Smart Economics

• Author: Mayra Buvinic/Elizabeth M. King
• Position: Sector Director for Gender and Development/Research Manager

More needs to be done to promote the economic power of women

With just eight years remaining to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the global community is focused on what's being done to halve poverty from 1990 levels by the target date of 2015 and to meet several other objectives, including improving health and education (see Box 1). But much lower on the radar is the third of the eight United Nations goals (MDG3), which calls for redressing gender disparities and empowering women.

Greater focus on MDG3 is critical because-although valuable in its own right as an important development objective-it is also a key to achieving several others, such as universal primary education (MDG2), a reduction in under-5 mortality (MDG4), improvements in maternal health (MDG5), and reducing the likelihood of contracting HIV/AIDS (MDG6).

Box 1

What are the MDGs?

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound and measurable goals and targets for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. Placed at the heart of the global agenda, they are now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The eight goals for 2015:

1. Halve extreme poverty and hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

3. Empower women and promote equality between men and women

4. Reduce under-5 mortality by two-thirds

5. Reduce maternal mortality by three-fourths

6. Reverse the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

8. Create a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade, and debt relief

Moreover, greater gender equality (see Box 2) can also help in the battle to reduce poverty (MDG1) and promote growth-directly by boosting women's participation in the labor force and increasing both productivity and earnings, and indirectly through the beneficial effects of women's empowerment on children's human capital and well-being (see Chart 1). The empirical evidence on these benefits is compelling. Whether self-employed or earning wages, working women help their households escape poverty. Women are more likely than men to face constraints to access credit markets, but when they are the direct users of credit rather than men, the impact of credit on several measures of household welfare is greater. When women have more schooling, the returns flow not only to themselves but to the next generation as well. And when they have greater control over resources in the family, they are more likely than men to allocate more resources to food and to children's health care and education, a finding from as diverse a set of countries as Bangladesh, Brazil, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia, and South Africa. Indeed, studies have shown that giving women more access to education, to markets (labor, land, credit), and to new technology, and giving them greater control over household resources often translates into greater well-being for themselves and their families. For women, their families, and their communities, this is smart economics.

Box 2

What do we mean by gender equality?

The 2006 World Development Report on equity and development refers to gender inequality as the "archetypal inequality trap." The sharp differences between men and women in access to assets and opportunities in many developing countries restrict women's basic freedom to choose and have negative consequences for the well-being of their children, families, and communities. These differences entrench inequality and are unfair (World Bank, 2005).

Gender equality does not necessarily mean equality of outcomes for males and females; it means equal access to the " opportunities that allow people to pursue a life of their own choosing and to avoid extreme deprivations in outcomes"-that is, gender equality in rights, resources, and voice (World Bank, 2001 and 2005). Equality of rights refers to equality under the law, whether customary or statutory. Equality...