publication:
Select papers may be published in any of the following after undergoing a rigorous review process:
- Scopus-indexed books
- Scopus-indexed journals
- Web of Science journals
- UGC-CARE journals
Said publication is subject to approval/ acceptance by the respective publisher as per their author guidelines which include theme(s), timelines, Article Processing Charges (if any, or wherever applicable, and is to be paid by the concerned authors), and any other conditions/ criteria that the publishers may have. The conference organisers will facilitate the process for a seamless dissemination of the conference proceedings.
- Submission of abstracts: 10 August 2024 (Extended)
- Acceptance intimation: 15 August 2024
- Early bird registration: 20 August 2024
- Full paper submission: 31 August 2024
- Late registration: 03 September 2024
- Date of the conference: 13–14 September 2024
The VIT-AP School of Social Sciences and Humanities (VISH) has evolved into an independent School that combines the Department of Languages and the existing courses of Social Sciences that have been present at the university since its inception in 2017. The VIT-AP School of Social Sciences and Humanities (VISH) focuses on providing students with language skills and a broad perspective on the evolution of culture, language, society, politics, and economics. Apart from the production and dissemination of the disciplinary concerns, the faculty of the School also provide students with a holistic education that would complement other disciplines of study offered at the University resulting in individuals who are capable of applying new knowledge and solving problems. The varied courses offered by the School enable the students to gain highly marketable skills ranging from critical thinking and problem solving, to knowledge application and evidence-based analysis.
Organising Team
Chair, Organising Committee: Dr Priyanka Ghosh, Dean In-charge VISH
Convenor: Dr Ashraf Pulikkamath
Co-convenors: Dr Soumik Sarkar, Dr Ritu Varghese, and Dr Anjitha Gopi
Organising Committee Members: Dr Rafael Gonzalez Macho, Dr Sunil Khosla, Dr Tanmoy Das, Dr Linet Thomas, Dr Neethu P Antony, Dr Arpana Venu, Dr Suresh Garimella, Dr Amrita Purakayastha, and Dr Karishma Bisht
Contact Information
Conference Email: [email protected]
School of Social Sciences and Humanities (VISH)
Vellore Institute of Technology-Andhra Pradesh (VIT-AP) University
Andhra Pradesh, India
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Gender inequality in health care in India: Evidence from NFHS-3. Economic Papers. A journal of applied economics and policy. Jan 2017 ... (2018). Gender inequality in India: An analysis of socio ...
Gender inequality remains a deeply rooted and pervasive issue in India, casting a long shadow over its development. This study, titled "Gender Inequality in India: Origins, Outcomes, and a Path Forward," aims to dissect the factors contributing to this challenge, assess its consequences, and offer a roadmap for a more equitable future.
In developing countries like India, the prevailing practice of gender discrimination hampers the inclusion of women in mainstream activities and thereby perpetuates gender inequality (Esteve-Volart, 2004).Gender inequality is associated with disparities in social status, authority, and the ability to obtain or manage resources (Okojie, 1994).The concept of a gender gap explores the extent to ...
As per UNDP report, India ranks 132 out of 187 countries on gender inequality index (GII). India ranks low partly because of its skewed ratio, with only 914 females for every 1000 males, according to Indian government data. As per UNDP report, only 29% of Indian women above the age of 15 in 2011 were part of labour force, as compared to 80.7% men.
The Problem. India struggles with gender inequality issues beyond just equal economic growth and access to educational resource opportunities. Gender inequality exists in the form of socially constructed, predefined gender roles firmly anchored in India's sociocultural fabric that has deep cultural and historical roots.
PJAEE, 17 (9) (2020) 131. "GENDER INEQUALITY IN INDIA". Dr. Raju. V 1, Dr.Nagaraju Kilari2, Dr.S.Vinay Kumar3. 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Kristu Jayanti College, Bangalore ...
The vast majority of theories reviewed argue that gender inequality is a barrier to economic development, particularly over the long run. The focus on long-run supply-side models reflects a recent effort by growth theorists to incorporate two stylized facts of economic development in the last two centuries: (i) a strong positive association between gender equality and income per capita (Fig. 1 ...
workforce. In Kerala only 30.1 percent of the women are employed compared to the states with high gender inequality such as, Rajasthan (55.4 per cent) and Gujarat (50.8 per cent)8. Figure 2 below displays GII index values and participation of women in paid. workforce in the different states of India.
A fundamental ind ic ator of gender inequality in India, and arguably, one of the most powerful, is a preference for sons so str ong that it is manifested as limiting the birth and survival of girls.
The benefits of reducing gender inequality go beyond women. Gender equality may be seen by some as a zero-sum game, from an economic point of view. ... IMF Working Papers 2022, 232; 10.5089/9798400224843.001.A001. Source: author's formulation. ... Excluding China and India, the gender gaps in labor force participation rates in emerging ...
The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. 1. Introduction ... Figure 1:Gender inequality remains high in India Note: The figure shows the female-to-male ratios for all variables, except for unpaid domestic work which is the ...
In 2016, India ranked 130 out of 146 in the Gender Inequality Index released by the UNDP. It is evident that a stronger turn in political discourse is required, taking into consideration both ...
reported a decrease by 7.4% while that against women. gender increased by 7.1% over 2010. Incidents like the Park Street inequality. with rape low in Kolkata,1 Nirbhaya gang rape2 in New Delhi and and. gender-based Shakti Mills gang rape3 in Mumbai have created headlines in. highest the last two years and remain afresh in public memory.
sake of humanity. Ending gender discrimination is not only a question of human right but an issue of national development (Vepa, 2007, p. 328-329). GENDER EQUALITY: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN AND TRANSGENDER ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN The origin of gender inequality in the Indian society lies in its patriarchal setup.
Gender inequalities, and their social causes, impact India's sex ratio, women's health over their lifetimes, their educational attainment, and even their economic conditions. It also prevents the institution of equal rape laws for men. Gender inequality in India is a multifaceted issue that primarily concerns women, but also affects men.
In 14 countries, including Brazil and Poland, roughly the same shares of men and women say equal rights for women are very important, and in an additional seven countries, gender gaps on this question are 10 percentage points or less. In India, women (75%) are only modestly more likely than men (70%) to support equal rights for both genders.
Across India gender inequality results in unequal opportunities, and while it impacts on the lives of both genders, statistically it is girls that are the most disadvantaged. Globally girls have higher survival rates at birth, are more likely to be developmentally on track, and just as likely to participate in preschool, but India is the only ...
score of 0.563 on the gender inequality index and came 114 th in the world in. terms of gender gap. According to the new (2015) report of the McKinsey. Global Institute, 'The Power of Parity ...
Gender Inequality in India Dr. Bharat D. Karhad Principal, N. K. Varadkar Arts and R. V. Belose Commerce College, Dapoli, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, (India). ... In her research paper titled "Women's Economic Empowerment in India: Challenges and Opportunities" published in the Journal of Gender, Work & Organization, Priya Desai (2020) examines ...
Developments in India: The most deep-rooted forms of gender inequality had been built into the structure of traditional Indian society. Through gender inequality exists a large measure in the society under different dimensions for long time, its importance has grown in the recent times only. In the traditional society the inequality between males
A Study of Gender Inequality In India This problem is simply known as gender biasness, which in simple term means the gender stratification or making difference a male or a female. According to the United Nations Development Program‟s Human Development Report (2013), India ranks 132 out of 187 countries on the gender inequality index- lower ...
To review the Studies related to dimensions of gender inequality in India. 2. To review the studies related to role of women in country. ... working of research paper, thesis and books of famous sociologist. 18) Dr.Naushad Khan(2018) Critical Review of Past Literature on Gender Inequality in the World To critically review the inequality in the
Abstract. Gender inequality is the concept explaining the unequal treatment between males and the female counterpart. The global HDI for females is 5.90% lesser than the male counterpart. South ...
The Gender Economic Forum's report shows fluctuating progress in gender equality, emphasizing the need to address inequalities across all genders and recognize the diversity among women. The budget should prioritize employability, education, and skill development to improve gender equality and social inclusion in India.
Concerning social disparity and intersectionality especially in South-Asian countries such as India, where caste, community, and religion take precedence in discourses rendered to counter inequality, this conference in its critical endeavour raises questions on the prevalent established norms.