Chapter two

Gender and development

 Brainstorming question
• What is gender all about?
• Why need for study gender dimension of
development?
 Gender: Definition and concepts
• Gender can be defined as the socially constructed
roles assigned/designated to men and women
which leads to division of labor in the society.
• While sex is biological/physical difference
between men and women, and is natural, gender is
socially and ideologically imposed different roles
allotted to wen and women in the society.
• When we say gender is a social construction, it is
an idea built by the people, groups, and institutions
that make up society.
Definition and concepts,..
• Gender differences are not neutral(unbiased), since
they are often constructed in opposition to one
another (e.g. notions of men being strong and
women weak), thereby creating power relations
that result in inequalities between men and women.
• This fixation/construct has been ingrained in the
society and distorted understandings about the
equal status, values and positions of men and
women for millennia, negatively impacting the life
of women.
Definition and concepts,..
• These relations can change over time and vary
according to the sociocultural context.
• Gender also intersects with other identity and power
dynamics such as social class, ethnicity, nationality,
sexual orientation, migratory status, etc.
• Gender relations, then, are constructed (and
challenged) at various levels: micro (individual,
household, community), meso (labor market, social
networks), and macro (international division of
labor).
Definition and concepts,…
• Gender division of labor: is the socially
determined ideas and practices which define
what roles and activities are deemed appropriate
for women and men.
• Gender discrimination is the systematic,
unfavorable treatment of individuals on the
basis of their gender(sex), which denies them
rights, opportunities, resources, leadership roles
and other entitlements at global, national, local,
household and individual levels.
The role of women in society
• Gender issues have got important attentions at local,
national and global levels in contemporary
development discourses as gender based inequalities
in various sectors remain a challenge to achieving
inclusive development.
• The role of women in development is significantly
large and this necessitates their empowerment to
promote their position in family and society.
• Studies show that women the world over, have been
at the center-stage of economic production, including
agricultural, livestock and business sectors.
Role of women
• In most parts of the developing world, women
participate in crop production and livestock
care, provide food, water and fuel for their
families, and engage in off-farm activities to
diversify their families’ livelihoods.
• In addition, women carry out vital reproductive
functions in caring for children, older persons
and the sick without which community and
society perpetuate.
 Role of women
• Though women play major roles in
agriculture, these roles are often unrecognized
(World Bank, 2009).
• According to FAO (2014), women produce
60–80 % of food in the developing world
though there have been controversial
arguments on the definition of food
production and questions pertinent to this
percentage
Role of women
• Other studies also show that women comprise
an average of 43 percent of the agricultural
labor force of developing countries.
• However, women who comprise over half of
the world’s population, rarely own any
reasonable forms of property(assets); do not
have adequate access to the same, and do not
even make major decisions pertaining to
allocation and use of such.
Role of women
• With regard to the relation between agricultural
productivity and women, FAO(2011) argues that
agriculture is underperforming in many developing
countries for a number of reasons; and among these is
the fact that women lack the resources and
opportunities they need to make the most productive
use of their time.
• While ownership of assets is important for poverty
alleviation, women do not have assets that are
associated with positive development outcomes at the
household and individual levels.
 Questions
• Give some forms/ simple examples of gender
inequality that are observed in the day-today
household activities.
• Why do women face such challenges in the
society?
Gender inequality in development
 Gender inequality,……

• The continued existence of disparities between

women and men in access and control over resources,
and the overt discrimination against women
throughout history, are now seen as a clog/block in the
wheel of national and international development
agendas.
• Importantly, the achievement of gender equality is
bound up with all other goals of sustainable
development, such as good governance, human rights,
environmental sustainability, and poverty reduction.
 Gender inequality,…
• The promotion of women’s empowerment as a
development goal is based on a dual argument: that
social justice is an important aspect of human
welfare and is intrinsically worth pursuing; and that
women’s empowerment is a means to promoting
sustainable human development.
• Therefore engendering national development and its
processes is to ensure that both men and women are
free to develop their full potentials, and are able to
make choices without restrictive gender roles.
 Gender inequality
• It thus follows thereby, that women’s and men’s
needs and interests are to be equally valued and
protected if any nation is to achieve sustainable
development.
• More importantly, countries with wide gender gaps
are found to exhibit poor indicators of growth and
wellbeing – poor nutrition, high maternal mortality
rate; high infant mortality rate; high poverty rate; low
life expectancy; low level of education; high
HIV/AIDS prevalence rate; and are mostly agrarian
society (low industrial growth) among others.
 Gender inequality,….
• Various efforts have been exerted by the global community
to reduce the gender gaps in development.
• Despite global progress on closing gender gaps, pervasive
gender inequality still severely limits the full potential of
women and men, not only in low-income and least
developed countries, but in some middle income countries
as well.
• The effects of gender inequality permeate beyond
individual well-being with negative consequences that last
generations, impacting community health, overall
economic growth, sustainable development, and global
progress on human rights.
 1. Gender inequality in education and the
rights of women
• Although issues of gender inequality impact women
and men differently, evidence shows many gender
gaps that disadvantage women and girls in
particular, including: access to education; literacy;
health care; and economic opportunities;
participation in decision-making spheres; legal
rights and protections; and natural resource use and
control.
• In primary education, gender gaps have narrowed
significantly in the last several decades, but there
are still wide disparities in some regions.
Gender inequality in education,….
• For instance, worldwide, around 58 million children of
primary school age do not attend school, more than half
of whom are girls.
• Three-quarters of these children live in sub-Saharan
Africa and South Asia, and in some countries, including
Afghanistan, Central African Republic, and Chad, fewer
than 70 girls per 100 boys are enrolled in primary school.
• In areas where primary education access has improved,
literacy rates among girls and boys have followed suit,
and the vast majority of young women and men have
basic reading and writing skills.
Gender inequality in education,….
• However, illiteracy rates are still high among older
populations, with 781 million people over the age of 15—
nearly two thirds of whom are women—considered
illiterate, residing mostly in Northern Africa, sub-Saharan
Africa, and South Asia.
• Gender gaps in education and literacy negatively affect
the resilience and self-reliance of a population and limit
opportunities for higher paying jobs and participation in
decision-making, especially for women and girls who face
additional barriers, such as social expectations of gender
roles or structural barriers to participation, in accessing
opportunities.
Gender inequality in education,….
• This impacts women and girls around the world; for example,
research shows that women and girls face societal barriers
which contribute to them being less likely than their male
counterparts to study and work in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematical (STEM) fields.
• A systemic review of literature on this gap in developed
countries from over the last 40 years shows that these barriers
can be grouped into five categories:
i) individual background characteristics;
ii) structural barriers in KG-12 grade education;
iii) psychological factors, values, and preferences;
iv) family influences and expectations; and
v) perceptions of STEM fields
 2. Gender inequality in labor force
• In general, women are increasingly participating in the
labor force; however, this has not translated to equal
employment opportunities and wages.
• On average, across all sectors and occupations, women are
paid less than men for full-time employment—in most
countries making about 70-90 percent of what their male
counterparts earn—and are more likely to participate in
low paying jobs with limited training and promotion
opportunities in informal economies with little to no
regulations and protections, and in unpaid labor, such as
caregiver responsibilities, usually implying they have no
access to monetary income.
 Question
• Who does longer hours a day in a household?
• Husband or wife?, son or daughter?
why/how?,
Discuss?
 Gender inequality in labor force
• Additionally, when paid and unpaid work—such as
household chores and childcare—are taken into account,
women work longer hours than men, resulting in women
and girls having less time per day—on average one to
four hours less—to devote to other productive or leisure
activities.
• Furthermore, it is worth noting that at times, unequal access to
formal and equal economic opportunities can be attributed
towards enabling male family members to hold control over
women’s access to money and economic resources and
activities, thereby increasing women’s dependencies on male
family members, making women more vulnerable to domestic
violence—a pervasive form of gender-based violence (GBV)..
 3. Gender inequality due to legal barriers
• In many ways, the gender gaps in educational and
economic opportunities influence and are exacerbated by
persistent legal barriers (codified and customary) that
women face, including in securing land use and
ownership rights, having decision-making power in the
household, and seeking legal recourse against GBV.
• In a study of 189 economies by the World Bank, all had at
least one gender difference in legal treatment, 68 had at
least one law limiting women’s decision-making and
freedom of movement, 75 restricted women’s rights to
access and own property, and 133 had at least one
restriction on women’s access to justice.
Gender inequality due to,…
• Even where laws are not necessarily gender-biased(for
instance the Constitution of the FDRE,1995), they can
effectively become gender-biased based on how they are
enforced and with respect to who has access to justice.
• Laws and restrictions such as these impede women’s
ability— relative to men—to contribute to economies,
undermine their dignity and security, reduce their ability to
seek justice, and limit their access to education and
resources, which reduces their overall resilience to
climate change shocks and stressors.
• Widespread incidence and varied expressions of GBV
further reduce overall resilience.
Gender-based violence
• Used to uphold unequal gender power dynamics,
GBV is “any harmful threat or act directed at an
individual or group based on actual or perceived
biological sex, gender identity and/or expression,
sexual orientation, and/or lack of adherence to
varying socially constructed norms around
masculinity and femininity.”
• This violence can be physical, sexual,
psychological, and economic, as well as rooted in
structural inequality and harmful cultural norms.
Gender-based violence,…
• GBV is among the most pervasive, systemic, and
violent expressions of gender inequality, in every
country and across communities, directly impacting
one in three women around the globe.
• GBV contributes to long-term physical, mental, and
emotional health problems of victims and has high
costs to societal well-being and economic growth.
• For example, the World Bank estimates that violence
against women costs some countries upwards of 3.7
percent of their GDP.
Gender-based violence,…
• When legal protections and victim services are
inadequate or nonexistent, victims of gender based
physical, sexual, psychological, and economic
violence are often reluctant to seek justice and
protection, with risks of facing additional
challenges if they do report such violence.
• Additionally, violence based on an individual’s
gender or perceived adherence to norms around
femininity and masculinity is largely overlooked
and ignored by authorities and in legal protections
against GBV.
Gender-based violence,…
• The reluctance or inability to report violence fosters
impunity(freedom) of perpetrators that can generate
fear and insecurity in communities, as well as
harmful beliefs among all members of a community
justifying use of violence.
• For example, in a recent national survey from
Tanzania, 40 percent of men and boys and 58 percent
of women and girls ages 15-49 consider that a husband
is justified in beating his wife if she burns his food,
argues with him, goes out without telling him, neglects
their children, or refuses to have sex with him.
Gender-based violence,…
• But in principle, living without fear of violence
is a fundamental human right for all, and
preventing GBV before it happens or reoccurs
reduces the social and economic costs of
violence.
• It also supports the dignity and well-being of
women, girls, and all persons affected by GBV
to fully participate in educational, economic,
and civic ventures.
 THE POSITIVE MULTIPLIER
EFFECT OF GENDER EQUALITY
The positive multiplier effect,..
• USAID envisions a world in which women and men have
equally realized economic, social, cultural, environmental, civil,
and political rights and are equally empowered to improve their
lives and exercise their own voices, as well as equally able to
access services, such as education and health care.
• Addressing gender gaps and promoting gender equality
contributes to this vision and evidence from around the world
and across all sectors highlight the multiple and widespread
benefits of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Improving education access, including through lifelong learning
opportunities for adults, has numerous monetary and non-
monetary benefits for individuals, communities, and economies.
The positive multiplier effect,..
• For instance, some studies found that each
additional year of schooling raises an individual’s
earnings by 8-10 percent, with greater increases for
women, and that improvement in women’s
education leads to better health outcomes for their
children and families.
• When women have more access to income-
generating opportunities and control over household
income decisions, they tend to spend in ways that
benefit their children, including improving health
and education.
The positive multiplier effect,..
• Unlocking women’s ability and opportunity to participate
equally in paid labor through training and education
programs, as well as protections against gender-based
discrimination, has the potential to contribute
significantly to the global economy.
• For example, one study finds that advancing women’s
equality could add between $12 and $28 trillion to global
GDP by 2025.
• Advancing toward and achieving gender equality concerns
everyone, not solely women.
• Women and men are more than homogenous groups
defined solely by gender.
The positive multiplier effect,..
• Every individual has multiple and intersecting social
identities—including their socio-economic status, ethnicity,
race, disability, indignity/humiliation, age, sexual and gender
minorities and citizenship status—that impact them in many
ways and interact with social, power dynamics and laws,
affecting their ability to access opportunities and resources.
• Additionally, long-held beliefs around masculine and
feminine roles and expressions can harm both men and
women.
• For instance, in emergencies, including related to natural
disasters, men are often expected to take on first-responder or
‘heroic’ roles, making them more susceptible to injuries and
death.
The positive multiplier effect,..
• On the other hand, depending on the context, women and
girls may be more susceptible to disadvantage, injury or
death due to their caregiving and other socio-cultural roles.
• Making progress toward gender equality, including by
effectively integrating gender into development initiatives,
requires understanding how socio-cultural norms and
power structures define roles in any given community and
influence the lives and opportunities of all people from
diverse social groups.
• Dimensions of gender equality can be mutually reinforcing.
Supporting women’s empowerment and gender equality can
be a pathway for positive transformation across sectors.
Ways of achieving the multiplier
effects
Gender equality and women
empowerment
Gender equality and,…
• Women’s empowerment is a ‘bottom-up’ process of
transforming gender power relations, through individuals
or groups developing awareness of women’s subordination
and building their capacity to challenge it.
• Empowering women is one of the best ways to promote
economic growth and to achieve peace and security.
• Women empowerment is achieved by ensuring gender
equality in every aspect; i.e., economy, social, political,
cultural, technological ,etc. that assures equal opportunity.
• This is all about fairness and equity as a right for all in the
outcomes of development, through processes of social
transformation.
Gender equality and,….
• Women’s participation can only be effective and
meaningful when underlying gender power relations are
transformed and when attention and support are given to
women’s specific knowledge and capacities.
• In addition to enhancing women’s educational
opportunities, the three further components of women
empowerment by ensuring gender equality are the
following.
(i) Enhancing women’s voice in decision-making, leadership
and peace-building
(ii) Promoting women’s economic empowerment
(iii) Ending violence against women and girls
 1. Enhancing women’s voice in decision-
making, leadership and peace-building
• Women’s participation in decision-making, leadership
and peace-building is important as a right in itself.
• Women also bring particular perspectives, priorities
and strengths resulting from their life experiences,
which are often different from men’s.
• This means they are likely to make different decisions,
with women leaders responding more strongly to
women’s policy priorities.
Enhancing women’s voice,…..
• The key factor in countries delivering legislation that
criminalizes violence against women is the presence
of strong women’s organizations.
• Women can and do play a key role in conflict
prevention, peace negotiations and peace-building, but
too often are excluded from these efforts.
• In situations of conflict and fragility, it is important to
ensure that women participate, recognizing women
can be powerful agents for change.
• Building gender equality into reconstruction efforts
can help to ensure more lasting peace.
 Enhancing women’s voice,…..
• Private sector businesses that have female
leaders tend to deliver stronger financial
performance.
• Where women’s representation in leadership
and formal decision-making is low, the role of
women’s organizations and coalitions is
particularly crucial for ensuring women’s
perspectives are heard.
 2. Promoting women’s economic
empowerment
• Women’s economic participation helps to drive growth
at a national level and reduce poverty within
communities and households.
• Women are often more likely than men to use income to
support development outcomes within their families.
• Increasing women’s earnings can strengthen their hand
in decision-making in their households.
• Women remain poorer than men globally, so in
promoting economic growth internationally, work is
needed to ensure women can participate in economic
life and benefit equitably from doing so.
Promoting women’s economic empowerment
• This can promote equality and lead to empowerment,
although often it merely increases women’s time burdens
and contributes to increased exploitation and violence.
• Careful analysis and considered interventions are needed
so women’s economic participation is empowering and
does not exacerbate inequalities or place unfair burdens
on women and their children.
• Accelerating women’s participation in the paid
workforce reflects the G20 commitment to close the gap
between women’s and men’s participation rates by 25
per cent by 2025.
 3. Ending violence against women and girls
• Violence against women and girls is pervasive and
persistent throughout the world and a significant
human rights violation.
• Violence against women and girls takes many forms
including: violence in the home, sexual abuse of girls
at school, sexual harassment at work and in the
streets, rape by husbands or strangers, child
marriage, acid attacks, trafficking of women and
female genital mutilation.
Ending violence,…
• In conflict situations, rape is often used as a tactic
of war and women and girls can be over-
represented among displaced populations(see for
example particularly what has happened as a result
of the conflict between the Ethiopian government
and Tigray region and what is happening in most
of Wollega zones)
• Women and girls with disabilities are more likely to
experience violence and face additional barriers in
seeking justice and support.
Ending violence,…..
• Boys are also at increased risk of certain types of gendered
violence and exploitation, such as through labor involving
significant risks to their health and safety.
• Violence or the fear of violence restricts women’s lives and
opportunities and constrains development.
• It causes trauma and limits women’s social, political and
economic participation.
• It can have a lifelong impact on women children. It creates
significant strain on national economies with escalating costs
in health care, social services, policing and the justice system.
• In the aftermath of natural disasters and during conflicts,
rates of sexual and gender-based violence increase.
 Individual assignment 2:Term paper
• Gender Equality and Women’s empowerment
in Ethiopia: Challenges and prospects.
• The paper must have introduction, body part
and conclusion, with references
• Page limit: 8-15 pages
• Submission date: on final exam date
 The end,

Thank you!