Stabroek News
April 29, 2001

Gender gaps

A major concern, that has arisen out of recent international debates on poverty and underdevelopment, relates to the central role which gender discrimination plays in perpetuating these during the present age of globalisation. By gender we do not simply mean male and female, seen as different sexes or biological categories. What is referred to instead, are the processes through which males and females are socially transformed in society into women and men, thereby becoming distinctive social categories performing very different social roles.

Unfortunately, in every society there is gender discrimination, although the forms this take and its extent varies across society. As a result, there are, everywhere, striking gaps in the political and social roles of men and women. Thus in terms of legal rights, women and girls are routinely disadvantaged. While, in the areas of economic activity and opportunity, there are also wide disparities between women and men. Indeed, in all the central agencies of power and voice in society, the gaps between men and women remain distressingly large.

The development cost

The impact of this widespread discrimination on development is incalculable. With women systematically having less productive resources at their disposal, less training and education, less information and voice in society, their ability to contribute to development is massively constrained. At the same time they are exposed to disproportionately greater risks than men, and are generally more vulnerable in the face of crises, whether these occur at the level of the household/ family, community, nation, or international community.

This situation persists despite the concerns express-ed over the past two decades, and the efforts that have been made to redress these imbalances and to reduce the gaps. Of course, as was pointed out earlier, the problems of gender today, while immense, are not uniformly the same in either their nature or extent across countries. To take one concrete example, in the developed economies it is estimated that women in the wage sector earn 77 percent of what men earn, on average. But, in the developing economies the similar ratio is less, 73 percent.

Gender development indicators

Because of such concerns the UNDP has developed two indicators, along the lines of the human development index (HDI) to measure gender outcomes across countries. These measures are the Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Mea-sure (GEM). The GDI uses the same variables as the HDI, that is, life expectancy, educational attainment, and income. It, however, adjusts these so as to measure gaps between women and men. It is assumed that such gaps would be undesireable, and therefore a "moderate aversion" to inequality between women and men is applied as a weighting factor in the formula used for preparing this index.

The GDI also recognizes that the life expectancy of women exceeds that of men. Therefore, the range used for women is 87.5 years maximum and 27.5 years minimum, as against for men, 82.5 years and 22.5 years respectively. As we saw last week the national range is 85 to 25 years, based on the highest national average life expectancy expected over the next 30 years and the lowest recorded over the past 30 years. In dealing with income, the same per capita PPP$ is used. However, the range expected for women and men is calculated on the basis of either the estimated empirical ratio of the average woman's wage to a man's wage, or when these data are not available, a crude average of a 75 percent share is applied.

In the case of the GEM measure, new variables are introduced to measure the comparative roles men and women play in the political and economic spheres of society. These variables are 1) women's and men's shares of administration and management position in society; 2) their percentage shares of professional and technical jobs; and, 3) their shares of parliamentary seats. The first two measures seek to capture the gap between women and men's participation in the economy and decision-making. The latter, their respective roles in politics and national decision making.

The data in support of these indicators fall far short of that available for calculations of the HDI which are reported on annually by the UNDP. This has been a source of much concern. However, the UNDP has persisted with the available data, with the expectation that the data deficiency would prompt initiatives in as many countries as possible to remedy it. In the Caribbean, a number of governments and other agencies have moved to develop gender-sensitive indicators of development. Perhaps the most advanced of these is the Government of Jamaica (PIOJ)/UNDP/ CIDA study entitled "The Construction of Gender Development Indicators for Jamaica". As the title suggests while acknowledging the contribution of the GDI and GEM, this effort, has sought to go well beyond these. The task however is extremely difficult because of the roles that cultural and other difficult to measure concepts play in the social relationships and roles of women and men in society.

As a general assessment therefore, we must remain frustrated over the scope and availability of data pertaining to such an important issue as gender, poverty and underdevelopment. This is not intended to detract from those efforts in train to improve the availability of such data, but to be realistic in saying we might be doing too little, too late. This apart, there is the more fundamental concern about the limitations of an indicators approach that focuses on outcomes. While these are important factors in understanding gender in poverty and underdevelopment, as with the HDI, we also have to introduce into the analysis both the processes through which these factors operate, and continue to search for their systemic origins and causes.

We were not able this week, because of space, to conclude, as promised, our discussion of the human poverty index as applied to the already developed economies. We shall do so next week in the wrap-up article on this topic. We shall also refer in next week's article to the United Nations 2000, strategy document: A Better World for All, which offers its version of the crucial poverty/ development indicators that are required at this stage of global development, and the targets for improvement the international community has set itself.