Imagine if a city of almost four million people disappeared every year. A Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Yokohama. It would be hard to miss.
Yet it goes largely unnoticed that almost four million girls and women “go missing” each year in developing countries when compared to their female counterparts in developed countries.
About two-fifths are never born; a sixth die in early childhood, and more than a third die in their reproductive years.
High mortality rates are just one of many barriers to equality between men and women. Equality is not just the right thing to do. It’s smart economics. How can an economy achieve full potential if it ignores, sidelines or fails to invest in half its population?
Today, girls and boys participate equally in primary education in most developing countries; a third have more girls in secondary school than boys. At the university level, women now outnumber men in more than 60 countries.
Women are using their education to participate increasingly in the labor force, diversify their time beyond housework and childcare and shape their communities, economies and societies. Women now make up more than 40 percent of the global labor force — including a large share of the world’s entrepreneurs and farmers.
This pace of change has been remarkable: For example, what took the United States 40 years to achieve in increasing girls’ school enrollment, Morocco did in a decade.
Other dimensions of equality, however, portray a more disturbing picture.
Girls who are poor, live in remote areas or belong to minority groups still cannot attend school as easily as boys. Women are more likely than men to work in low-paying occupations, to farm smaller plots and to manage smaller firms in less profitable sectors.
Whether workers, farmers or entrepreneurs, women earn less than men: 20 percent less in Mexico and Egypt; 40 percent less in Georgia, Germany or India; 66 percent less in Ethiopia.
Women —especially poor women— have less say over decisions and less control over household resources than men. Women’s voice and representation in society, business and politics is significantly lower than men’s — with little difference between poor and rich countries.
Leveling the playing field for women would offer huge potential.
Much more can be done to stop women from being economically marginalized.
Equalizing access to fertilizers, and other inputs for female and male farmers, for example, could increase agricultural yields in much of Africa by 11 percent to 20 percent. Removing obstacles to women that block certain sectors and occupations could raise output per worker by 3 percent to 25 percent — depending on the country. Legal reforms that would allow women to own land and businesses, or inherit property, can free them to become economic agents of change.
Putting resources in the hands of women has shown to be good not just for them, but also for their children. It increases a child’s chances of survival, health and nutrition and school performance.
Empowering women to use their talents and skills can boost countries’ competitiveness and support growth —a valuable, under-used resource in an uncertain global economy.
During the 2008 financial crisis, women’s incomes helped keep many families afloat —hence the importance of ensuring that women’s productivity and incomes are not held down by market or institutional barriers, or overt discrimination.
This challenge is not just about developing countries. Around the world, one in 10 women will be sexually or physically abused by a partner, or someone she knows, over her lifetime.
Calls for action in four areas:
- addressing human capital issues, like the higher mortality of girls and women, through investment in clean water and maternal care and persistent disadvantages in education through targeted programs;
- closing the earning and productivity gaps between women and men — by improving access to productive resources; water and electricity, and childcare;
- increasing participation by women in decisions made within households and societies; and
- limiting gender inequality across generations, by investing in the health and education of adolescent boys and girls, creating opportunities to improve their lives and offering family planning information.
We have seen that focused policy attention can make a difference. Sustainable solutions are best grounded in partnerships including families, the private sector, governments, development agencies and religious and civil society groups.
Even in the most traditional societies and poorest villages, It is seen that when women gain opportunities to earn more for their families, it quickly overcomes men’s suspicions — or even initial hostility.
But people often need a project that sparks a changed outlook. The poorest countries can accomplish much more with financial help.
Gender equality is the right thing to do. And it is also smart economics.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.