Gender and Development
The Economic Basis of Women′s Power
Samuel R. Cohn, Rae Lesser Blumberg
- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Gender and Development
The Economic Basis of Women′s Power
Samuel R. Cohn, Rae Lesser Blumberg
About This Book
Drawing from the leading scholarship in the field, Gender and Development: The Economic Basis of Women?s Power helps students develop a foundational understanding of the significant role that gender plays in developing societies. Award-winning scholars Samuel Cohn and Rae Lesser Blumberg have carefully selected and edited a collection of readings that encourage students to think critically about the economic power (or lack thereof) of women, and apply key concepts and theory related to gender and current development issues. From women's participation in labor markets to their financial autonomy and purchasing power, these readings enable students to explore the economic implications of female power and the importance of women's strategic indispensability.
Key Features:
- Distinguished scholars in the field offer students distinctive personalized points of view that extend the study of women's power, gender, and development in new and interesting directions.
- A wide range of countries/regions, perspectives, and issues is explored to enable instructors the flexibility to introduce students to a variety of key concepts in a manner that works for their classrooms.
- Analysis of the cause and effect of women's power offers students insights on the inter-relation between gender and development.
- "Guide to the Book" provides students with context for understanding gender and development, as well as introduces students to the key theories that they will explore throughout the book.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Chapter 1 “Power of the Purse”: The Importance of Women’s Economic Power: Why Women’s Economic Power Is Absolutely Essential
Globally, countries are losing $160 trillion in wealth because of differences in lifetime earnings between women and men.— World Bank, May 30, 2018The increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the last couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than has either new technology or the new giants, China and India.— The Economist, “Forget China, India and the Internet: Economic Growth Is Driven by Women” (Special Report: The Importance of Sex), April 12, 2006 (16)
- In Colonial North America, the women of the six tribes of the Iroquois Confederation controlled essentially the entire economy: land, crops (which they cultivated), and the storehouses where food was kept. It gave the Matrons, the women leaders, the power to nominate male chiefs, as well as to recall them and nominate a replacement; the Matrons also could veto a military expedition by not giving the men the stored trail food needed. Men and women also had equal power in the religious sphere. There is no mention of any wife beating or violence against women (Brown 1970, 1975).
- In today’s Afghanistan, men control almost all the wealth. A study by Grace (2005:16) found that men owned more than 98% of the land—in a country that is about three fourths rural. The dominant ideology views women akin to property and “not quite human beings.” Overwhelmingly, women wear near-identical face-covering burqas with no individual touches when they go out lest they be recognized and harmed by disapproving men (Blumberg 2016b). UNIFEM estimates that 87% of Afghan women face abuse and violence (UNIFEM 2006; Khan 2012:2). Yet, via a U.S.-promoted quota system, women are 27.7% of members of Parliament (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2018). Some are brave and speak out, but none wield any real clout.
The Two Primary Causes of Women’s Economic Power
The 10 Supporting Causes of Women’s Economic Power
- Absence of patrilineal inheritance. Patrilineal inheritance is inheriting property or money strictly between males, especially from father to son. Wives and daughters are intentionally bypassed. Cutting women off from inherited assets weakens them economically.
- Absence of patrilocality. Patrilocality is having women go to live with their husband’s family when they marry. When women are forced to live exclusively with their husband’s family, surrounded by his male-side kin, contact with and support from their family of birth typically plummets or disappears. This leaves them with no allies in a marital dispute. Everyone else in the household and his relatives will support the husband.
- Absence of non-irrigated (“dry”) plow agriculture. Men have been far more likely to use the plow than women, given that human- or animal-drawn plows require considerable upper-body strength and, biologically, men have roughly one half more. In dry plow agriculture, plowing the earth to plant the seeds may be seen as the single most important phase of the food production process. In these cases, men, not women, have strategic indispensability and male power is high. In fact, women have little role from plowing to harvest. The next section adds more detail. (Blumberg’s chapter gives a fuller treatment of dry plow agriculture; Blumberg 2004b, 2009 offers more detail on points 1, 2, and 3.)
- Labor scarcity. Keeping women out of powerful positions requires that there be enough men available to fill those powerful positions. When men are either scarce or insufficient to meet rising demand and alternative labor forces (e.g., male migrants or even robots) are not readily available, there are jobs that will go undone unless one allows women to do them. Scarcity of men can come from warfare when men leave their homes to fight distant battles. It can also come from men migrating to other places. Such male absence often leaves the women to handle all the normal business at home (although sometimes older men who stay behind can prevent women from gaining economic autonomy). Overall labor scarcity can come from economic expansion or business booms. These scenarios increase women’s prospects for becoming strategically indispensable.
- Access to human capital. Human capital is economic jargon for skill. Human capital generally comes from education and work experience; good health and nutrition also enhance it. In a modern industrialized economy, skilled jobs pay more than unskilled jobs. Having human capital is essential to attaining positions of responsibility and status.
- Commercialization of women’s home-based production/enterprise. Prior to industrialization, most people lived on farms and produced the bulk of goods at home. When industrialization comes, some of that work can become valuable in the market. If women make textiles or art objects or do market trading—and are lucky enough to have that sector take off—they can find themselves in a lucrative niche in the economy.
- Absence of male preference by controllers of capital or sales. It is hard for women to become economically powerful if men won’t do business with them. If credit institutions and banks won’t loan to women, then the only businesses with significant assets will be those controlled by men. If strategic buyers won’t negotiate with women or buy their products, then marketing and dealmaking will be male monopolies.
- Women’s economic organization. Women can make alliances with each other to increase their mutual power. Female business associations, cooperatives, trading groups, traditional rotating savings and credit groups (especially among traders in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia), as well as informal cooperation among women in business, all increase women’s economic power relative to men. Microfinance institutions, too, often prefer women as microloan clients because they usually repay better than men.
- Favorable balance of nondiscriminatory versus patriarchal noneconomic institutions. Women need societal support if they are to attain positions of power. To the extent the government or the law is antifeminist and discriminates against women, women seeking power will face legal and political obstacles. The same applies if religious organizations, schools, or the mass media are patriarchal, discriminating, and antifeminist. Under those circumstances, women will face hostile public opinion, as well as organized resistance from gatekeepers enforcing traditional moral codes.
- Absence of armed conflict near women’s homes. War and violence close to home foster male control over women. Women who want positions of power must be able to go about their business. If the streets are unsafe, women either must stay home or find armed male escorts if they wish to go out. Limited mobility severely constrains what women can do on their own behalf. In warlike conditions today, power devolves on those people who carry guns. Disproportionately, gun carriers tend to be males.
Absence of Patrilineal Inheritance, Patrilocality, and Non-Irrigated Plow Agriculture
Patrilineal Inheritance
- The “patriarchal belt” delineated by Caldwell (1982)—MENA, much of South Asia, and (pre-Revolutionary) China. It has long traditions of this—for example, half-share inheritance for women under Islamic Sharia; male inheritance in Hindu-majority India, where there are still problems despite legal changes; and in pre-Communist China.
- Sub-Saharan Africa, where 75% of ethnic groups have a male-dominated kinship/property system (Elondou-Enyegye and Calves 2006). Presently, in rural areas among these groups, there still is considerable de facto male inheritance of land even in nations where a land law has been passed giving women rights to inherit it. Mainly, this is because the legal code has yet to be scrubbed of remaining “customary law.” In contrast to the “patriarchal belt,” however, most of those African women long have been important in horticultural cultivation (see the section on “Horticulture”), as well as in trade. These pursuits have given most of them the ability to earn—and control—income on their own, even if they don’t inherit. Where women do control income, especially in West Africa, which has the strongest, longest traditions of female entrepreneurship, women and men keep “separate purses” (Hill 1969; Treas 1991); that is, neither husband nor wife knows what the other is earning—which protects women’s income from possible male designs.