Gender and Change
Examine gender inequalities in culture, status, education, birth ratios, health, employment, empowerment, life expectancy, family size, migration, legal rights and land tenure.
Culture
Culture
- Gender identities and gender relations are critical aspects of culture because they shape the way daily life is lived in the family, but also in the wider community and workplace.
- Religion and traditions play a main role when comparing the status of men and women.
- For example in many Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia, there are strong religious impositions on women.
- Furthermore, the traditions a country has, it has had for centuries, and what may seem unacceptable to a country may seem normal to another.
- In some rural regions of India, women are objectified and men wanting to marry them must pay a ‘dowry’ to the family. Women have no choice in the matter and are forced into marriage.
- In many cultures, domestic violence against women in accepted and not investigated by police.
Status
Education
Employment
Although women are increasingly free to get educated, find work and migrate, in most countries around the world there is still a pay divide between men and women and a shortage of women in senior managerial positions.
Glass ceiling: An imaginary pay scale or promotion that women find hard to go pass because of a bias towards male employees.
Even overtime has an effect - 24.1% of men working full-time take home overtime pay, compared to only 12% of women in the same position.
It is estimated that for each year a mother is absent from the workplace her future wages will reduce by 5%.
Approximately 70% of people in national minimum wage jobs are women.
Empowerment
To invest with power, this may be legal power to do something or social power and belief to do something.
Life Expectancy
Women live longer than men
Higher fertility rate
Examples – New Zealand
Family Size
Migration
Land Tenure
Females still suffer unfairly in terms of inheritance and ownership
Examples:
- Less experience in the work force due to childbirth and child rearing aps in employment – most women are unable to return to the level of employment they held prior to pregnancy and are often not kept in the lop during their absence
- Lack of valuing the work that women perform. For example tradition women’s roles in community services is underpaid
- The contribution of men to housework and childcare has grown significantly over the past 25 years, but is still far below women’s contribution
- In particular, gender equality in workplaces recently has been under scrutiny. The number of female graduates greatly outnumber the number of males in most developing countries
- Women are the majority of all graduates almost everywhere in the developed world, but make up
- The mean age of marriage for Indian women in rural areas is 18 years. Earlier marriages and lack of education on family planning can result in higher fertility rates--detrimental to poorer families who cannot afford healthcare and school related fees, but also to the mothers who are kept in a traditional role and will struggle to find well paid employment.
Education
- The World Bank has shown progress- illiteracy rate was halved to 45% from 90% over the past 3 decades.
- Increased gross enrolment rate in primary education to 87% in 2008-09 from 68% in 1998-99 and to 78% in 2008-09 for girls from 49% in 1998-99.
- 30,000 girls have received conditional cash transfers to support attendance in school since 2008.
- The IDA (International development association) have increased access of children in rural Yemen, adding an additional 3,866 classrooms being built between 2001 and 2009;
- Phase one of the Fast Track Initiative projects constructed 110 schools and rehabilitated 40 existing schools, increasing the total enrolment in targeted governorates by 3 percentage points and the gross enrolment rate for girls by 5 percentage points. Phase two also constructed 102 schools, and rehabilitated 39 schools, again helping increase the enrolment rate by 2 percentage points;
- 90% of teachers in grades 1-6 participated in annual refresher training between 2001 and 2006 and over 90,000 teachers in basic education have been trained in general and subject-specific training between 2006 and 2010. This quality enhancement of basic education in Yemen has contributed to an improvement in the Grade 6 primary completion rate, with the completion rate for girls growing to 51% in 2008/2009 from 38% in 2000/2001 and the total primary completion rate increasing to 62% in 2008/2009 from 58% in 2000/2001;
- Starting in 2007, authorities committed to contract and train female teachers over a three-year period. According to the Minister of Education, as quoted in Yemen Times, 1,000 new female teachers were contracted in 2008. Anecdotal evidence suggests the contracting of female teachers is indeed attracting girls to school by making girls’ education more culturally acceptable.
- The Ministry of Education is undergoing a process of modernization at the central and local levels, introducing an Education Management Information System and a new Monitoring and Evaluation framework to improve informed decision-making. The Ministry now undertakes annual work plans under the 2007-2010 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework.
- Yemen participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies in 2007 and is in the process of establishing an independent Center of Measurement and Evaluation.
- Conditional cash transfer schemes were introduced in two governorates in 2008 and 2009 to support girls’ attendance in school. More than 30,000 girls have received the transfers so far.
Employment
Although women are increasingly free to get educated, find work and migrate, in most countries around the world there is still a pay divide between men and women and a shortage of women in senior managerial positions.
Glass ceiling: An imaginary pay scale or promotion that women find hard to go pass because of a bias towards male employees.
- Reasons why men tend to have higher pay in the workplace than women are:
- Females leaving work to have a baby before achieving top positions.
- Females being slightly behind men in terms of entering universities and the workplace (in many countries women have only recently been emancipated in order to do this).
- Women are also responsible for maintaining their families along with work. They will definitely expect certain amount of flexibility in their job. This may not be supported at all in most of the workplaces, thus women will have to face serious setback on their job front.
- In some countries, men are favoured over women due to the social constructs which deem men to be more valuable for certain positions, based purely on their gender.
Even overtime has an effect - 24.1% of men working full-time take home overtime pay, compared to only 12% of women in the same position.
It is estimated that for each year a mother is absent from the workplace her future wages will reduce by 5%.
Approximately 70% of people in national minimum wage jobs are women.
Empowerment
To invest with power, this may be legal power to do something or social power and belief to do something.
- In many counties, traditions and culture pose obstacles to women’s economic development, so understating their impact is a key to effective development policies.
- Most women won’t feel confident enough to run for jobs ranking high in governments and big TNC’s as they feel they won’t make it as the role is generally done by a male.
- Education, especially for girls, has social and economic benefits for society as a whole
- Education women have more economic opportunities and engage more fully in public life
- Women who are education tend to have fewer and healthier children, and they are more likely to attend school
- Education also increases the ability of women and girls to go and find jobs and make themselves employable
Life Expectancy
Women live longer than men
Higher fertility rate
Examples – New Zealand
- Male life expectancy in 2000-2002 was 4.8 years less than female life expectancy
- Disparities represent a decline from the 1970s when it was over 6 years but it has really only just returned to the degree of inequality that was last seen in 1950s.
- Gender inequality in Maori survival remains close to historical highs, and for the first time has surpassed that in the non-Maori population.
- Decomposition of the sex difference in 2000-2002 life expectancy by age revealed that although women have lower mortality at all ages, approximately half of the female survival advantage occurs at age 65-84. Among the Maori, though, it is more evenly spread with this age group responsible for just 31%. Interestingly, only 2.3% of the difference can be attributed to higher male infant mortality and only 3.3% to all ages under 15 years.
- The overall low infant and child mortality in both sexes in mainly responsible for this small contribution, because male babies still have a 20-30% higher risk of dying than females babies.
Family Size
- Boys preferred over girls
- Some countries only allow one baby – China
- Big families keep having babies until they have a boy
Migration
- Recently females have almost equaled males in terms of migration
- Traditionally there have been few women migrants for a number of reasons
- The role of women has been to stay at home and look after the children, women usually marry young and have children when they are young
- Usually the male is the member of the family who migrates and sends remittances home
- Many migrants jobs require physical labor thus it can be deemed as unsuitable for females
- Many societies prohibit females to travel alone
Land Tenure
Females still suffer unfairly in terms of inheritance and ownership
Examples:
- In Bangladesh, women still inherit only half as much as their brothers
- In the UK, male heirs are favored over females in their succession to the throne, a female will only become Queen if she has no brothers or all her brothers have died (or abdicated)
- In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive, this band comes from the strict interpretation that women need to be accompanied by a legal male guardian in public
- Females struggle to ensure land rights (tenure)
- Land certificates in rural areas boost confidence and status of women