Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

The Thai Scene

Some of the emerging trends in the rural development agenda relating to gender development in Thailand need special attention here. As in India, so also in Thailand, high rates of female labour force participation among tribal and hilly communities help explain the relatively better status of women in these regions (Sen, 2005; Kirjavainen, 2002). For example, in Thailand, the role of women in agricultural labour market is remarkably high (about 60%). Traditionally, in Northern Thailand, land is inherited through the matrimonial lineage system, and women are mostly both de facto and de jure household managers even if men are seemingly the leaders. However, land is increasingly registered in the name of ‘head of household’, who are normally the male members in recent period.

Another economic issue is the recent and continuing shift of labour from industry back to agriculture, which has worsened the land to head ratio thereby causing further deterioration in the conditions of living of Thai women. In a country like Thailand where there is high degree of homogeneity in terms of ethnicity, religion and geographical traits, rapid industrialization and derivative occupational disorder have made the women and girls more vulnerable (Sean and Barr, 1997; Somswasdi and Theobold, 1997; Matzner, 1998; Perkins, 1992). This provides new challenges for agricultural and rural development planning for the future of Thai women and girls.

Women in present day Thai society face an entirely different set of decisions regarding work, fertility and lifestyle than the earlier generations. The main forces fuelling these changes are fertility decline, delayed marriage, high levels of migration from rural areas, and increased employment opportunities in urban areas. Compared with women in other South-East Asian countries, Thai women in general fare relatively well in several aspects like literacy, access to tertiary education, degree of autonomy regarding reproductive behaviour decisions, freedom of movement and association, post-marital residence patterns, inheritance and choice of marriage partners.

The picture is not so encouraging in rural areas. One obvious result is the increasing rate of participation of Thai women and teenage girls in the oldest profession of sexual activities (which is largely informal) away from agriculture because of worsening overhead land availability and job shrinkage due to technology-intensive industrialization (Chandamrong, 1994; World Bank, 2003). Faster industrial growth and short run disorder have dislocated the traditional social fabric as well as the mobility of women (Pejaranonda et al., 1995; Sean and Barr, 1997). The difference between men and women is apparent in all age groups but is most significant in the older age groups, reflecting the lower age of retirement imposed on women (Prapapun, 1996). As the Thai economy move away from low-skilled manufacturing which earlier employed unskilled rural women, to highly skilled and knowledge-intensive activities, a substantial proportion of rural and urban women- those with no skill and education- queue in the assembly line for switching to the oldest profession. United Nations (UN) agencies reported that one in 60 Thai people were infected with human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) by the year 2000. The linkage between regional rural poverty, women’s subordinate economic position, their disadvantageous situation in the labor market, the high levels of recruitment of poor migrant women as sex workers, their generally lower levels of education (or lack of education in technical subjects), and their absence from public decision-making, have contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand (Ramitanondh and Tongsiri).⁷

Why women in this part of the world even after a decade of the announcement of MDGs are still discriminated against in a democratic though diverse country like India and in a culturally homogeneous Buddhist country like Thailand?

Our hunch is that there may be many different sets of crucial “extra-economic factors” operating in different regions, the existence of which dictates the importance of the “economic factors”. Unless these determinants are identified, official supports will be easily nullified in the face of rising disorder of occupational choice in post-reform context. Therefore, empirical gender studies which are not founded upon disaggregated intra-state (among districts) analysis must lead to unwarranted conclusions thereby inviting policy misspecification. Elson (1999) rightly mentions that participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women, and discrimination against women may persist unless the nature of the linkage is known as clearly as possible and future policies are undertaken on the basis of such observations.

Under such a background, the broad research objective of the present study would be to explore the nature of relationship between levels of living, work participation, gender inequality index, poverty, education and sex ratio. We pay more emphasis on Indian districts primarily because of their intense heterogeneity compared to more homogeneous Thai regions. Due emphasis is given on education and work participation of women with special reference to disparity across the districts, and wherever possible, between rural and urban areas. Apart from the conventional gender variables, we have organized district-wise purchasing power, poverty ratio and economic inequality (Lorenz ratio) in order to investigate their impact on sex ratio and work participation. Our analysis confirms that national level and state-level studies without emphasizing on the sub-regions called ‘districts’ as unit of analysis will essentially mutates against the very purpose of gender study.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Data, methodology and coverage are dealt with in Section II. The results of statistical exercises are analyzed in Section III. Section IV discusses the limitations and future research agenda.