Gender Equality and the Economy

While gender inequalities have diminished in some aspects of life, they remain deeply rooted in others. In no country around the world do men and women enjoy equality in economic and political participation, earnings, educational attainment, general health, and physical security.

The Levy Institute’s Gender Equality and the Economy (GEE) program focuses on the ways in which economic processes and policies affect gender equality, and examines the influence of gender inequalities on economic outcomes. GEE’s goal is to stimulate reexamination of key economic concepts, models, and indicators—with a particular view to reformulating policy. It offers a broad view of what an economy is and how it functions, bringing into the analysis not only paid work, but also unpaid work (unpaid family work, work devoted to subsistence activities, caring for household members, and community volunteer work), an integral and key component of all economies. Ultimately, the program seeks to contribute knowledge and recommend policies that promote gender equality. 

Research

GEE research concentrates on two primary themes: the gender dimensions of macroeconomic issues and international economic policy; and gender equality, poverty, and well-being in national and international perspective. In the past decade, a growing body of work has explored how macroeconomic outcomes are affected by gender inequalities, and how gender inequalities are influenced by macroeconomic policies. Although gender equality is not the focus of macroeconomic policy, such policies cannot be assumed to be gender neutral. Does a requirement to balance budgets make it more difficult to reduce gender inequality? Given the inability of markets to guarantee a job for all who seek one, how can public policy that promotes full employment be inclusive of gender equality considerations? How can economic growth and gender equality be made compatible? Can gender equality improve the employment/inflation trade-off?

The Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being was established in order to improve existing official measures of economic well-being and allow for accurate cross-sectional and intertemporal comparisons. GEE will enhance this area of the Levy Institute’s work by developing research on the intersection of gender inequality, expanded income, and  time poverty.  Research will include the reexamination of U.N. indicators for measuring gender inequality and women’s empowerment, new analyses of time-use data, and the preparation of recommendations for the refinement of existing measures and/or the development of alternative indicators that can be used in policy formulation.

Gender Equality and the Economy Program / GEM-IWG Workshop on Gender and the Global Economic Crisis, Bard College, June 29 – July 10, 2009

The Levy Economics Institute and the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics (GEM-IWG) sponsored an intensive two-week workshop, “Gender and the Global Economic Crisis,” in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, from June 29 to July 10. This workshop was part of the GEM-IWG Knowledge Networking Program, established in 2003 to strengthen intellectual links among economists whose work focuses on the interface of gender, globalization, and macroeconomic policy. This year’s program, organized in partnership with the Levy Institute’s Gender Equality and the Economy program, centered on the global economic downturn and the formulation of gender-equitable policy responses. More than 30 fellows gathered at the Institute’s main research and conference facility on the Bard College campus to exchange ideas and explore various aspects of the crisis from a gender perspective, including its origins, its impact on banking and credit, and its implications for trade and pro-poor development. The 9th GEM-IWG International Conference on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics, held at United Nations Headquarters in New York City, followed on July 13–14. For program details, visit www.genderandmacro.org.

Research Group: Rania Antonopoulos, Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Nilüfer A. Çagatay, Kijong Kim, Feridoon Koohi-Kamali, Lekha S. Chakraborty, Pinaki Chakraborty, Valeria Esquivel, Indira Hirway, Tamar Khitarishvili, Emel Memis, Fatma Gül Ünal, Imraan Valodia

Program Publications
Working Papers | March 2010 Determining Gender Equity in Fiscal Federalism: Analytical Issues and Empirical Evidence from India Despite the policy realm’s growing recognition of fiscal devolution in gender development, there have been relatively few attempts to translate gender commitments into fiscal commitments. This paper aims to engage in this significant debate, focusing on the plausibility of incorporating gender into financial devolution, with the Thirteenth Finance Commission of India as backdrop. [more] Working Paper No. 590
Public Policy Briefs | February 2010 Why President Obama Should Care about “Care”: An Effective and Equitable Investment Strategy for Job Creation In his State of the Union address President Obama acknowledged that “our most urgent task is job creation”—that a move toward full employment will lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and ensure that the federal government creates the necessary conditions for businesses to expand and hire more workers. According to a new study by Levy scholars Rania Antonopoulos, Kijong Kim, Thomas Masterson, and Ajit Zacharias, the government needs to identify and invest in projects that have the potential for massive, and immediate, public job creation. [more] Public Policy Brief No. 108, 2010
Book Series | January 2010 Unpaid Work and the Economy This volume offers both theoretical and policy-oriented examinations of the value of unpaid work, usually unacknowledged but increasingly recognized as an organic component of the economy. Particularly in developing countries, much of the provisioning of basic needs occurs beyond the boundaries of market transactions. [more] Book Series, January 2010
Public Policy Brief Highlights | August 2009 Promoting Gender Equality through Stimulus Packages and Public Job Creation: Lessons Learned from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme Beyond loss of income, joblessness is associated with greater poverty, marginalization, and social exclusion; the current global crisis is clearly not helping. In this new Public Policy Brief, Research Scholar Rania Antonopoulos explores the impact of both joblessness and employment expansion on poverty, paying particular attention to the gender aspects of poverty and poverty-reducing public employment schemes targeting poor women. [more] Public Policy Brief Highlights No. 101A, 2009
Working Papers | August 2009 The Unequal Burden of Poverty on Time Use This study uses the first time-use survey carried out in South Africa (2000) to examine women’s and men’s time use, with a focus on the impacts of income poverty. We empirically explore the determinants of time spent on different paid and unpaid work activities, including a variety of household and individual characteristics, using bivariate and multivariate Tobit estimations. [more] Working Paper No. 572
Working Papers | July 2009 From Unpaid to Paid Care Work: The Macroeconomic Implications of HIV and AIDS on Women's Time-tax Burdens This paper considers public employment guarantee programs in the context of South Africa as a means to address the nexus of poverty, unemployment, and unpaid work burdens—all factors exacerbated by HIV/AIDS. It further discusses the need for genderinformed public job creation in areas that mitigate the “time-tax” burdens of women, and examines a South African initiative to address social sector service delivery deficits within the government’s Expanded Public Works Programme. [more] Working Paper No. 570
Press Releases | June 2009 Government Job Programs That Focus on Social Services More Than Infrastructure May Offer Greater Benefits to Economy, New Study from Levy Economics Institute Suggests [more] Press Release, June 8, 2009
Public Policy Briefs | June 2009 Promoting Gender Equality through Stimulus Packages and Public Job Creation Beyond loss of income, joblessness is associated with greater poverty, marginalization, and social exclusion; the current global crisis is clearly not helping. In this new Public Policy Brief, Research Scholar Rania Antonopoulos explores the impact of both joblessness and employment expansion on poverty, paying particular attention to the gender aspects of poverty and poverty-reducing public employment schemes targeting poor women. [more] Public Policy Brief No. 101, 2009
Working Papers | May 2009 The Current Economic and Financial Crisis: A Gender Perspective Widespread economic recessions and protracted financial crises have been documented as setting back gender equality and other development goals in the past. In the midst of the current global crisis—often referred to as “the Great Recession”—there is grave concern that progress made in poverty reduction and women’s equality will be reversed. [more] Working Paper No. 562
Working Papers | November 2008 An Empirical Analysis of Gender Bias in Education Spending in Paraguay Gender affects household spending in two areas that have been widely studied in the literature. One strand documents that greater female bargaining power within households results in a variety of shifts in household production and consumption. [more] Working Paper No. 550
Working Papers | July 2008 The Unpaid Care Work–Paid Work Connection In order to provide a coherent perspective of gender differences in the world of work, the many intersections of paid and unpaid work must be brought to light. It is well documented that gender-based wage differentials and occupational segregation continue to characterize the division of labor among men and women in paid work; yet unpaid work in social reproduction, subsistence production, family businesses, and the community is often ignored. [more] Working Paper No. 541
Working Papers | July 2008 The Effects of International Trade on Gender Inequality The process of economic globalization has winners and losers. Iran’s carpet industry provides a good illustration of the adverse side of this process. [more] Working Paper No. 540
Working Papers | July 2008 Deficient Public Infrastructure and Private Costs This paper presents new evidence on the links between public-infrastructure provisioning and time allocation related to the water sector in India. An analysis of time-use data reveals that worsening public infrastructure affects market work, with evident gender differentials. [more] Working Paper No. 536
Working Papers | November 2007 Public Employment and Women In 2002, Argentina implemented a large-scale public employment program to deal with the latest economic crisis and the ensuing massive unemployment and poverty. The program, known as Plan Jefes, offered part-time work for unemployed heads of households, and yet more than 70 percent of the people who turned up for work were women. [more] Working Paper No. 519
Working Papers | October 2007 Fiscal Deficit, Capital Formation, and Crowding Out in India This paper analyzes the real (direct) and financial crowding out in India between 1970–71 and 2002–03. Using an asymmetric vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the paper finds no real crowding out between public and private investment; rather, complementarity is observed between the two. [more] Working Paper No. 518
Working Papers | September 2007 The Right to a Job, the Right Types of Projects There is now widespread recognition that in most countries, private-sector investment has not been able to absorb surplus labor. This is all the more the case for poor unskilled people. [more] Working Paper No. 516
Working Papers | July 2007 Female Land Rights, Crop Specialization, and Productivity in Paraguayan Agriculture Previous work has shown a pattern of lower household incomes for those Paraguayan farms with female landowners in the household. The study of agricultural production reveals that Paraguayan women specialize in livestock and dairy production, while men specialize in crop production. [more] Working Paper No. 504
Working Papers | May 2007 Gender Disparities in Employment and Aggregate Profitability in the United States We explore the relationships between aggregate profitability and women’s growing share of market work in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Using decomposition analysis and counterfactuals, we investigate whether the contribution of the declining wage share to the upswing in profitability was aided by the growing incorporation of women into the workforce. [more] Working Paper No. 496
Working Papers | April 2007 Gender Inequalities in Allocating Time to Paid and Unpaid Work This working paper analyzes paid and unpaid work-time inequalities among Bolivian urban adults using time use data from a 2001 household survey. We identified a gender-based division of labor characterized not so much by who does what type of work but by how much work of each type they do. [more] Working Paper No. 495
Working Papers | March 2007 State, Difference, and Diversity Should the state treat men and women in identical ways, or should it legislate and enforce policies that are aware of gender differences? In other words, should the state be gender-blind or gender-sensitive? Gender, ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, ideological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions represent diversity among citizens. This paper argues that if the goal of the state is to promote democratic participation for all, a distinction must be drawn between socioeconomic characteristics that signify difference and those that manifest inequalities. [more] Working Paper No. 493
Working Papers | August 2006 The Financial Requirements of Achieving Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Although the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been ratified in global and national forums, they have not yet been incorporated into operational planning within governments or international organizations. The weak link between the policies and the investments needed for their implementation is one barrier to progress. [more] Working Paper No. 467
Working Papers | January 2006 Importing Equality or Exporting Jobs? This study investigates the impact of increased import competition on gender wage and employment differentials in American manufacturing over the period from 1976 to 1993. Increased import competition is expected to decrease the relative demand for workers in low-wage production occupations and the relative demand for women workers, given the high female share in these occupations. [more] Working Paper No. 436
Working Papers | February 2005 Asset Ownership along Gender Lines Gender differences have long been documented in earnings, employment opportunities, and time spent within the unpaid care economy. This paper joins the recent efforts in the economics literature on gender differences in asset ownership. [more] Working Paper No. 418
Working Papers | February 2003 Does Trade Promote Gender Wage Equity? This study explores the impact of competition from international trade on the gender wage gap in Taiwan and South Korea between 1980 and 1999. The dynamic implications of Becker's 1959 theory of discrimination lead one to expect that increased competition from international trade reduces the incentive for employers to discriminate against women. [more] Working Paper No. 373
Working Papers | August 2002 Race, Ethnicity, and the Gender-Poverty Gap We use data from the Current Population Survey (CPS 1994-2001) to document the relationship between gender-specific demographic variations and the gender-poverty gap among eight racial/ethnic groups. We find that black and Puerto Rican women experience a double disadvantage owing to being both women and members of a minority group. [more] Working Paper No. 351