Woman's Role in Economic Development

Citation

van der Meulen Rodgers, Y. (2010), "Woman's Role in Economic Development", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 339-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/03068291011025282

Since the early 1970s, economic analyses through a gendered lens have produced a substantial body of evidence indicating that economic development and macroeconomic policies affect women and men differently. In this body of work, Ester Boserup's Woman's Role in Economic Development (1970) was the first to present a systematic evaluation of the gender‐differentiated effects of the structural transformation associated with modernization in agriculture and industry. Boserup's book and subsequent works that it motivated also examined policy strategies that developing country governments pursued, from the inward‐looking strategies designed to promote the fledging industries of newly independent nations, to the more outward‐oriented strategies based on market‐oriented reforms. Much of the evidence in this path‐breaking book pointed to adverse outcomes for women in their labour market and social status.

With its rigorous empirics, Boserup's work not only set a new precedent for gender‐aware economic analyses, but it also made a major impact in the policy arena. The book inspired the United Nations Decade for Women from 1976 to 1986, and it led policy makers and international agencies to start thinking about gender impacts in development models and policy reform packages that they had hitherto considered gender neutral.

This 2007 reissue reproduces the original 1970 publication, along with an informative introduction that highlights some of the book's main findings and offers more recent data to underscore some of Boserup's arguments. The introduction points to the feminization of labor, which is most usually interpreted as the rapid increase in women's share of the paid labor force. However, as Boserup predicted, much of this increase has come from women's access to employment in low‐wage, unskilled jobs in the manufacturing sector. These employment gains have been accompanied by an increasing informalization of the workforce, with a growing tendency for workers to engage in work that is irregular, part‐time, home‐based, or subcontracted. As noted in the introduction, this creeping precariousness of work is another way to interpret the feminization of labor.

The introduction also suggests new areas for research that Boserup could not have foreseen given the economic, social, health, and environmental conditions in the developing world at the time when she was conducting her research. In particular, climate change and the spread of HIV/AIDS have both presented women with extraordinary challenges and undue hardship. Climate change and environmental degradation have forced women to adapt by spending more time on activities such as collecting water and fuel wood. Climate change has also led to efforts in the public and private sectors to mitigate the levels of greenhouse gases, yet these efforts have often ignored women's needs and their relationship with the environment. Regarding the spread of HIV/AIDS, not only have women seen a dramatic increase in their risk of infection, but they have also experienced more difficulty than men in seeking treatment, and they have had to meet greater demands on their time in caring for the sick. The gender discrimination and social structures that inhibit gender equality and women's rights have served as strong determining factors in the feminization of HIV/AIDS in developing regions, especially in Africa.

Boserup's book is divided into three parts covering the agricultural transformation, industrialization, and issues associated with rural‐urban migration. Some of the main contributions include an assessment of the gender division of labor on the farm, in the factory, and in the home, and how gender relations within and across these settings play an instrumental role in determining why economic development has a differential impact on women and men. This discussion and the accompanying data make clear the crucial links between production in the market economy and women's reproductive labor in the home, as well as the extent to which women's paid work and their reproductive work have contributed to economic development. Boserup also examines the types of jobs that are considered productive work, and how growing gaps in men's and women's productivity as countries develop arise mostly from advantages that men experience in gaining access to education and training.

This work has helped to promote sustained policy efforts across developing regions, especially in Asia and South America, to close the gender gap in education. It has also sparked a growing literature in feminist economics on the effects of economic growth and macroeconomic policy reforms on gender equality and women's well‐being. In drawing on Boserup's ideas, much of this subsequent work in feminist economics has argued that, with the focus on the monetized economy, mainstream neoclassical analyses of the macroeconomy and resulting neoliberal policies ignore the impacts of policy changes on the unpaid reproductive economy. As a result, scholars and policy makers do not fully assess the costs of neoliberal policy reforms that target stabilization and structural adjustment. For example, feminist economists have demonstrated that cuts in health and education budgets have resulted in increases and intensification in women's unpaid household work to make up for the shortfalls in public services. Given the various channels through which women's income, time, and care affect the well‐being of their children, such expenditure cuts thus have intergenerational impacts as well.

With its emphasis on gender equality, Woman's Role in Economic Development remains a fundamentally important piece of scholarship in shaping the ongoing feminist economics research agenda. Our thinking on the various dimensions of gender equality, the multifaceted linkages between economic development and gender equality, and the most effective policy strategies to ensure gender‐equitable macroeconomic progress continue to evolve. Yet, Boserup's key insights on women's contributions to economic growth and the links between productive work and reproductive work still form a central theme in this research agenda.