A great deal of human behaviour is not the result of individual preferences. Rather, it is governed by institutional rules, norms and conventions that have powerful material effects on people’s lives. Institutions have been defined as the ‘rules of the game’ in a society. These rules may be written or unwritten, explicit or implicit, codified in law, mandated by policy, sanctified by religion, upheld by convention or embodied in the standards of family, community and society. They play a powerful role in shaping human behaviour, in terms of both what is permitted and what is prohibited. In the economy, they:
influence the gender division of labour between production and reproduction in different parts of the world; and
give rise to distinctive regional patterns in labour force participation and economic activity by women and men.
A great deal of human behaviour is not the result of individual preferences. Rather, it is governed by institutional rules, norms and conventions . . .
While institutions themselves are abstract concepts, they take concrete form in organisations – the ‘teams’ that play the game. There are four key categories of institutions, each with a particular domain (or area of influence) in society and each associated with a different set of organisations and groups. These are states, markets, civil society/community, and kinship/family (see box 3.1).
These institutions govern the processes of production, reproduction and distribution in a society. The way they are set up varies by level of economic development, structure of economy and extent of commodification (i.e. the extent to which a market value has been given to previously non-commercial goods and services). In terms of the productive pyramid shown in Fig. 2.1, there are likely to be differences across the world in the extent both of formal markets and state regulation and of subsistence production.
Box 3.1 Key Categories of Institutions in Society
States: The state is responsible for the overall governance of society. It enforces the rules and procedures that regulate how the different institutional domains interact. Access to state resources, including employment, is through its legislation, policies and regulations. Examples of state organisations include those associated with the bureaucracy, the police, the legislature, the judiciary and local government.
Markets: Markets are organised around a commercial logic – the maximisation of profit – and resources are exchanged on the basis of contract-based entitlements. Market-based organisations include firms, commercial farms, micro-enterprises, trade networks and multinational corporations.
Civil society/community: Civil society refers to a range of associations whose members pursue a variety of interests. The membership and goals are usually ‘chosen’, and members determine how resources and responsibilities will be distributed on the basis of some agreed set of principles. Such organisations include trade unions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and professional associations. Community is used here to refer to associations and groups based on what sociologists call ‘primordial’ ties. Membership of these groups is ascribed rather than chosen. Individuals’ access to their resources depends on how they are positioned in the group by these ascribed identities. Examples of community include caste, tribe and patron-client relationships.
Kinship/family: Kinship and family refer to forms of social organisation, including lineages and clans, that are based on descent, marriage and various forms of adoption or fostering. One of the key organisations associated with kinship and family is ‘the household’, usually based on shared residence and/or shared budgets. Elson calls households the site par excellence of ‘provisioning’, that is, “the activity of supplying people with what they need to thrive, including care and concern as well as material goods”.
Four key categories of institutions in society are: states, markets, civil society/community and kinship/family.
Institutions provide a structure, and hence a degree of stability, to everyday life. They reduce uncertainty, make certain forms of behaviour more predictable and allow individuals to co-operate with others to produce results that they would not be able to achieve on their own. At the same time, however – and whatever their official ideologies – institutions rarely operate in egalitarian ways. Rather, they tend to support hierarchical relationships organised around:
inequalities of ownership or access to the means of production (land, capital, finance, equipment);
achieved or acquired attributes (education, skills, contacts); and
various socially-ascribed attributes (gender, age, caste, etc.).
A variety of explanations and justifications are given for these hierarchies, including merit, capacity, aptitude, biology, nature or divine will. Institutions’ rules of access – and exclusion – also intersect and overlap (see box 3.2).
Society’s institutional framework – its rules, norms, beliefs and practices – means that individuals and social groups not only start from different places, but also have different opportunities to improve their situation in the course of their lives.
Box 3.2 Intersecting Inequalities and the State
Institutional inequalities in one area can be offset or worsened by access or exclusion in another. For example, inequalities in a community on the basis of caste, race or gender can be countered by anti-discrimination laws in employment or by the ability of subordinate groups to take advantage of new opportunities in the market place. On the other hand, prejudice by employers or exclusionary practices by trade unions and professional associations can make these inequalities worse. Society’s institutional framework – its rules, norms, beliefs and practices – means that individuals and social groups not only start from different places, but also have different opportunities to improve their situation in the course of their lives. Given its importance in the overall governance of society, the state can play a critical role in maintaining, reinforcing or countering inequalities in other domains.
Institutions and Gender Inequality
Gender inequality, the main focus of this book, is one of the most pervasive forms of inequality. This is not just because it is present in most societies, but also because it cuts across other forms of inequality (see introduction to Chapter 1). It is constructed through both:
the formal laws and statutes that make up the official ideologies of a society and its institutions; and
the unwritten norms and shared understandings that help shape everyday behaviour in the real world.
Gender inequality . . . is one of the most pervasive forms of inequality . . . not just because it is present in most societies, but also because it cuts across other forms of inequality.
Although gender inequality is thus found throughout society, institutional analyses of it generally start by looking at kinship and family. This is because these are the primary forms of organisation that are inherently gendered. Women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities in the domestic domain also reveal how the wider society views their natures and capabilities and hence constructs gender difference and inequality. In addition, a great deal of productive, as well as reproductive, activity is organised through kinship and family. This is particularly the case among the poor in poorer parts of the world. Consequently, even when women and men participate in the wider economy, their participation is partly structured by relations in the household.
Families and kinship are different from other institutions because of the nature of the relationships within them. These are usually based on intimate ties of blood, marriage and adoption (in contrast to the more impersonal relationships of contract and statute found in the market and state). They are also generally ‘gender-ascriptive’. In other words, to be a husband, wife, brother or daughter is to be a male or a female. In most societies, women are associated with the functions of care and maintenance. These include bearing and rearing children and the wider range of activities necessary to the survival and well-being of family members on a daily basis. While men may participate in some of these activities, particularly in training boys ‘how to be men’ or sharing in certain household chores, they tend to have far less involvement than women.
Women thus play a key role in unpaid processes of social
reproduction (i.e. reproducing society’s human resources on a daily and intergenerational basis). They may also predominate when these activities are shifted into the market, for example, nursing, teaching and social work. However, the part they play in production and accumulation – and the form that their involvement takes – varies considerably across cultures. Different rules, norms and values govern the gender division of labour and the gender distribution of resources, responsibilities, agency and power. These are critical elements for understanding the nature of gender inequality in different societies. Ideas and beliefs about gender in the domestic sphere often get reproduced in other social relations, either consciously as gender discrimination or unconsciously as gender bias. Rather than being impersonal, state or market institutions thus become ‘bearers of gender’. They position women and men unequally in access to resources and assign them unequal value in the public domain.
Regional Perspectives on Gender Inequality
Gender inequality varies at the regional level, suggesting a ‘geography’ of gender. This geography reflects systematic regional differences in:
the institutions of kinship and family;
the household patterns they have given rise to; and
the associated gender division of resources and responsibilities.
These have in turn given rise to regional differences in the gender division of labour between production and reproduction, paid and unpaid work, and the domestic and public domains.
[The] different rules, norms and values [that] govern the gender division of labour and the gender distribution of resources, responsibilities, agency and power . . . are critical elements for understanding the nature of gender inequality in different societies.
Regional differences mean not only that women and men participate in their national economies differently from each other, but also that these differences are not uniform across the world. Two factors are particularly important for the extent to which women play a role in the wider economy, the scope of their agency and their access to socially valued resources:
1. how corporate the unit is around which the household economy is organised (i.e. the extent to which resources and efforts are managed and allocated on a joint basis); and
2. how rigid the ‘public-private’ divide is, and hence women’s degree of public mobility and opportunities for direct economic participation.
Research from a variety of social science disciplines suggests that there are a range of household types associated with distinct ‘regional patriarchies’. These have particular patterns of land inheritance, marital practices, economic activity and welfare outcomes.
There are a range of household types associated with distinct ‘regional patriarchies’. These have particular patterns of land inheritance, marital practices, economic activity and welfare outcomes.
Asia
Despite variations in women’s public mobility and labour force participation across the region, ‘Asian’ households are generally organised along corporate lines, usually centred on the conjugal relationship.
Western Asia, South Asia and East Asia
The most marked forms of gender inequality in the region are associated with regimes of extreme forms of patriarchy. These include the belt stretching from North Africa and western Asia across the northern plains of South Asia, including Bangladesh and Pakistan. They also take in the countries of East Asia – China, Japan, Republic of Korea and Taiwan. These countries clearly have widely differing economies, histories, cultures and religions. However, they have certain historical similarities in how family, kinship and gender relations are organised and in patterns of female economic activity.
Kinship structures in these regions are predominantly patrilineal: descent is traced and property transmitted through the male members. Marriage tends to be exogamous and patrilocal: women marry outside their kin and often outside their village community, leaving their own homes at marriage to join their husband’s family. Households are organised along highly corporate lines, with strong conjugal bonds and cultural rules that emphasise male responsibility for protecting and provisioning women and children. Household resources and income are pooled under the management and control of the male patriarch. The payment of dowry by the bride’s family to the groom is the norm in the northern plains of India, though not necessarily elsewhere in East or western Asia.
Female chastity is emphasised (with severe penalties for any transgression). This is considered essential to ensure that property is transmitted based on biological fatherhood. Female sexuality is controlled through a strong public-private divide, with women secluded in the private domain. While the practice of ‘purdah’ is usually associated with Muslim societies, female seclusion based on norms of honour and shame is also practiced by Hindus, particularly the upper castes. Restrictions on female mobility, patrilineal inheritance and patrilocal marital practices have meant the economic devaluation of women and their overall dependence on men in much of this region. ‘Son preference’ is also marked.
Boserup pointed to the extremely low percentages of women in agriculture and trade in western Asia, North Africa and Pakistan, which she called ‘male farming systems’. Female family labour did not exceed 15 per cent of the total agricultural labour force (with the exception of Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey). Women made up less than 10 per cent of the labour force in trade in South and western Asia, and less than one-
Women in agriculture, Jordan
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
third in East Asia and areas of Chinese influence (Hong Kong, Singapore, Republic of Korea and Taiwan). In China, too, prior to the revolution, only 7 per cent of the Chinese labour force in trade were women. However, Boserup also noted variations to the pattern within the region. In South Asia, for example, women’s participation in trade varied from 2–6 per cent in Bangladesh, the northern plains of India and Pakistan to around 17 per cent in the southern states of India.
Somewhat less rigid gender relations are found in the way kinship and family are organised in South-East Asia . . . and, to some extent, the southern states of India and Sri Lanka.
South-East Asia
Somewhat less rigid gender relations are found in the way kinship and family are organised in South-East Asia (Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam) and, to some extent, the southern states of India and Sri Lanka. The structure of households is still along corporate lines, but with important differences. For example, a child is considered equally related to both its parents and a person’s most important social grouping comprises relatives from both sides. Son preference is moderate or non-existent.
There are more cases of women as well as men being able to inherit property, and a greater incidence of matrilineal kinship, where property and descent are traced through women. While income is likely to be pooled in these households, women are often responsible for managing the household budget. A greater number of newly married couples set up their own households and more wives retain links with their natal families. The exchange of wealth at marriage tends to be reciprocal between the families of bride and groom, or else greater on the part of the latter in the form of ‘bride-wealth’. Most South-East Asian countries have traditionally been more tolerant of sexual freedom for both women and men, although colonialism brought in more restrictions, particularly for women.
Boserup noted that female family labour made up around 50 per cent of the total agricultural force in Thailand and 75 per cent in Cambodia, both areas of female farming. Women also made up around half of the labour force engaged in trade and commerce in Burma, Cambodia, Lao PDR, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (see box 3.3).
Box 3.3 Gender Relations in Vietnam
Despite the strong influence of Confucianism among the ruling elite in pre-revolutionary Vietnam, most rural women worked daily in the fields and were largely responsible for trade. Vietnamese women were not only involved in managing the household budget, but also in direct production such as transplanting rice and, importantly, in marketing the produce. Husbands could not dispose of harvested rice without their wives’ consent. Although there was patrilocal-patrilineal marriage and some evidence of son preference, women were not regarded as ‘helpers to men’ but as their equals.
However, the absence of any marked restrictions on women’s mobility, and some degree of symmetry in the division of labour in the household, should not be taken to imply an absence of gender inequality in general in these societies. For example, even though Filipino women may have high status relative to women in some other countries, this needs to be assessed in relation to Filipino men to be meaningful. It should also be noted that it is in the relatively more egalitarian regimes of South-East Asia – Thailand and the Philippines – that sex tourism has emerged as a key source of income for women. Clearly, labour markets continue to reproduce gender disadvantage. Bearing this in mind, it is still clear that gender regimes in this part of the world do not result in the very marked gender inequalities in survival and well-being which, as shown in the next chapter, continue to characterise regions marked by ‘extreme’ patriarchy.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Research on household arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa point to the wide prevalence of highly complex, lineage-based homesteads with considerable gender segmentation. Women and men from the same homestead may work in separate groups, in different economic crops or on separate fields, and spouses may maintain individual accounting units. This presents a different challenge to mainstream economic portrayals
of the household (as a unified entity whose members pool and share their resources in order to maximise their joint welfare) to that posed elsewhere. Where households are organised on a corporate basis, as described earlier, the challenge has consisted of noting the existence of gender and other inequalities in the distribution of household welfare. There, certain members are systematically discriminated against in the distribution of the gains to household production. Here, however, household goods and incomes are generally not even meant to be held in common. Instead, cultural ideas and practices require that male and female income and resources belong to different spheres and are intended for different uses. Hence the need for a complex set of transactions in the household through which labour and incomes are used and needs met.
Along with [some] similarities there are important differences in the social organisation of kinship and gender relations across the African sub-continent, and even in the same country.
Much of sub-Saharan Africa is patrilineal. Women’s access to land is usually through usufructuary rights (i.e. rights to farm the land and profit from the produce but not to ownership) through their husband’s lineage group. Since women’s obligations to the family include food provisioning and caring for their children, they are granted this access to enable them to carry out these responsibilities. Female seclusion is uncommon, although it does occur among some communities such as the Muslim Hausa in Nigeria. However, such seclusion occurs in segmented households and Hausa women retain considerable economic autonomy. They manage their own enterprises and engage in ‘internal market’ transactions with their husbands. Marriage in the region usually involves the contractual payment of bride-wealth to the lineage of the woman by the husband’s family.
As might be expected, along with these similarities there are important differences in the social organisation of kinship and gender relations across the African sub-continent, and even in the same country. The organisation of gender relations in Uganda varies from region to region, but is generally strongly patrilineal and patriarchal structures predominate, with women’s economic autonomy and independent access to land being relatively more constrained than elsewhere in East Africa. Under customary law and practice in Uganda, women were minors without adult legal status or rights. In general, in much of eastern and southern Africa, women’s labour contribution tends to be subsumed in the cultivation of ‘household
fields’ over which men have ultimate control. However, studies from Zambia report evidence of jointly managed fields as well as fields individually managed by both sexes.
In parts of West Africa on the other hand (e.g. Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria), women generally have usufruct rights to separate holdings through their husband’s lineage. Both women and junior men also provide labour on household fields that are controlled by the compound head. These domestic groups are characterised by strong lineage ties and weak conjugal ties. Moreover, women enjoy direct access to land in matrilineal areas, many of which are also in West Africa (including Côte d’Ivoire, southern Ghana, Malawi and Zambia), as well as in areas of Muslim influence. Matrilineality means married women are able to retain links with their families of origin and gain access to land as members of their own lineage groups. As a result, their obligations are not limited to the conjugal unit but extend to natal family networks.
Women enjoy direct access to land in matrilineal areas, many of which are also in West Africa . . . , as well as in areas of Muslim influence.
In addition, there are more polygamous marriages in West and central Africa (with over 40 per cent of currently married women in such unions). The equivalent figures are 20–30 per cent in East Africa and 20 per cent or less in southern Africa. Polygamy contributes to a pattern of separate (rather than pooled) spousal budgets, assets and income flows and may include separate living arrangements. Women exercise considerable economic agency in the family structure and are not dependent on their husbands in the way that they are in much of South Asia.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced very different histories and patterns of economic development within three broad cultural traditions: indigenous, Hispanic and Afro-Caribbean. This has led to considerable diversity in their household arrangements. Nevertheless, many of the countries share certain features in common, including the intersection of colonialism and slavery, and large urban populations (around 70 per cent).
The region belongs to the weaker corporate end of the spectrum. The Spanish and Portuguese colonisers introduced their own version of the public-private divide into Latin America,
associating men with the calle (street) and women with the casa (home). However, this division is far stronger among the upper classes in areas with Hispanic, and hence Roman Catholic, influence. It is far less often found among the black and indigenous populations. While legal marriage may be the social ideal, as well as the norm in many parts of the region, there is a high incidence of consensual or visiting unions. In some areas of Latin America, this appears to reflect partly indigenous antecedents and partly the precariousness of marriage when male mobility is an integral part of economic strategies. In the Caribbean, it reflects the impact of slavery, which weakened ties between children and their fathers as slave children became the property of their mother’s owner. One result of this is a high number of female-headed households, as well as complex extended households made up of children from different unions.
Boserup noted that women’s economic activity in the public domain varied across the [Latin American and Caribbean] region. There were higher rates in populations with a strong African or Asian presence than in countries on the Atlantic coast where the Spanish influence is stronger.
Boserup noted that women’s economic activity in the public domain varied across the region. There were higher rates in populations with a strong African or Asian presence than in countries on the Atlantic coast where the Spanish influence is stronger. The region as a whole is characterised by low levels of female economic activity in rural areas and higher levels in urban areas. Women tend to be more active in agriculture in the Caribbean region, where there are more smallholder farms, than in Latin America. Large-scale plantation agriculture, and the fact that commoditisation and mechanisation have gone further in Latin American agriculture than elsewhere in the Third World, explain why it is less significant as a source of overall as well as of female employment. However, women are active in trade throughout the region and also dominate in the flows of migration into urban areas. This is an indication of the lack of strict restrictions on women’s mobility.
Updating the Geography of Gender
There have been significant changes since the period that informed Boserup’s analysis, including:
the oil shocks of the 1970s and subsequent debt crisis and recession;
the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s;
the collapse of some socialist societies and the managed transition to the market economy of others; and
the acceleration of the forces of economic deregulation, liberalisation and globalisation.
Most economies today are far more oriented to the market, far more open to international competition and far more integrated on a global basis than they were in the 1960s. The rest of this chapter looks at the extent to which changes in the wider economic environment have influenced the gender division of labour in different regions and modified the geography of gender described above.
Most economies today are far more oriented to the market, far more open to international competition and far more integrated on a global basis than they were in the 1960s.
Globalisation and the rise of flexible labour markets
Two factors have been particularly significant in driving the pace of globalisation:
the changing technology of transport and telecommunications, which served to compress time and space across the world; and
the dismantling of the regulatory frameworks that had provided some degree of national stability in markets for labour and capital in the post-war decades.
There has been a massive increase in world trade flows. Trade now accounts for 45 per cent of world Gross National Product (GNP) compared to 25 per cent in 1970. Much of this increase is in manufacturing, which accounts for 74 per cent of world merchandise exports (compared to 59 per cent in 1984). Developing countries have performed well in this sector. The share of manufactured goods in developing country exports tripled between 1970 and 1990 from 20 to 60 per cent. Exports in labour-intensive manufacturing have grown particularly rapidly, the most important and fastest growing being electronic components and garments. These accounted respectively for 10 and 6 per cent of total developing country exports in 1990–91.
There has also been a dramatic increase in the inter-
national mobility of capital. Capital flows in the industrial countries rose from around 5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the early 1970s to around 10 per cent in the early 1990s. The equivalent figures for transitional and developing countries were 7 and 9 per cent. Previously, transactions between countries occurred mainly in the form of trade in goods. Today, however, it is possible for individuals and firms to invest freely in foreign exchange and financial markets. This increased movement of capital between countries is often motivated by short-term opportunities to gain from more favourable interest or exchange rates. As recent crises in East Asia and Latin America have demonstrated, economies are extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of this global market.
Different forms of labour, such as outworking, contract work, casual labour, part-time work and home-based work have been replacing regular, full-time wage labour.
However, the movement of labour has not been deregulated to the same degree. On the contrary, there have been increasing restrictions on the mobility of unskilled labour, particularly by the developed countries. Migration per 1,000 of population declined during this period from around 6.5 to 4.5 in the industrialised countries and remained static at around one elsewhere (though this does not take account of illegal labour movements, particularly increasing trafficking in women).
At the same time, within national economies, labour markets have become increasingly ‘informalised’ and social protection has been eroded. Different forms of labour, such as outworking, contract work, casual labour, part-time work and home-based work have been replacing regular, full-time wage labour. These changes have largely affected the organised labour force in industrialised countries and the small minority in formal labour in poorer countries. The overwhelming majority of the working population in these poorer countries is still engaged in livelihood strategies outside the formal, protected economy. These strategies include a diverse set of activities, contractual arrangements and working conditions. There is consequently a social hierarchy to the labour market, depicted in Fig. 3.1, that loosely overlaps with the economic pyramid depicted in Fig. 2.1.
The occupational hierarchy in the formal labour market consists of:
An elite group of wealthy industrialists, financiers, entrepreneurs, etc. at the pinnacle. They make the ‘rules of the
Figure 3.1: Social Hierarchy of Livelihoods
game’ in their society, are wealthy enough to ensure their own security and often take advantage of the growing global market in savings, pensions and insurance.
Salaried and professional classes. They generally enjoy a considerable degree of job security and social status in the labour market.
‘Core workers’. They are in full-time employment, often unionised and protected by state provision. Some may be unemployed but they may still have some security in the form of state unemployment assistance.
The elite is likely to be smaller and much less wealthy in the poorer countries than in the richer countries. The second and third groups also represent a far smaller proportion of the total
work force in developing countries than in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. They are likely to have shrunk even further with the downsizing of the public sector in the wake of SAPs.
Comparing women’s labour force participation around the globe is problematic, and the difficulty of capturing often irregular, casual forms of work in the informal economy is compounded by the different definitions used in measurement.
Meanwhile, the informalised workforce – which has little stability of work, social security provision or state regulation – has expanded. It makes up more than 80 per cent in low-income countries and around 40 per cent in middle-income countries. The informal economy has its own hierarchy, distinguishing those with some degree of security in their lives from those without any:
Owners of some land or capital. They are in a position to hire labour on their farms or in their enterprises.
Waged workers in some form of regular employment. They often work in medium-sized enterprises, or on plantations or commercial farms.
Own-account workers, with little or no capital. They rely on their own or family labour.
Casual labourers and home-based workers. They are either unpaid family workers or disguised wage workers who earn a fraction of their directly employed counterparts.
A category of ‘detached’ labour. They eke out a living from various stigmatised occupations: prostitution, pimping, recycling trash, picking pockets, begging and so on. They not only lack any formal ties to the state, pension and insurance markets, but may also have lost their place in kin or community structures.
Gender and labour force participation in the 1980s and 1990s
Comparing women’s labour force participation around the globe is problematic, and the difficulty of capturing often irregular, casual forms of work in the informal economy is compounded by the different definitions used in measurement. The discussion here uses the conventional definition (i.e. activities done for pay or profit). While this does not fully capture women’s contribution to the economy, nor show what is happening in the unpaid economy, it reveals the restrictions
Table 3.1: Estimated Economic Activity Rate of Women and Female Percentage of the Labour Force
Table 3.1: Estimated Economic Activity Rate of Women and Female Percentage of the Labour Force (continued)
Source: The World’s Women 1970–1990: Trends and Statistics
Source: 2001 World Development Indicators
that women face in terms of paid work relative to men and how these vary across the world. It also has something important to say about the pattern of women’s work in recent decades and the extent to which the geography of gender difference in labour market participation has changed from that observed by Boserup.
The most striking features of labour force participation patterns in the last few decades are: (a) the rise in the percentage of women in the labour force; and (b) the accompanying increase in their share of overall employment. In almost every region, there are now many more women involved in the visible sectors of the economy (see Table 3.1). In addition, women’s participation has increased faster than men’s in almost every region except Africa, where it was already high. With a stagnating or, in some cases, decreasing male labour force, gender differences in labour force participation have shrunk in many regions.
[W]omen’s [labour force] participation has increased faster than men’s in almost every region except Africa, where it was already high.
These changes reflect a number of factors:
Demographic transition (i.e. the change from high to low rates of births and deaths) in most regions and a decline in fertility rates have allowed many more women to go out to work.
The increasing enrolment of young men in secondary and tertiary education, as well as the growing availability of pensions for older men, partly explain diminishing male participation.
The changing nature of labour markets has resulted in what can be described as a ‘double feminisation’ of the labour force internationally. Women have increased their share of employment while employment itself has started to take on some of the ‘informalised’ characteristics of work conventionally associated with women.
Another major change in patterns of work in recent decades has been in the distribution of the labour force between different sectors of the economy. Only in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa has female labour remained largely concentrated in the agricultural sector. East and South-East Asian countries, by contrast, are characterised by high levels of female labour force participation and by a more even distribution of female labour across agriculture, industry and services (see Table 3.2). Women made up over a third of the labour in each sector during 1970–1990, with their representation increasing in ‘services’ over this period. There is of course variation across the region (see box 3.4).
Table 3.2: Employment by Economic Activity
Table 3.2: Employment by Economic Activity (continued)
Table 3.2: Employment by Economic Activity (continued)
Box 3.4 Variations in Women’s Labour Force Participation in Asia
In Indonesia, there was an overall decline in national labour force participation, partly due to a restrictive time period for measuring economic activity and partly because the working age population was increasing over this period. However, female rural labour force participation continued to increase, outweighing these two factors. In rural areas, women’s labour force participation declined slightly in agriculture but increased in manufacturing and trade. In Vietnam, too, rural households rely heavily on off-farm and self-employment to supplement earnings from farming. In the Philippines, female employment is high, with women making up 37 per cent of the total labour force.
According to the UN, industrialisation as part of globalisation is currently as much female-led as it is export-led.
There have not only been changes in the distribution of women’s labour between different sectors of the economy. There has also been a change in their participation in the ‘traded’ sector of the visible economy. In some parts of the world, this has taken the form of higher participation in export manufacturing employment as economies moved from a capital-intensive, import-substituting industrialisation to a labour-intensive export-oriented one. According to the UN, industrialisation as part of globalisation is currently as much female-led as it is export-led.
Women’s high rates of participation in export-oriented manufacturing started in the East Asian ‘miracle’ economies and Mexico and spread to other parts of Asia and Latin America. However, the spread has not been universal. In South Asia, it has mainly taken off in Bangladesh where there has been an astonishing rise in the female labour force in the manufacturing sector since the early 1980s due to the emergence of an export-oriented garment industry. Other countries in Asia that have seen a dramatic increase in both labour-intensive export manufacturing and the share of women in the manufacturing labour force include Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. On the other hand, as export-production has become more skill- and
capital-intensive in a number of middle-income countries, the demand for female labour in manufacturing appears to have weakened (for example, in Puerto Rico, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan).
A textile factory in the Philippines
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
Women form at least as high a percentage of the workforce in the ‘internationalised’ service sector, including data entry and processing, as they do in export-manufacturing. Indeed they make up the entire labour force in this sector in the Caribbean. In a number of countries, such as the Philippines and Thailand, where tourism had become the largest provider of foreign exchange by 1982, a considerable percentage of this income is generated by the sex industry, which largely employs women.
Globalisation and economic liberalisation, often with the imposition of SAPs, have also caused changes in agriculture. There has been a shift from subsistence to cash crops and from
weak-performing traditional agricultural products (coffee, tobacco, cotton and cocoa) to higher value non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAEs) such as fresh fruit and nursery products. These require little or no additional processing, and most are produced as part of global supply networks (see box 3.5). The need to remain competitive means that production involves flexible and informal work arrangements similar to those seen in manufacturing. These include piecework; temporary, seasonal and casual work; and unregulated labour contracts. Studies suggest that women make up a disproportionate share of the workforce in this sector.
[W]omen make up a disproportionate share of the workforce in the [non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAEs)] sector.
Box 3.5 Women and Non-traditional Agricultural Exports (NTAEs)
In Latin America, particularly Colombia and Mexico where the sector is well established, NTAEs have generated seasonal employment for women. In Mexico in 1990, women made up around 15 per cent of the agricultural labour force but their participation went up to 50 per cent if only the production of fruit and flowers was considered. Women have also found employment in this sector in the Caribbean (leading to a decrease in the availability of the food for the local market that they traditionally produced and sold). In Africa, women make up around 90 per cent of the workforce in the NTAEs produced in large-scale enterprises organised along quasi-industrial lines. They are paid cash in direct exchange for their labour, in contrast to the unpaid labour they provide on family farms. However, many of these products are grown on smallholdings, often on a contract basis. While women provide much of the labour, they do not necessarily receive an equivalent proportion of the proceeds.
Along with these changes, there are still signs of the earlier regional pattern in female activity. Rates of female labour force participation were lowest in the belt of ‘extreme’ patriarchy, both in 1970 and in 1990, with the smallest increases recorded for the Arab countries of the Middle East.
Gender and hierarchies in the labour market
The increasing presence of women in paid work, and their greater share of employment, does not mean that gender inequalities have disappeared. It is also important to know where women and men are located in the social hierarchy of the market place. In other words, information on where women are relative to men in the pyramid of production depicted in Fig. 2.1 has to be supplemented by information on where they are in the social pyramid depicted in Fig. 3.2.
In countries where there are large numbers of women in the formal economy, they tend to be under-represented at the higher levels and over-represented in those lower down.
The percentages of both women and men in waged and salaried work – those most likely to work outside the home – are high in the industrialised countries of the OECD, in Eastern Europe, in Latin America and the Caribbean and in East Asia. Involvement in unpaid family work is low for both women and men in these regions. The picture is more uneven in South-East Asia, with high involvement in the waged economy in Malaysia, but lower involvement in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. It is generally low in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but with important differences in women’s economic activity. Women in South Asia (and in other regions of extreme patriarchy) continue to be concentrated in unpaid family work (over 60 per cent of the female work force) while in sub-Saharan Africa, percentages of women in unpaid family work are generally below 60 per cent. The rest are distributed between self-employment and, in a few countries, in waged employment (see box 3.6).
Measuring economic activity in the informal economy is particularly difficult and it varies considerably across the world. In India, for example, formal, protected employment accounts for around 10 per cent of overall employment, but only 4 per cent of female employment. Women’s share of formal employment, however, increased from 12 per cent in 1981 to 15 per cent in 1995.
Both formal and informal markets continue to be segmented by gender. In countries where there are large numbers of women in the formal economy, they tend to be under-represented at the higher levels and over-represented in those lower down. In Morocco, for example, 38 per cent of the total labour force is in ‘professional and technical’ and ‘administrative’ work, but only 10 per cent of the female labour force is in
these categories. In East Asia, South-East Asia and the English-speaking Caribbean, women’s participation in clerical, sales and services; production and transport; and agriculture, hunting and forestry is fairly high. However, they are generally under-represented in management and administration. In South Asia, women are concentrated in agriculture/forestry but less well represented in other sectors. There is a generally low representation of women in the labour force in the Middle East and North Africa, with Morocco reporting higher rates than the rest of the region.
Box 3.6 Female Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
In sub-Saharan Africa, women’s share of employment in the formal economy between 1970 and 1985 rose from 6 per cent to 25 per cent in Botswana, from 1.5 per cent to 6 per cent in Malawi, from 9 per cent to 20 per cent in Swaziland and from 0.6 per cent to 2 per cent in Tanzania. In Zambia, only 7 per cent of formal wage employment was female. In Guinea-Bissau, women accounted for 3.6 per cent of formal sector employment.
In Latin America, the percentage of the female labour force in formal sector employment was generally high in the 1980s, varying between 32 per cent in Paraguay, 41 per cent in Ecuador, 52 per cent in Chile, 53 per cent in Brazil, 59 per cent in Argentina and 61 per cent in Panama. However, these rates, and the apparent increase they represent over those prevailing in the 1970s, may be somewhat misleading. This is because they are inflated by the inclusion of women working in micro-enterprises, most of which operate in the informal economy.
From 1950 onwards, there has been a systematic rise in female labour force participation in Latin America. One of the most striking features of this has been the increasing share of ‘white collar’ (professional and technical) employment in almost every major city in the region. In Chile, women made up half this workforce. However, for the majority of poorer women, oppor-
tunities are more limited. In Mexico, women’s workforce participation since the early 1990s has increased steadily while that of men has decreased. Gender differences in participation rates have thus declined in both urban and rural areas (particularly in non-agricultural self-employment). Between 1991 and 1995, women made up 68 per cent of the increase in this sector, and 90 per cent in rural areas. However, only women with secondary or higher levels of education were in salaried employment.
Working hours are on average shorter in industrialised than in developing countries, and shorter in urban areas of developing countries than in rural. Yet women work longer hours than men in every case.
Finally, data on gender differences in time allocation show what is occurring in the non-market economy alongside changes in the market economy. They highlight a different, and persisting, dimension of gender inequality. Working hours are on average shorter in industrialised than in developing countries, and shorter in urban areas of developing countries than in rural. Yet women work longer hours than men in every case. The extent of the difference varies considerably. Women work just 10 per cent longer than men in rural Bangladesh, where they spend 35 per cent of their total work time in System of National Accounts (SNA) activities. In Kenya, on the other hand, they work 35 per cent longer and spend 42 per cent of their work time in SNA activities. Women’s longer working day – and the extent to which it exceeds that of men – may reflect the difference between situations where seclusion restricts their economic activities and those where they are expected to participate in production. In any case, women continue to put in long hours of unpaid work into the reproductive economy regardless of their role in the productive economy.
Classifying Gender Constraints
This chapter has provided an institutional explanation of gender inequality. It has focused on the organisation of family and kinship, but has also pointed to the relevance of the wider institutions of markets, states and civil society as ‘bearers of gender’. This section looks at different categories of gender constraint – those reflecting kinship and family systems and those reflecting the wider institutional environment. These are gender-specific constraints, gender-intensified constraints and imposed forms of gender disadvantage. They provide a background to the analysis of the relationship between gender inequality and poverty that occupies the rest of this book.
Gender-specific constraints
These reflect the rules, norms and values that are part of the social construction of gender. They vary among particular social groups in particular contexts and the way these groups define masculinity and femininity. Ideas about, for example, male and female sexuality, purity and pollution, female seclusion and the ‘natural’ aptitudes and predisposition of men and women all help to explain differences in what is permitted to men and to women in different cultures.
Gender-intensified constraints . . . reflect the uneven distribution of resources and opportunities between women and men in the household.
Gender-intensified constraints
These reflect gender inequalities in resources and opportunities. Class, poverty, ethnicity and physical location may also create inequalities but gender tends to make them more severe. Gender-intensified constraints are found in, for example, workloads, returns to labour efforts, health and education and access to productive assets (see box 3.7). They reflect the uneven distribution of resources and opportunities between women and men in the household. Where resources are scarce, women find themselves at a greater disadvantage than male members of the family. Some inequalities may be the result of community norms, such as customary laws governing inheritance. Others arise from decisions in the household, often because females are seen as having less value than males.
Box 3.7 An Example of Gender-intensified Constraints from Uganda
In Uganda, women produce 80 per cent of the food and provide about 70 per cent of total agricultural labour. An assessment of poverty in the country showed how women’s gender-specific domestic responsibilities interact with household poverty to increase their disadvantages in farming. Women are mainly found in the unpaid subsistence sector and perform their agricultural tasks without the use of technological innovations, inputs or finance. While it is true that many of these problems also apply to poor male farmers, men are not constrained by competing claims on their labour time.
Imposed forms of gender disadvantage
These reflect the biases, preconceptions and misinformation of those outside the household and community with the power to allocate resources. These institutional actors may actively reproduce and reinforce custom-based gender discrimination. Examples include:
employers who refuse to recruit women or only recruit them in stereotypically ‘female’ – and hence usually the most poorly paid – activities;
trade unions and professional associations that define their membership rules in ways that discourage the membership of women workers and professionals;
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that treat women as dependent clients rather than active agents;
religious associations that define women as somehow lesser than men, refusing to let them become priests or to read the holy texts;
banks that refuse to lend to women entrepreneurs because they pre-judge them to be credit risks;
judges who think women get raped through their own fault; and
states that define women as minors under the guardianship of men or as second-class citizens with fewer rights than men.
Gender is a key organising principle in the distribution of labour, property and other valued resources in society.
These forms of gender disadvantage show how cultural norms and beliefs are also found in the supposedly impersonal domains of markets, states and civil society.
Conclusion
Gender is a key organising principle in the distribution of labour, property and other valued resources in society. Unequal gender relationships are sustained and legitimised through ideas of difference and inequality that express widely held beliefs and values about the ‘nature’ of masculinity and femininity. Such forms of power do not have to be actively exercised to be effective. They also operate silently and implicitly through compliance with male authority both in the home and
outside it. For example, if the senior male in the household or lineage has the main responsibility for members’ welfare, he usually also has privileged access to its resources. Women, and junior men, accept his authority partly in recognition of his greater responsibilities and partly because they have less bargaining power.
While institutionalised norms, beliefs, customs and practices help to explain the distribution of gender resources and responsibilities in different social groups, they are clearly not unalterable. This is shown by the significant changes in work patterns that have occurred in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Female labour force participation rates have risen in most countries, while male rates have often stagnated or even declined. Various factors have played a role in different regions, including:
greater impoverishment in some places and rapid growth in others;
demographic transition and falling birth rates;
rising rates of education;
public policy;
socialist egalitarianism;
economic liberalisation; and
greater integration into the global economy.
While institutionalised norms, beliefs, customs and practices help to explain the distribution of gender resources and responsibilities in different social groups, they are clearly not unalterable.
Nevertheless, gender inequalities persist. They help explain why regions with extreme forms of patriarchy continue to have lower rates of female labour force participation than can be explained by their levels of per capita income. They may also help to explain some of the regional variations in the relationship between gender equality and economic growth noted in the previous chapter. Indeed, the use of religion as a variable noted in Dollar and Gatti’s analysis may simply be picking up regionally clustered institutions of ‘extreme patriarchy’, of which religion is only one aspect.
These more resilient aspects of patriarchy may also help to explain the positive relationship found by Seguino between gender inequality in wages and rates of economic growth. She suggests that institutions in patriarchal societies reinforce the
internalisation of social norms that favour men. Thus political resistance and therefore the costliness of gender inequality are reduced. For example, the state in the Republic of Korea condoned the marriage ban – the widespread practice by employers to make women quit work on marriage – that limited women’s job tenure, organisational ability and potential for wage gains. This explanation is also supported by a study of women’s labour market experiences in seven Asian countries (see box 3.7).
Gender inequality in areas such as education, wages and legal infrastructure is . . . related to broad regional variations in patriarchal regimes . . .
Box 3.7 The Importance of Enforcing Rights to Gender Equality
A study of women in the labour market in India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea and Thailand notes that differences in patriarchal organisation helped explain why Japan and the Republic of Korea, despite their high rates of economic growth, have lower rates of female labour force participation than the Philippines and Thailand. Women had higher relative pay and made greater inroads into higher paying occupations in the latter two countries. Of the five countries where women had lower relative pay, India, Japan and the Republic of Korea had equal pay laws while the latter two had also recently enacted strong equal-opportunity legislation. The institution of formal rights in support of gender equality is an important message about social values. However, legislation is clearly not sufficient on its own to bring this about and makes little difference if not enforced. Public action in the form of strong civil society organisations, including an active women’s movement, is necessary to ensure such laws are translated into practice.
The empirical findings show that gender inequality in areas such as education, wages and legal infrastructure is only partly related to per capita GNP. It is also related to broad regional variations in patriarchal regimes, particularly among the poorer countries of the world. The next chapter examines the relationship between gender inequality and poverty revealed by different approaches to poverty analysis.
« return.