Economics of Women: Her Expertise and Her Growth.
Nagsen Torne is a graduate in Bioanalytical Sciences from Ramnarain Ruia College and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Public Policy Analysis. He is a kickboxer and also a bibliophile who loves learning. He believes that a pen, a few words and an idea can bring about the greatest of social revolutions.
Economics of Women: Her Expertise and Her Growth.
As we stepped into the twenty first century, the world changed, liberalization took place, modern economies promoting “human rights coupled with growth” approach emerged. At this time when the world witnessed such impressive gains in material wealth, millions of women were still denied their right to even basic levels of health care, water and sanitation. Living in a rural area continued to increase a woman’s risk of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. Women were still more likely than men to have no income security in their old age. The inequalities among women widened, leaving millions of poor women behind. There were “rights” for women on paper, right to health, right to sanitation, right to education but a right to overcome the disparities in gender economic statuses was never deemed necessary. There were schemes, here and there, to uplift people from poverty but they did not concern themselves much with economic disparities related to gender. This changed when the United Nations adopted a goal of promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all as a Sustainable Development Goal.
This eighth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal prioritizes growth and economic rights for all. It includes advocating for legislation on equal pay for equal work, better access to employment opportunities, safety from sexual harassment in the workplace and other critical rights. The goal tries to promote women’s ability to secure decent jobs, accumulate assets, and influence institutions and public policies determining growth and development. It seeks to measure and redistribute women’s unpaid care work, and to take actions so women and men can more readily combine it with paid employment. It also aims to engage the private sector to create equal opportunities for women at work. The positive effects of this type of empowerment can be comprehended by stories like these, one where a 37-year-old single mother who used to sell charcoal became a cross-border trader or another where women in rural central Asia became self-reliant by sewing.
A wide variety of actors—donor agencies, governments, civil society organizations and, more recently, the private sector—have embraced the goal of women’s economic empowerment. Some see in women a largely untapped market of consumers, while others speak about the opportunity of ‘unleashing the economic power and potential of women as a means to solve the problems caused by the global financial crisis and stalled growth. This is true to some extent but a human-rights approach to these arguments should be adopted. The human-rights approach provides a framework of binding principles to which countries must be accountable, irrespective of their economic, social and political characteristics. It is a framework that is centered on the rights and freedoms to which all are entitled by virtue of being human – even where women and men are both just as likely to live in a poor household, women are more likely to be deprived in other key areas of well-being, such as education, and less likely to have an independent source of income through paid work, which can result in the uneven distribution of power and resources within the household. A macroeconomic approach will just provide the statistics for this problem and would fail to provide the insight that a human-rights based approach provides. This is why SDG 8 stands out from the previous public policy.
Although public policy in the form of increasing the reach of education has made a considerable difference and has contributed to advances for women’s employment, it has not been sufficient to overcome women’s disadvantage in the labour market. The work of women continues to be undervalued and exploited and nowhere is that clearer than in how we treat our domestic workers. The quest for decent-living wages and better living conditions is a universal aspiration for both men and women around the world, but it is particularly important for women. Gender-based discrimination and poverty often drive women’s labour force participation in particular sectors and occupations, very often in occupations characterized by low wages, lack of rights and poor working conditions.
Women’s employment options are hugely limited by societal expectations that burden them with disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work. Without adequate support, they may ‘choose’ part-time or informal work that can be combined with these unpaid responsibilities. Labour market institutions and practices also channel women into a narrow range of gender segregated occupations at lower levels in the employment hierarchy, leading to gender-based pay differentials. And because women typically earn less than their male partners, household decisions tend to reinforce a division of labour where men ‘specialize’ in paid work while women ‘specialize’ in homemaking.
Redressing women’s socio-economic disadvantage requires concerted action on three fronts to break this cycle. First, a reorganization of unpaid care and domestic work is required; second, efforts are needed to break down occupational segregation in the labour force; and third, gender pay gaps need to be reduced. Inclusive policies can have phenomenal results. Some inclusive policies like extending coverage of child-care services in line with the needs of working mothers and extending coverage of paid maternity leave, entitlements to informal workers, along with measures to ensure implementation can go a long way. Besides we can enable women’s lifelong access to education, training and mentoring, including basic literacy, on-the-job training to upgrade their skills and training in non-traditional skills to support them to move up the occupational ladder, adopt and implement quotas and targets to reduce vertical segregation and also address sexual harassment in the workplace through passing and implementing appropriate laws as well as through training, awareness raising and support to women to access justice in such cases.
Women’s access to income through decent employment and social protection is the most transformative way to promote women’s economic empowerment and the achievement of substantive gender equality. It strengthens women’s agency and bargaining power with broader benefits for families and communities. Women’s economic empowerment and gender equality can be achieved by extending women’s opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace, access to social protection, and better prospects for personal and social development. Efforts to secure women’s income generation must start by promoting an enabling macroeconomic framework, where decent employment creation and gender equality remain the main objectives of development and growth policies. Inclusive policies will generate decent jobs and allow for a more equal distribution of income and non-income gains. The burden of unpaid care work on women and girls puts major constraints on their time and opportunities, perpetuating their economic marginalization and preventing their enjoyment of many rights, including paid work, education and skills development. Support for unpaid care work and social protections, combined with active labour market policies, can have important multiplier effects across the spectrum of The United Nations Sustainable Goals.
