- December 1, 2014
- 12:12 pm
- Serhat Cicekoglu
- no comments
Gender Inequality in Education, How Economies Suffer
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.
The famous Francis Bacon is attributed for the saying, “Knowledge is power.” Many have used this quote in variations to explain the importance of education and the act of bettering oneself through information gain. In the reverse, can we assume then the lack of knowledge is then weakness? According to the World Bank Gender World Development Report of 2012, college enrollment for women has increased 7 times in the past thirty years, compared to the four times it has increased for men. While this is an impressive statistic, it is very misleading, women still struggle to gain equal education to men around the world. Poor education opportunities in women lead to stunted or controlled careers, contributing to economic inefficiencies.
Both education and health are critical factors in aiding citizens to reach their full potential. Scientifically, health and educational opportunities are linked. For example, low childhood birth weights and disease cause low cognitive development. Ultimately, “Poorer health outcomes in adulthood in turn affect economic outcomes, reflected in health-related absences from the labor force and lower work hours and earnings.” It follows, that in developing countries where there is poorer sanitation and health standards, there is also stunted education. These developing countries are the ones that require the most improvement, especially with women as a minority group in education and a high ratio of “missing girls at birth”, which is estimated by the World Bank as the gender ratio at birth in specified areas compared to comparable populations with no discrimination. As a gender, women are already put at a disadvantage, from birth, as workforce contributors with lower birth rates and higher health risk factors than men. The Development Report goes on to explain how gender discrimination in education can hide behind the hard facts; while more women are now enrolled in higher education, their studies and career paths can ultimately be controlled by society and other factors. A large problem here is that the educational system itself sets certain expectations and standards for both boys and girls, which limit them and hold them back from reaching their full potential. There is a dire need for businesses and companies to experiment with hiring women in generally male-dominated careers and the same for men in women-dominated careers. Grounded on the findings of the World Development Report 2012 Team, which referred to statistics from UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the field of education is a 84% female dominated occupation based on a sample of 97 countries, while engineering is a 100% male dominated field. Few fields including social sciences; business and law were reported to be 23% female dominated, 16% male dominated, and 61% neutral. Field of study goes on to control career choice and wage opportunities. As an example, women in education have only so much career growth and earning opportunity compared to their male counterpart in the engineering field with much higher wage and growth opportunities. In a report and study done by Michael A. Koenig, Saiffudin Ahmed, Mian Bazle Hossain, and A.B.M. Khorshed Alam Mozumder, Women’s Status and Domestic Violence in Rural Bangladesh: Individual-and Community-Level Effects, the authors report many conclusions for analysis. In the report it states that a wife’s education is inversely related to domestic violence occurrence. Based on statistical evidence the authors conclude that even partial primary education for women can have promising effects on domestic violence. In the areas where women are less educated, there is a higher incidence of domestic violence, these women are unable to become economically self-sufficient and are forced to rely on their husbands, which creates a situation where they are unable to leave their dangerous conditions. Conversely, in areas that women are more educated, they have more opportunities. And when women have more opportunities, they are empowered as leaders or co-leaders in the household. Educated, empowered, and employed women have more authority in economic decisions for the household and more power to leave harmful situations if needed, including domestic violence. There currently lies a large risk for corporations and public systems in not taking action to educate women worldwide. As we have reported throughout this blog series, there are many factors that contribute to gender inequality in economics. Education plays a crucial role in advancing women in the work force. It is economically efficient to invest in women and allow them to pursue many fields of study. Please stay tuned for the next blog in this series where we hear from Dr. Arup Varma, PhD—professor and expert in the field of human resources, on how low investment in women affects talent search risks.