Egypt, Cairo, October 24,25 2015 Gender Equality in the MENA Region

1. CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING
GENDER INEQUALITY: THE
WORK AHEAD
MARIA S. FLORO
Professor of Economics
American University
Washington DC, USA
1Gender Equality in the MENA Region

2. Introducing Lucia, a 2nd grader in Santa
Maria, Guatemala and her classmates
2Gender Equality in the MENA Region

3. Where is she now and what will she
become…
Her
identity
determined
by
social
expectations
her
aspirations
opportunities
open for her
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 3

4. Her
identity
gender
ethnicity
economic
status
culture
citizenship
location
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 4

5. Regarding laws on property rights and
inheritance…
5
Reference: UNWOMEN, Progress of theWorld’sWomen (2015), Figure 1.2, p.31.
Gender Equality in the MENA Region

6. Extent of gender inequality
indicator
0.546
0.331 0.317
0.416
0.539
0.578
Arab States East Asia and
the Pacific
Europe and
Central Asia
Latin
America and
the Caribbean
South Asia Sub-Saharan
Africa
Gender Inequality Index
6
Source: UNDP, Human Development Reports.All figures for 2013.
Gender Equality in the MENA Region

7. Lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence
(physical, or sexual) among ever-partnered
women
7Gender Equality in the MENA Region
Reference: Duvvury (2014)

8. 8Gender Equality in the MENA Region
Reference: Beneria, Berik and Floro (2015)

9. Embedded in institutions, structures
and processes
Households,
communities,
kinship systems
Educational system
and materials
Markets: labor,
credit, land
Laws: family,
property, labor,
investment,
business
Religion Culture
Media
Knowledge building
e.g. economic
theories and data
collection
Political institutions
Decision-making
processes and
procedures
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 9

10. Why is it persistent?
Patriarchy
• ethnicity
• race
• class
Interconnected
with other
persistent
inequalities
• Dominance of neoliberalism
• Authoritarian regimes
Useful instrument for maintaining
privilege, control, and power
[Plus ça change]
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 10

11.  Used to work in a small factory making hand-crafted dolls for
export for several years before 2009.
 By 2011, Rani is working as a daily house cleaner, earning 1,000
rupees a month.
 Besides the decline in her earnings, what depresses Rani is her
shift from a “stable factory job” to the status of a casual worker
cleaning different houses.
 To Rani, “America” and “recession” were meaningless words.
She doesn’t understand why her job disappeared so suddenly.
Explanation of the global financial crisis brings only an
exasperated query from her:
“But why should something that happens ten thousand
miles away affect me?”
Introducing Rani, a 42-year-old
woman in South India

12. Joined by many other women…
12
Source: World Development Indicators, World DataBank. All latest figures in 2013 except Jordan (2012),
Kuwait (2011), Lebanon (2007), Morroco (2008), Syria (2011), Tunisia (2011) and West Bank and Gaza
(2010). Gender Equality in the MENA Region

13. About globalization
 Uneven process
 Diverse contexts
 Laws of motion set by capital
accumulation
 Rise and consolidation of neoliberalism
 Commercialization and financialization
 Concentration of wealth and
proletarianization
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 13

14. Globalization
 Mixed effect on gender inequality
◦ Liberating
◦ Intensifying
◦ Reconstituting
 New tensions
 Formal changes vs. resilient norms,
attitudes and practices
 Increasing differentiation among women
 Widening forms of vulnerability
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 14

15. Women, men and children of Tacloban City, Leyte,
Philippines in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 15
Photo taken by Guardian (2013)

16. More challenges ahead
 Rising inequality
 Good in creating more conflicts
 Caught up on accumulation of wealth and
ever increasing consumption
 Feeble action to address climate change
and environmental degradation
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 16

17. Water and climate change in the
MENA Region
Droughts and severely
depleted aquifers
• 85% of MENA region’s
annual water use is for
agriculture
• Increasing conflict around
water resource
• <1% of global water
resources
• Examples: Jordan River,
Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers, Nile River, Jubba
and Shabele, Disi/Saq
Aquifer, etc.
Gender Concerns
• Hunger and food security
• Managing common property
resources
• Increasing conflicts
• Livelihood impact
• Unpaid work burden
17Gender Equality in the MENA Region

18. A few lessons from our own
journey towards integrating gender
in development
Rethinking development paradigm and
strategies
Building bridges towards
cooperation and collective action
Change requires social movements
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 18

19. Example:“Accounting for Women’s
Work Project”
 A collective endeavor by scholars,
women’s groups, the UN, donors,
international institutions, and some
governments to make women’s work
visible to society and policymakers
 Key objective: to obtain a full account of
women’s contributions to human welfare
Floro_ASSA 2014 presentation 19

20. Historical, systematic bias against
unremunerated work
1.Theoretical bias in the economics discipline
2. Exclusion in conceptualization of ‘economy’
and ‘work’ since 1954
3. Invisibility in data and statistics
Floro_ASSA 2014 presentation 20

21. Progress has been slooww
 1993: some unpaid work officially
acknowledged and added to System of
National Accounts (SNA)
 Improvements in collecting information
 Collection of time use survey data
Floro_ASSA 2014 presentation 21

22. Transformative
Making a broader impact,
that transcends the initial
concerns raised by
feminists
challenges the
biases in output and
labor force statistics
critiques the underlying
conceptual and
methodological conventions
regarding unpaid work
exposes the biases embedded in
conventional economic models
and analyses
promotes care agenda in the
context of sustainable human
development
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 22

23. How much does household production
contribute to provisioning for human life?
Country Year
Estimated value of
household production
(satellite account to
SNA)
(billions)
Currency % of GDP*
Finland 2001 62.80 € 33.10
Germany 2001 820.00 € 29.40
Finland 2001 57.27 € 31.00
Germany 2001 1008.00 € 34.00
Australia 2000 471.00 2002 AUS$ 43.80
Canada 1998 297.30 CAN$ 33.00
United
Kingdom 2000 877.30 £ 37.40
23Gender Equality in the MENA Region
Reference: Beneria, Berik and Floro (2015)

24. Making care economy visible in
Colombia
Passage of National Law 1413 in
2010 requiring the government:
“to measure the contributions of women
to the economic and social development
of the country and to serve as
fundamental tool for the design and
implementation of public policies”
(Lopez et al. 2013)
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 24

25. Reform at global level:
New definition of work in 2013
19th ICLS resolution redefines the concept of
work and provides a framework for their
measurement.
Resolution identifies 5 types of work that are
done by persons over 15 years of age:
 Unpaid own-production work
 Employment work
 Unpaid trainee work
 Unpaid volunteer work
 Other unpaid work
Floro_ASSA 2014 presentation 25

26. Gender equality in the MENA
region: what does it take?
Struggle for
gender
equality is a
shared task
Collective
effort to bring
about
governance
reforms to
tackle
inequality and
injustice in
various forms
Require
cooperation
and coalition
work of
scholars,
donors,
international
organizations,
environmental
ists, grassroots
community
organizations.
Make
words
into
deeds
Floro_ASSA 2014 presentation 26

27. Thank you.
Gender Equality in the MENA Region 27