Global Development Theme 8 - Gender and Development

EVIDENCE OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD:

• Higher levels of poverty and low income for women in the developing world - women perform 66% of the world's work but only earn 10% of the world's income
• Lower rates of paid employment - women in non-paid agricultural work is 41% globally
• Lower levels of education - 96 girls to every 100 boys enrolled in primary school in the developing world and 95 girls to every 100 boys enrolled in secondary school (as of 2008)
• Less political involvement - this statistic is improving however, we are still short of gender parity in global politics
• Lack of reproductive rights and poor maternal health
• Women are more likley to be victims of physical/sexual violence 

• Blames internal cultural factors for gender inequality - traditional religious ideas underpin women's inequality                                                                                                                                                                                         

SOLUTIONS: all supported by aid 

• Improving maternal health
• Family planning and contraception
• Education
• Involving women in aid projects 

• Favour small-scale 'ground up' projects which focus on improving the day to day lives of women                                                                                                                    

FOR EXAMPLE:

• Salons for acid attack victims in Pakistan
• An app has been developed in the Dharavi slums to make school girls safer
• #bringbackourgirls campaign for the 300 girls abducted in Chibok

• TNCs exploit patriarchal values rather than promoting real gender equality - they take advantage of women's 'material subordination' whereby women will put up with worse condition than men because anything is better than unpaid domestic labour                                                                                                                                                

SOLUTIONS:

• The solution is not simply ending patriarchy in the developing world - we need to tackle global capitalist power relations which benefit from patriarchy

• Radical Feminists argue that gender inequalities still remain in the developed world therefore development is not the solution 
• Global patriarchal systems are responsible for gender inequality in the developed world - e.g. the s e x trade: between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked into slavery every year, with 80% of those figures (average of 560,000) being female. 
• Around 12 million girls and women worldwide are currently working as s e x-slaves