Question

Explain the different types of gender inequality?​

Answer 1

Women Works Longer than Men:

In most of the societies the male-stream is the main stream who argues that women have comparative advantage in household non-market production, like cooking and cleaning for the family that can be called emotional and personal caring work.

Today, women represent 40 p.c. of the global labour force and 43 p.c. of the world’s agricultural labour force. Most importantly, because of the reduction in fertility rate in many developing countries, women’s participation in paid job has been rising in these countries. This, of course, is suggestive of reduction in gender gaps as time advances. It is revealed from the World Develop­ment Report 2012 that the gender gap in work participation has been narrowed from 32 p.c. to 26 p.c. between 1980 and 2008.

Gender Inequality: Economic and Household Works

2. Inequality in Employment and Earnings:

Historically, men have greater participation in work outside home than women. But women (particu­larly of poor households) share unequally house­hold duties in addition to economic production. Thus they work longer than males. This kind of ‘division of labour’ may be seen as the ‘accumu­lation of labour’ on women, as described by Amartya Sen. Household activities are often viewed as ‘sedentary activities’ which require less ‘calorie’ to gain energy.

Only 10 p.c. of women say that their earnings are greater than their male counterparts and the same percen­tage of women think that their earnings are about equal to their husbands’ earnings. Irrespective of religion, caste and educational achievement, earnings of 80 p.c., of women are less than the male population. Thus, the right to equality or women’s, empowerment in India is wide off the mark.

3. Ownership Inequality:

A case of social inequality: Let us turn to another kind of inequality, called ownership inequality—a classic case of social inequality. In most of the societies, owner­ship over property and means of production rests mainly on male members. The law of inheritance provides such ownership rights on male child. Such denial coming out of hierarchical dualism within the family not only reduces the voice of women but also prevents them from participating in commercial, economic and social activities.

This kind of social deprivation means absence or lack of capability. Or because of ‘capability depri­vation’, women are subject to various kinds of exploitation and un-freedoms. Social inequality distorts the process of development. Unfortu­nately, ownership inequality in any country is not of recent origin. In her earlier life, a woman comes under the influence of her father, then husband as she enters a married life, and, finally, under sons ownership right over property is skilfully avoided. A Telegu proverb corroborates this understan­ding: “Bringing up a daughter is like watering a plant in another’s courtyard.”

4. Survival Inequality:

Another crudest form of gender disparity is the unusually high mortality rates of women, though biologically, women live longer than men! Thus, more boys than girls are born everywhere leading to a ‘deficit’ of women and a ‘surplus’ of men. In developed countries because of absence of gender-bias in health care and nutrition, women outnumber men. In Europe and in North America, 105 or more girls are born per 100 boys. Such high female- male ratio (1.05) in these countries is attributed to a high gendered survival rate in different age groups.

The concept of ‘missing women’ as stated by Amartya Sen may be linked to this kind of anti- female bias relating to care and medical attention. Low female male ratios in Asian and North African countries are another way of explaining ‘missing women’. If these countries showed the female- male ratios as observed in Europe and the North American countries, these countries would have millions more women.

Missing women is a rough estimate of the quantitative difference between the ‘actual’ population sex ratio and the ‘expected’ population sex ratio in the absence of discrimination between sexes. If ‘actual’ ratio exceeds the ‘expected’ ratio, then the excess is called the ‘missing women’.

But why has such gender imbalance been increasing in developing countries? In Europe and America, males outnumber females at birth but women outnumber men as the female-male ratio (of around 1.05) tells. On the contrary, in the third world countries, because of high mortality rates of women, male population becomes large. Abundance of women in advanced countries may be related to premature death, a high propensity to smoking and a larger involvement in violent activities of men.

The bias towards boys over girls explains the ‘missing women’ mystery. Because of significant anti-female bias in health care and other social influences relevant for survival, female infanticide that goes on is one good reason for ‘missing women’.