Gender Inequality - Impact and Counteractions

Impact and Counteractions

Gender inequality and discrimination is argued to cause and perpetuate poverty and vulnerability in society as a whole. Household and intra-household knowledge and resources are key influences in individuals' abilities to take advantage of external livelihood opportunities or respond appropriately to threats. High education levels and social integration significantly improve the productivity of all members of the household and improve equity throughout society. Gender Equity Indices seek to provide the tools to demonstrate this feature of poverty.

Despite acknowledgement by institutions such as the World Bank that gender inequality is bad for economic growth, there are many difficulties in creating a comprehensive response. It is argued that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) fail to acknowledge gender inequality as a cross-cutting issue. Gender is mentioned in MDG3 and MDG5: MDG3 measures gender parity in education, the share of women in wage employment and the proportion women in national legislatures. MDG5 focuses on maternal mortality and on universal access to reproductive health. However, even these targets are significantly off-track.

Addressing gender inequality through social protection programmes designed to increase equity would be an effective way of reducing gender inequality. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute argue for the need to develop the following in social protection in order to reduce gender inequality and increase growth:

• Community childcare to give women greater opportunities to seek employment;
• Support parents with the care costs (e.g. South African child/disability grants);
• Education stipends for girls (e.g. Bangladesh’s Girls Education Stipend scheme);
• Awareness-raising regarding gender-based violence, and other preventive measures, such as financial support for women and children escaping abusive environments (e.g. NGO pilot initiatives in Ghana);
• Inclusion of programme participants (women and men) in designing and evaluating social protection programmes;
• Gender-awareness and analysis training for programme staff;
• Collect and distribute information on coordinated care and service facilities (e.g. access to micro-credit and microentrepreneurial training for women); and
• Developing monitoring and evaluation systems that include sex-disaggregated data.

However, politics plays a central role in the interests, institutions and ideas that are needed to reshape social welfare and gender inequality in politics and society limits governments' ability to act on economic incentives.

It is interesting to note that NGO's tend to protect women against gender inequality and Structural violence. During war, the opposing side targets women, raping and even killing them. This could be because women are associated with children and killing them prohibits there being a next generation of the enemy.

Another opportunity to tackle gender inequality is presented by modern Information and communication technologies. In a carefully controlled study, it has been shown that women embrace digital technology more than men, disproving the stereotype of "technophobic women". Given that digital information and communication technologies have the potential to provide access to employment, education, income, health services, participation, protection, and safety, among others (ICT4D), the natural affinity of women with these new communication tools provide women with a tangible bootstrapping opportunity to tackle social discrimination. In other words, if women are provided with modern information and communication technologies, these digital tools present to them an opportunity to fight longstanding inequalities in the workplace and at home.