If Development Is Not Engendered, It Is Endangered

In 1976 the economist Muhammad Yunus lent twenty seven dollars from his own pocket to forty two women in the Bangladeshi village of Jobra who made bamboo stools. They repaid him on time. From that experiment grew the Grameen Bank, which by the 2010s had lent to millions of borrowers, around nine in ten of them women, with repayment rates above ninety eight per cent. Women used the credit to start small businesses, to feed and educate their children and to gain a voice in their households. The story is one of many that give meaning to the topic's claim that development which is not engendered is endangered, which is to say that a development that ignores gender is at risk.

The word engendered here does not mean merely including women as an afterthought. It means that the whole process of development, in its planning, resources and measurement, takes account of the different positions and needs of women and men. Where this is done, the results are visible. Where women are denied schooling, income, health care and a say in decisions, the entire society pays. The point is practical as well as moral.

The economic case is strong. Women are about half of the working age population, and a country that keeps most of them out of paid work wastes a large share of its talent. The McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2015 that India could add around 700 billion dollars to its annual output by 2025 if women's participation in the economy came to match that of men even partially. East Asian economies grew fast in part because they brought women into factories and schools, and Bangladesh's garment industry, which employs several million women, has transformed rural society and lifted the country's growth.

Education is the clearest channel. Educated mothers have fewer and healthier children, who are more likely to survive and to go to school themselves. Studies across countries find that an additional year of a mother's schooling reduces child mortality significantly. Amartya Sen has pointed out that in states of India, such as Kerala, where women are literate and have a strong social standing, fertility fell without coercion, in contrast with the heavy handed methods of China's one child policy. Investment in girls pays a double dividend, in their own lives and in the next generation's.

Investment in girls pays a double dividend, in their own lives and in the next generation's.

When women control income, spending patterns change. Research from many countries shows that a larger share of money controlled by mothers goes to food, health and schooling for children. Microfinance and self help groups, such as those of Andhra Pradesh and the Self Employed Women's Association of Gujarat, have used this fact to channel credit to women. In Rwanda, after the genocide of 1994 had killed hundreds of thousands of men, women took up work and leadership, and the country's parliament, with more than sixty per cent of seats held by women since 2013, has pursued policies on health and land rights that many observers credit with progress.

Yet the opposite story is also told by the figures. Amartya Sen estimated in 1990 that more than 100 million women were missing from the world's population because of neglect, sex selective abortion and violence. In India, the child sex ratio of 919 girls to every thousand boys recorded in the census of 2011 was the lowest since independence. The United Nations Gender Inequality Index ranks India low among countries. Women do the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work and have limited ownership of land and assets. A development that raises average income while leaving these inequalities intact is, in the language of the topic, endangered.

The danger takes several forms. Economically, a growth based on half the population is slower and more fragile. Socially, gender imbalances create problems such as the surplus of young men in regions with skewed sex ratios, who find it hard to marry, and who in some cases are linked to violence and trafficking. Politically, the exclusion of women from decision making means that policies overlook half the population's needs, as in public transport, sanitation and security. Cities designed by men for men are unwelcoming to women. The Swachh Bharat campaign recognised that the lack of toilets is a danger and a humiliation for women and girls.

The topic must be handled with care, however, because the arguments for engendered development can themselves be misused. If women are valued mainly because they improve growth, health or demographic outcomes, they are treated as instruments of policy and not as persons with rights. Critics call this the smart economics approach. Equality is justified in its own right, because women are citizens with the same claim to freedom and dignity as men, and not simply because it pays. A policy that gave women opportunities only where they raised output would betray the principle on which the topic rests.

Some practical lessons follow. Budgets can be analysed for their effects on women, an approach called gender budgeting that India adopted in 2005. Data should be gathered separately for women and men, because averages hide disparities. Legal reforms, such as equal inheritance rights, protection against violence and reservations in local government, change the bargaining position of women in families and communities. Programmes such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched in 2015, aim to change attitudes toward daughters, but results depend on implementation. Lasting change needs both law and social movement.

There is a final consideration which lies in the choice of the word endangered. It suggests that the harm falls on development itself, and not only on women. This is a persuasive device, aimed at those who are not moved by arguments of fairness. If a society will not do what is just because it is just, perhaps it will do it because its own prosperity is at risk. Whether an argument of this kind can produce true equality, or only the amount of equality that pays, is a question that the evidence from the countries that have tried it cannot yet decide.