In her talk on Women’s Legal Rights and Inequality in Economic Resources: A Global Perspective, Prof. Hema Swaminathan, from the Centre of Public Policy at IIMB, focuses on inequality in the economic sphere with respect to employment and asset ownership, explaining that economic freedom and empowerment is foundational to empowerment in other spheres
18 APRIL, 2022: Gender inequality continues to be pervasive in nearly all walks of life – economic, political, social, cultural – an issue that cuts across borders. This remains true even as women are making tremendous progress and shattering glass ceilings in many ways. “Successful examples are inspiring and push boundaries, but they do not change the lived realities of most of the world’s women to whom equality is still not within reach,” pointed out Prof. Hema Swaminathan, from the Centre of Public Policy at IIM Bangalore.
In her talk on Women’s Legal Rights and Inequality in Economic Resources: A Global Perspective, the fifth in the series ‘Inequality Conversations’, hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at IIM Bangalore, this evening, Prof. Hema Swaminathan focused on inequality in the economic sphere with respect to employment and asset ownership, explaining that economic freedom and empowerment is foundational to empowerment in other spheres. “The ability to command and enjoy economic resources is important in its own right – they build agency, confidence, create peer groups, networks, and so on and lead to empowerment,” she said.
Prof. Hema Swaminathan and Prof. Deepak Malghan, from the Centre for Public Policy, have research papers on women’s labour force participation and have found that it is low in many regions of the world; in no country do they earn as much as men do, on average, and this does not change across the income distribution. She also listed the reasons for gender inequality in labour income.
“While the broad data says discrimination against gender is prohibited, a recent Index of States in India report, based on an analysis of 48 Acts, 169 Rules and 20 Notifications, shows that discrimination in employment continues,” she said.
Quoting from the World Inequality Report 2022, which shows that female labour income share is systematically below 50%, ranging from below 10% to 45%, Prof. Hema Swaminathan said, “Women are less likely than men to own high-value assets like land, house, and other forms of immovable property. Governments have a direct and indirect responsibility for much of the inequality in economic resources experienced by women.”
“Labour market is not gender neutral”
“We commonly hear that women do not have an appetite for risk; we hear of gender stereotypes. What I do want you to remember is that the choices which women make or the skills they possess have not fallen out of the sky – they have already encountered discrimination of some kind which has led to these choices. Women also pay, what is called, motherhood penalty where they experience a sharp drop in their earnings and do not experience any recovery in their earnings even after years of rejoining the labour force. Interestingly, there is no fatherhood penalty in the labour market,” she said, adding that the care economy (child care, elder care, domestic maintenance), where women do the bulk of such work, is also undervalued and underpaid than, say, the STEM fields. “I want to focus on state-sanctioned discrimination – globally,” she said, observing that while one must look at redistribution of the care work, the role of the state in addressing this imbalance must be looked into as laws remain regressive.
Every country has committed to the Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality), but the momentum to realizing this goal is lacking, she said, drawing attention to legislations and policies enacted by national governments that limit women’s employment opportunities, and their opportunity to acquire assets and wealth. “Further, such legislations not only devalue the tremendous contribution that women make to the economy and society, but they also fuel gender stereotypes of men as bread winners and women as caregivers. Such policies hurt us all. What we need from governments through legislations and policies is the signal that women are capable economic agents who need effective rule of law to function to their full capacity,” she said.
Gender inequality in assets & wealth
“Property ownership gives one a great sense of security even if you don’t have an income, and across countries, women’s land/ home ownership is lower than men,” said Prof. Hema Swaminathan, adding that asset acquisition happens through marriage, inheritance and markets in most developing countries. Drawing attention to laws around assets through marriage (full community of property, partial community of property and separation of property), she said women fare better under community of property regimes, pointing out that India follows the separation of property regime, which could be a double whammy for women because it does not understand the patriarchy which is at play and makes invisible the contribution of women.
Earlier in the evening, Prof. Soham Sahoo introduced Prof. Hema Swaminathan and her work on poverty and inequality.
Watch here: https://youtu.be/uGbG9RklKl4