Gender inequality matters to development for two reasons.
First, it is a justice problem. Ideologies of women’s inferiority are used to justify serious human rights abuses including female infanticide, child marriage, female genital mutilation, sexual violence, and deprivation of equal access to health care, education, property, employment and pay.
Second, gender inequality is developmentally inefficient. Women’s limited access to and control of material resources and limited decision-making power within the household can produce high fertility rates, under-investment in aspects of family welfare such as child nutrition and education, and sub-optimal allocations of human capital in the economy. Constraints on women’s and girls’ education, access to health care (especially in relation to pregnancy and childbirth), independent livelihoods, and control of property and income contribute to underdevelopment and state fragility.
Gender is an important foundation of structural inequality. Almost everywhere, gender ideologies, through which unequal value is assigned to ‘female’ and ‘male’ anatomical sex, sustain economic, social and political inequalities. Although a hierarchy among women exists and produces competing interests, gender stratification is found across class, race, ethnicity and other markers of socio-economic status, creating common experience of disprivilege because of women’s sexual and economic subordination to men. Socialization, gender stereotyping, reference to a ‘natural’ or divinely ordained gender order, and a constant threat of violence, ensure women’s acquiescence to this structural inequality.
The ‘Gender in Development’ field has struggled to identify effective routes to women’s empowerment. Gender equality policies can threaten traditional interest groups and established patterns in state-society relations including a determination – often enshrined in unequal family laws – to keep gender relations out of the purview of public justice. Policies to improve women’s education levels and paid work do not mean they control their own income or are safe from domestic violence. Increasing numbers of women in public decision-making do not necessarily produce gender-equality policies. Given the complexity of women’s empowerment, the MDG 3 target (gender parity in school) and indicators (proportion of students who are girls, proportion of women in national representative politics, and in waged non-agricultural employment) are significantly off-mark.
Researchers of policy effectiveness concur in concluding that women’s collective action holds the key to women’s empowerment. This underlines the fact that women’s empowerment is a political achievement, not something that can be achieved by fiat. However, women’s collective action faces serious obstacles owing to constraints on women’s time (because of their significant responsibilities for care work), mobility (because of threats of violence) and resources (because of their weak market position). The effectiveness of women’s collective action also depends on democratic conditions – on guarantees of free speech and association, and on an electoral incentive for policy-makers to respond to women’s interests.
