---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 10:35:31 -0600
From: Arthur R. McGee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WORLDWATCH] Gender Bias (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 09:55:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: PNEWS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [WORLDWATCH] Gender Bias
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/* Written worldwatch in igc:worldwatch.new */
/* ---------- "Gender Bias #110" ---------- */
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WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE
Gender Bias: Roadblock to Sustainable Development
by Jodi L. Jacobson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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GENDER BIAS CAUSES POVERTY, POPULATION GROWTH
During the 1980s, per capita income dropped in at least 50
countries. A new Worldwatch study points to a surprising reason
for the growing impoverishment of many developing nations:
discrimination against women, reenforced by conventional
strategies of economic development.
Such discrimination, especially in the subsistence economies
of the Third World, is the single most important cause of
population growth as well as a leading cause of poverty.
Birthrates will decline voluntarily--and poverty rates drop--when
and only when steps are taken to increase women's control over
economic resources.
Women are the primary breadwinners in subsistence economies,
which include 3 billion of the world's 5.5 billion people.
Research shows that they work longer hours and devote a larger
share of their earnings to supporting their families than men do.
Yet women's efforts to support their children are all too
often stymied. Gender bias in subsistence economies ranges from
wage discrimination, to exclusion from development programs, to
legal barriers to owning land, to systemic violence against women.
This discrimination exacerbates poverty by preventing hundreds of
millions of women from obtaining the credit, education, training,
health services, child care, and legal status needed to improve
their prospects. As a result, not only do families remain poor,
but the economies of many Third World nations lag far below their
economic potential.
Moreover, gender bias keeps population growth rates high,
because it denies women routes to economic security other than
childbearing. Ironically, conventional population programs fail
because they fail to combat the social barriers to women's
economic advancement.
For example, rising female literacy rates are directly linked
to declines in births. But girls and women are less likely to
attend school than boys and men. While overall literacy rates
rose between 1970 and 1985, the gender gap in literacy actually
widened: The number of women unable to read rose by 54 million;
illiterate males increased 4 million. Today, the gap continues to
grow.
On the other hand, evidence consistently shows that investing
in women is the most direct way to lift families out of poverty.
Increasing women's productivity--giving them access to education,
training, land ownership and credit--is by extension the most
effective way to stem population growth voluntarily.
In subsistence economies, women farmers produce the lion's
share of food consumed at home. In sub-Saharan Africa, women grow
80 percent of the food destined for their kitchen tables. Women's
labor produces 70 to 80 percent of food crops grown on the Indian
subcontinent, and 50 percent of the food domestically consumed in
Latin America.
Yet conventional development strategies grant males
disproportionate access to land, credit, and farm machinery;
encourage men to plant cash crops for income--often on land on
which women had formerly grown food--and deliver education and
training primarily to boys and men. Development strategies
typically exclude women except as targets for population
"control." A 1982 study, for example, estimated that only 0.5
percent of all United Nations allocations to agriculture went to
programs for rural women.
Few governments or international agencies invest in women
farmers. Furthermore, many rural development strategies end up
actually reducing women's access to land, credit, seeds, and
labor-saving technologies.
For instance, in most rural areas of the Third World, the
commonly-owned village lands which women farm are being shifted
into the hands of governments and private landowners to promote
cash crops. Since the sixties, the government of Malawi--like
many others--has promoted the transfer of large tracts of commons
to owners of private estates. At the same time it has been taxing
domestic crops to subsidize credit, seeds, and fertilizers for
cash crop growers. Women, who make up more than 70 percent of
full-time subsistence farmers, have been most severely affected.
The results are increasingly severe land pressure, stagnation in
the country's basic food supply, and reductions in both economic
growth and equity.
In addition to food production, women are responsible for
gathering fuel and water. Yet tree planting campaigns and
international investments to counter deforestation have all but
ignored women: Out of 22 social forestry projects appraised by the
World Bank from 1984 through 1987, only one mentioned women as a
project beneficiary.
Men are more likely to earn cash income than women, but are
less likely to spend their earnings on family maintenance--food,
shelter, clothes, health care--and therefore less likely to pull
their families out of poverty. Research in Mexico shows that
women contribute 100 percent of their earnings to the family
budget, while men contribute at most 75 percent of theirs, and
often less.
Women effectively provide the largest share of the family's
basic needs while the incomes of men often are siphoned off by the
purchase of alcohol, tobacco, or other consumer products. Studies
from throughout the developing world show that the mother's income
or food production--and the degree of control she maintains over
that income--determines the relative nutrition of children.
Unfortunately, over the last decade the status of women has
actually declined--they have less control than ever before over
their land, cash and other resources. As a result, all over the
developing world, women find themselves working longer hours to
make ends meet. The increased workload ensures that birth rates
stay high since women depend on children--particularly girls--to
lend a hand.
This is the population trap. Unless governments move quickly
to combat gender bias in subsistence economies, rapid population
growth will continue unabated. To date, however, far more
emphasis has been put on curtailing women's fertility than on
improving their health and productivity.
If women in subsistence economies are the major suppliers of
food, fuel, and water for their families, and yet their access to
productive resources is declining, then more people will suffer
from hunger, malnutrition, illness, and loss of productivity.
Investing in women is the fastest way to simultaneously
increase food security, reduce population growth and relieve
pressure on the environment.
--END--
"Gender Bias: Roadblock to Sustainable Development", published in
1992, is available for $5 ($4 for 2-5 copies; $3 for 6-20 copies;
$2 for 21+ copies) plus $3.00 shipping and handling per order from
Worldwatch (see below or topic "Order and Subscription
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