Women’s autonomy and economic development

Empowerment and autonomy is in itself a worthy goal for all people. In the past few decades, a number of development economists have focused on the more specific question of how women’s empowerment—enhancement in education, work, health, and social participation, along with protection from violence—can drive economic growth. . development for the country. Sivan Anderson discusses the links between these multiple aspects of empowerment in Innis’ lecture on “The Dismemberment of Women’s Autonomy”. presented at the June 2022 meetings of the Canadian Economic Association and now published in the November 2022 issue of the journal. Canadian Journal of Economics.

Here are a few topics that caught my attention. Anderson writes:

Women’s empowerment is a multi-faceted concept that aims to: empower women to make decisions in the household, reduce violence against women, expand market and political opportunities, equal legal rights, and eliminate gender-based customs and norms. While the multifaceted nature of women’s empowerment is recognized by scholars and policy makers alike, it is not entirely clear how the various aspects interact and develop with each other or with society as a whole.

Perhaps the classic argument in this area is that empowered women invest more in children.

[This] The first step towards arguing that relative empowerment of women leads to better economic development seems to be based on the assumption (and accompanying evidence) that women and men have different preferences.7 In particular, women want, ceteris paribus, to devote relatively more household resources to the education and health of children than men. Since both are critical determinants of human capital formation, and human capital formation is at least the immediate cause of economic development, development will be enhanced by factors that increase women’s autonomy (or women’s alternative) vis-à-vis their husbands through increased control over the distribution of household resources.

It follows that finding ways to tip the scales in the household towards greater autonomy for women and greater control over household spending can bring significant payoffs.

The standard model of household decision-making as a negotiation process assumes that members are fully informed and able to communicate perfectly. However, there is strong empirical and experimental evidence to the contrary. The ability (and willingness) to hide information is critical to the allocation of resources. Anderson and Baland (2002) found that revolving savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), ubiquitous in developing countries, were used by women as a way to hide savings from their husbands. Women were less likely to access a bank account with an ATM card when it was easy for their husbands to access the card (Shaner 2017). The researchers found evidence of family pressure as well as the seizure of targeted grants for women (De Mel et al. 2009Fridson-Ridenoor and Peyrotti 2019). Accordingly, hiding money from husbands (in bank accounts) has been shown to avoid this to some extent (Dupas and Robinson). 2013Fiala 2018). Moreover, in-kind grants (Fafchamps et al. 2014) and mobile money deposits are less likely to be embezzled (Riley 2020).

In turn, the question arises of what factors contribute to the empowerment of women. Generally speaking, one can discuss evolutionary and revolutionary factors. For example, technological changes that allow capital to replace what has traditionally been done by women, or allow women to better control fertility, may act as evolutionary factors. Revolutionary factors can be events such as World War II in the US workplace, which changed the options available to women, or no-fault divorce movements, which changed positions in marriage negotiations. But is it possible to take concrete measures that could push for greater gender equality? Anderson writes:

It can be assumed that short-term political interventions are unlikely to significantly change well-entrenched social norms, given that many of them have persisted for centuries. However, emerging data suggests otherwise. For example, reserving seats for women politicians in rural India has helped reduce negative stereotypes about women as local leaders (Beeman et al. 2009). Television programs have been able to change fertility preferences in different settings (Jensen and Oster). 2009La Ferrara and others. 2012). Burshtyn and others (2020) were able to adjust for Saudi men’s predetermined beliefs about the appropriateness of their wives’ labor supply decisions by providing information on the actual average beliefs of men in their local geographic area. Regular high school discussions, which were held among both boys and girls in India, were able to change some of the negative attitudes and behaviors of women (Dhar et al. 2022).

Or in the political realm:

There are a number of policies aimed at political empowerment of women. Today, there are 135 countries with constitutional, electoral or party quotas for women. In this respect, many developing countries are superior to developed ones. The most direct way to ensure women’s leadership is to reserve political seats for women. Policies that reserve political seats for women at the national or subnational level exist only in less developed countries, and are not enforced in Western industrialized countries. … Rwanda leads the world with 64% of legislators in the national parliament (the lower or only house) being women, followed by Senegal (43%), South Africa (41%), Mozambique (39%), Angola (37%). ), Tanzania (36%) and Uganda (35%). This is compared to other developed countries with a significantly lower representation of women, such as Canada (27%) and the United States of America (24%).

In general, it is clear that there is a correlation between women’s empowerment and higher economic development. As Anderson writes:[T]there is no simple causal relationship between women’s empowerment and overall poverty reduction. However, it still remains that gender equality is highly positively correlated with measures of aggregate economic development (GDP per capita or poverty rate).” However, the direction of causality probably goes both ways: that is, women’s empowerment affects economic development, while economic development also affects the degree of women’s empowerment. Countries develop in different ways, from different starting points. There is no reason to believe that this dual process of women’s empowerment and economic development will proceed in the same way in all countries. Anderson puts it this way:

In Latin America and the Caribbean, a significant increase in women’s labor force participation has been accompanied by a decline in fertility, women’s education, and growth in the service sector. The same factors have led to only modest increases in women’s participation in the Middle East and North Africa. And they led to the decline in South Asia (primarily in India). An interesting hypothesis explaining this variation is the role of social stigma. …

Thus, there is no reason to expect that the cultural changes in today’s developing world will follow the paths followed in the West. The heterogeneity of how such norms are changing today in the developed world also suggests that local cultures can persist or change differently under the same economic pressures. In addition, there are a number of other reasons to be skeptical that the paths being followed in the West will be an omen. First, the timing of structural changes is different. Today, developing countries have experienced the expansion of education and the growth of the service sector at a much lower level of GDP per capita than when they developed in the West (Jayachandran). 2021). Their legal contexts also differ markedly. Today’s developing countries have generally inherited the formal legal structures of their former colonists, which are generally more progressive and women-friendly than the corresponding legal structures that prevailed at comparable levels of development in the West. At the same time, these formal legal structures often coexist in today’s developing countries alongside highly male-centric forms of customary law. Finally, it does not appear that the labor supply of married women will become a massive shock comparable to that caused by the Second World War, which could serve as an impetus for gender norms.