Gender Disparity: Its Manifestations, Causes and Implications

Impact of Levels of Living, Education and Culture on Gender Disparity in India and Thailand: A Study of Rural and Urban Districts^*

By
Principal Investigator:

Dr. Buddhadeb Ghosh

Associate Scientist

Economic Research Unit

Indian Statistical Institute

203, B. T. Road,

Kolkata- 700 108, India

&

Collaborating Investigator

Ms. Yaowapa Maneechai

Statistical Officer

National Statistical Office

Bangkok- 10100, Thailand

JEL Classification: J16

Key Words: Development Index, Gender Disparity, and Sex Ratio

Permanent Mailing Address:

“TRINITY”

Dr. Buddhadeb Ghosh

117, Netaji Subhas Avenue

Serampore, Hooghly

West Bengal, India

Pin 712 201

E-mail: [e-mail]

Mobile: [phone]

I. The Background

In no other spheres of life the entanglement between economic and non-economic forces is so intense, widespread and inseparable as in case of gender issue. The Millennium Declaration signed in September 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit committing its member nations “to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable” potentially poses serious doubts about its fulfillment within the deadline. And India as a testing ground for this purpose is a perfect candidate to raise some pertinent questions for which urgent answers are needed in order to meet the deadline not only in India but also in comparable societies.¹

It is almost 30 years since 1979 that the UN General Assembly under the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) guaranteed (and ratified by 170 members) the rights of women and girls. What is then new in MDGs? It is the first time that UNO involve concrete, time-bound and quantitative targets for action in order to improve the conditions of living and work of women and girls across the globe in collaboration with the concerned governments. It is well known that even in industrial countries, women in the wage sector earn an average of 77 percent of what men earn; in developing countries, they earn 73 percent; so the state of affairs is not amazingly different in these two worlds (Beneria and Bisnath, 2001). Abu-Ghaida and Klasen (2004) estimate that a large majority of countries are unlikely to meet the gender target within the deadline². For India, it will be clear from the present study that unless the nature and direction of the linkage between gender indicators and other socio-economic factors are well diagnosed, policy misspecifications may complicate the problem further thereby nullifying the good intentions of UNO, governmental and other non-governmental organizations.

Human development is a process of enlarging the choices and opportunities for all people. Such a process indisputably becomes unjust and discriminatory if at least half of the human race is excluded from its overall benefits as in India. Denial of equal choices to women in economic, social and political arena is a continuing indictment to human progress. Women’s capabilities and opportunities as we see today is surely not a representation of their potential. Where thousands of years of cultural complexity have inseparably been blended with economic life particularly in gender issues, where regional variations are widespread and intense, and national averages in gender disparity do not do not represent the extremes even under the same constitutional set up as in India, where conventional generalization techniques can hardly find any uni-directional causality at ease, who can assure the fulfillment of gender equality within a decade? Any policy instrument campaigned before diagnosis even at the behest of the government should only defer such a noble predicament as MDGs within the deadline. The present study is an attempt at finding the possible linkages between economic and non-economic factors with widespread gender disparity across smaller geographical units of the country namely ‘districts’ and that too under ‘rural’ ‘urban’ divisions.