Male Bias in Economic Development: Causes and Global Evidence

Introduction: Gender and Development Policy

Until the 1970s and 1980s, women were largely ignored by policymakers at the national and international levels, while neoclassical economic models assumed that the aggregate income of households would be shared equally between men and women. More recent research has proven these assumptions to be false, and that the conflict model of household economics is more the norm in reality. Economists and government statisticians also failed to recognize the value of women's unpaid labor in domestic and reproductive work, or that Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund had a disproportionately negative effect on women. In addition, even in the formal sectors of the economy, women's labor was generally low-paid, unskilled, and insecure compared to that of men.

Feminist theorists have demonstrated that gender relations are "socially determined" (Elson 1) and that development issues cannot be considered apart from these. For this reason, economists and social planners need to address questions of differences in power relations, since "women are less powerful than men of similar economic and social position" (Elson 2). Women are also in greater danger of sexual violence and physical abuse regardless of social class, although women of different social classes do not share the same social and economic interests. A gender relations approach that takes subordination and power differences into consideration does not necessarily mean that "all men are biased against women" or that some women do not cooperate in their own oppression — only that women are usually more willing to combat it than men (Elson 3).

Male Bias in Development Outcomes

Neoclassical economists played down gender bias in their research and did not seem to be aware of power differentials within households. They also ignored factors of culture and socialization that trained women to perform purely unpaid domestic and reproductive tasks, denied them adequate nutrition and educational opportunities, and reinforced patriarchal family and community structures that made it impossible for women to even express their own individual choices and preferences (Elson 5). In the twentieth century, women may have obtained voting rights and legal equality in the formal sense, but inequality has remained the norm in social and economic life.

In many countries, even land ownership is still reserved for male heads of households, while labor, social welfare, and minimum wage laws do not apply to the informal sector where the majority of women are employed. Male bias in development continues to exist because "women enjoy fewer and more circumscribed capabilities than do men" (Elson 5). Female-headed households are overwhelmingly poor in every region of the world, which is yet another indication of male bias. Like racial, ethnic, and regional biases, it also lowers female output and productivity and makes the achievement of overall development objectives far more difficult.

Causes of Male Bias in Development

Male bias exists at all levels of development, including actions and attitudes in everyday life, public policy, and the theoretical reasoning of development economists. In daily life, such biases may even be unconscious — "perceptions and habits, the result of oversight, faulty assumptions, a failure to ask questions" (Elson 7). Women's labor and contributions to family income and living standards go unpaid and unrecognized almost everywhere. Their wages and incomes are lower than those of men in almost every country in the world, while in childhood they are often denied adequate nutrition because sons are more highly valued.

Women's contribution to agricultural production is largely unknown to official statisticians or is simply aggregated as part of household and family incomes. Until very recently, economic and social development policies were simply not formulated with women in mind, and "women were largely invisible to policy-makers" (Elson 11). Moreover, women almost always carry a double burden of unpaid productive and domestic work that does not appear in official records. Household income is not shared equally between women and men but is mostly under the control of males, who spend it according to their own needs and priorities.

Conclusion: Structural Adjustment and the Path Forward

Male bias in development is clearly well-entrenched and systematic all over the world, and there are no simple or easy solutions to this problem. The development process itself has not reduced male bias, which exists in the public and private sectors, within households, and in the formal and informal areas of the economy. Structural Adjustment Programs implemented by the World Bank and the IMF have increased the problem rather than diminishing it, even though neoclassical economists made the false assumption that these programs would turn out to be gender-neutral. Even where they increased the incomes of farmers, for example, this did not mean that the benefits were shared equally between men and women within households.

Structural Adjustment has imposed greater burdens on women than on men, and reductions in public social welfare programs have also affected women disproportionately. Increased inflation in the prices of food and other basic household commodities affected women more than men, and their unpaid labor was never sufficient to cover all the real costs of adjustment. Within households and outside of them, women were the ultimate victims of trickle-down economics. From a feminist viewpoint, only collective action and empowerment offer any hope of correcting this male bias in development, although none of these changes will happen overnight.