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Women’s Status and the Effects on Global Economies: Identifying the Fault in Gender Discrimination

Emily Erdman, a junior student at Quinlan School of Business joins our blog as a guest author. Her blog will focus on gender discrimination and its effect on Enterprise Risk Management. Please join us with your comments.


 

Along with many other social movements, the Women’s Rights Movement has gained tremendous power over the past century. Women’s suffrage, workers equality, and numerous more in between have been key objectives in this effort. Today’s fight for women is one largely of equality in the workplace. On the surface it appears gender equality in the labor force has become a reality, however this is not the case.  Common data gives us a false sense of hope in the progression of gender equality. There are many issues buried deep in the fabric of many nations’ societies and economies that prohibit women from becoming fully integrated into the work force. Using women as equal participants in the labor force is crucial to economic growth. When women are not viewed as a strong economic asset, economies are unable to grow to their fullest potential.

 

The World Bank identifies in the World Development Report 2012, that women now make up 40 percent of the global labor force.  This is another deceiving statistic. Due to high maternal death rate, poor education prospects, and overall disadvantages to economic opportunities, women are continuously oppressed- putting some economies at a standstill. Numerous women in these cultures have the skills and education required for particular occupations, but due to societal oppression, are forced into subordinate positions. These women work a job they are overqualified for, resulting in a misuse of skills in the labor force, leading to economic discrepancies.

 

Another issue The World Bank examines is the lack of land security for women, specifically in Africa. Female farmers are not allocated equivalent land rights to their male counterparts, contributing to lower credit. Low credit results in fewer funds for these women to acquire necessary commodities, ultimately resulting in fractional crop yields. Low crop yields contribute only marginally to the economy, compared to the full yield that could be produced with proper land and credit resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that if women were given equal land resources to men, these developing nations could increase total output in anywhere from 2.5 to 4 percent of total agricultural production.

 

In this same report The World Bank describes why gender equality is imperative for development and economic efficiency for three major reasons: first being that gender equality removes the barriers that prohibit women from having the same educational, economic, and productivity opportunities as men. Second, gender equality improves women’s status, resulting in other progressive outcomes- one very important development being the educational and other opportunities of their offspring and the world’s future generation. And lastly, gender equality increases women’s chances to get involved in social and political decisions, leading to uniform rights for men and women in the future.

 

It is important to remember that negative conditions for women’s equality are often associated with negative economic consequences. An example listed in the World Development Report 2012 is the correlation between maternal education and infant mortality rates in developing countries. This report uses the example of Mozambique to prove that where there is low maternal education, there is also a high occurrence of children with stunted psychological development, including children under 24 months old showing poor motor and cognitive skills. These children are then less likely to invest themselves into education, and thus the cycle continues down the family line of lowly educated citizens, and inhibited economic opportunities.

 

A report by David Dollar and Roberta Gatti, “Gender Inequality, Income, and Growth: Are Good Times Good For Women?”, explains the effects of gender discrimination on global economies. Through multifarious and comprehensive growth models, Dollar and Gatti addressed three major ideas throughout their research. Their first conclusion stated lower investment in female education is not simply an “efficient economic choice,” but rather that countries that do under-invest in female education mature slower than those that invest. The second conclusion, determined that cultural and societal preferences often lead to gender inequality, and that these preferences, on a whole, make people worse off. And the third conclusion, which they feel is an area for future research, is that it appears in some cases, as countries flourish, so do investment in females.

 

Gender Discrimination not only hurts women, but economies as a whole.  The investment in women in a society leads to growing economic stability due to several contributing factors. Please stay tuned for the next blog in this series where we will take an in-depth look at women and their impact on a few industry verticals.

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