Introduction
Women are important in the economic growth and development challenge. In the developing nations, women are highly disadvantaged at their homes and the society level. At households, women are limited to access to resources available and have no control of those resources, as well. Moreover, these women cannot take part or have an influence in making decisions at their homes. In a societal perspective, women are not represented in public offices and other decision-making institutions, they have limited say in the markets, and have limited to no access to resources meant to benefit the community or society. Developing countries, therefore, have simply subjugated women to the extent of denying them their rights.[1]
Women subjugation seems to be acceptable in the developing nations due to the existence of subjective and inferior laws. There also exist primitive beliefs and practices that allow abuse of women thus encouraging exploitation of women. Among the key areas that women have been denied opportunities are in the education sector, heath care and employment where there is male prevalence. Third world countries tend to disregard the girl child while the boy child is considered to be worth of going to school and getting employment. Women are assigned roles based on their sex whereby they only assume domestic roles such as looking after the house and giving birth while men do less in the households. Furthermore, these women are subjected to early marriages, rape, and routine domestic violence from their husbands.
However, in the recent times, a positive change in the global scale to look after women rights and their empowerment has been observed. There have been increased pressure for reforms aimed at overcoming gender inequality, as well. Despite the overall positive changes in the world in the field of women’s rights and overcoming gender inequality, the situation of women in developing countries is still deeply unsatisfactory, because it combines the socio-cultural and economic problems of developing countries with the problems of female oppression and gender inequality. Although it is worth noting, that several positive trends appeared in the areas of employment, education and policies that contribute to the restoration of gender equality.
Women empowerment and gender equality are currently one of the major goals of millennium development goals. There has been a sign of success especially in the western countries such as North America and most parts of Europe where women have gained much recognition to enable them progress through participating in economically progressive areas. This article, therefore, digs deeper in the issue of women and development in less industrialized nations, with the main focus on education and employment. A major part of this paper has also been dedicated to the discussion of various laws and policy measures aimed at improving the position of women in developing countries.
Education
Elimination of gender disparity in all levels of education is a development goal in the developing world. However for decades, the girl child has been highly marginalized when it comes to access to education in developing nations. Here, sex roles place women at homes to look after children and do other house chores instead of going to school. Males, on the other hand, are favored by being excluded from household or domestic work so that they can attend to education. However, the only education girls get is the informal education at home whereby they are taught how to cook and do other housework, including bringing up children when they conceive. The traditional informal education for boys such as looking after cattle and being a warrior seems to be long forgotten since they now get a formal education in schools.
Nelly Stromquistremarks that none of the countries in Sub-Saharan and West Africa have achieved the required universal primary enrollment. Most of the schools are dominated by males denying the girls the opportunity to a weapon that could use to free themselves from the social shackles. The ratios between schooling girls and boys in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are surprising based on empirical studies carried out by the United Nations. The gap is a much as 30 percent from the regional levels of these countries although this has decreased sharply from the past decades when girls’ school attendance was very minimal.[2]Mukta Dubey in his Journal attributes low numbers of schooled women to discrimination and subjugation by third world societies.[3]
But then, Stromquist points out how the girl child is sacrificed so that the boy child can get an education.[4] Some communities in the developing world can allow for girls of tender ages as low as ten or below, to get married so that dowry can be acquired. This dowry can then be used to educate the males who are considered to be better members of the society with that education. Moreover, Cohen cites UNICEF report in 2001 about continued practice of marrying underage girls. The report describes the worst case in Nepal where 7% of girls got married under ten years and over 40% under 15 years.[5] This is a failure to realize that the sacrificed girls can also become better and productive, even than the males, with that denied education. Girls who manage to access education, are also prone to various challenges that normally impact their schooling negatively. Lack of proper informal education to the girls leads to unprotected sex, and they normally end up with unwanted pregnancies. Bearing children at their youthful ages affect their education since they are forced by circumstances to alter their learning.
Education disparities continue even when the girls are in schools whereby they are discriminated based on the disciplines they choose to learn. Due to masculinity, the males often get to take technical subjects such as math and sciences, as well because they are considered to be able. Girls, on the other hand, take simpler subjects such as religion and particular art disciplines because they are considered to be simpler. In the long run, these choices affect the girls as they are bound to get limited opportunities in the job markets, and lowly paying jobs too. Unfortunately, many learning institutions in the developing nations have not identified these differences in career choices, and the few that have noticed have done little to encourage the girl child that they are equally in a good position to take up science and other technical subjects that could give them better careers and well-paying opportunities in their future.
Martin Hilbert has observed the gender digital divide that exist between women and men in developing countries. He points out at how women are lagging behind regarding technology that is the force behind the rapid developments in developing nations. The main reasons ascribed to lack of a high number of technologically competent women is that women are technophobic. This means that they lack the enthusiasm to go for technology education so that they can be professionals in the field. The mentality that women are not good in technology has led to male dominance on the internet, social networking apps, and telephony. Males are considered to be master of digital tools since it is believed to be a technical area that they understand and perform better than the women.[6]
Hilbert’s empirical study that is considered the most comprehensive and extensive, however, show surprising results regarding women and technology education in developing countries. His study has focused on Latin and African nations whereby technology use is on the rise in the recent decades. Hilbert finds out that a few number of women use and access ICT because of various unfavorable factors connected to education and income. Existing data also show that women in developing nations are less likely to use IT hence a clear depiction of the digital dived that exists.[7] Then, without the hindrances of income and education, females are better off and more active regarding the use of digital tools compared to males. Thus, these women need technology empowerment to improve their living because they are poised to perform better at it than men.
Employment
Women are a marginalized gender in the labor market in the developing countries. This is because they are discriminated regarding employment opportunities whereby they do not get equal employment opportunities as their male counterparts. A research journal based on Kenya by Dr. Isis Gaddis show that there are massive differentials in labor force participation in third world countries. He explains how there exists a very small ratio of women employed in various sectors to men.[8] A study by Angela Luci, Johannes Jutting and Christian Morrisson further shows how women in the developing world end up in poor-paying or “bad jobs.”[9] Reforms in the labor force by various developing nations like in Africa are yet to eliminate gender disparities though there is a slight improvement in the number of women in the labor market, and women are now getting better-paying employment opportunities.
Inequalities in the labor force have, however, has been majorly linked to inappropriate or lack of education by women. The girl child is denied schooling in most developing nations hence do not get the required skills to enable her to develop a sound career to offer a well-paying job opportunity. Since women in these nations are normally assigned domestic roles and do not access formal education, they end up only with ‘bad jobs’ that cannot sustain a good living or lifestyle. In addition, the women who manage to access education take up disciplines that lead them to unmarketable careers that do not attract a higher pay. Male counterparts who get proper and formal education, on the other hand, reap heavily from the labor force because they are highly skilled. Males also take technical subjects that lead them to marketable careers such as computer experts and engineers hence better-paid jobs than women.
Disparities in employment can also be observed in government offices whereby the majority are men. Most developing nations have that mentality that a woman cannot take a leadership role; hence, these women do not easily get election posts to become leaders. Women subjugation in taking offices can be traced to the society where they are considered to be inferior and cannot make sound decisions.[10] Some men would even say that a woman cannot lead a man. In a Christian context, it is required from a woman to be submissive to their man hence take directions without making any decisions. That is the reason you cannot count the current number of female presidents in Africa and exceed two, and also a reason you cannot easily find a single developing nation with a county or national government representation with a female majority.
While most developing nations highly depend on agricultural production to sustain its citizenry, the agricultural sector has come out to be one of the sectors with massive gender inequalities. Agnes Quisumbing in her article on gender in agriculture has not failed to note various gender gaps that exist in agricultural developing economies. Quisumbing cites the 2011 report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) whereby she remarks that agriculture performs poorly because most women do not have access to available agricultural opportunities resources. The FAO report also indicates that women are willing and able to do more farming and agricultural activities even than men, but they are hampered by access to resources.[11]
Women also have a chance to create a better life with self-employment in the developing nations, but they are often denied their right. This depicted by women denial of property rights as indicated in Cohen’s article. She documents that widows in most African countries such as Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ghana lose valuable land when their husbands die because they are only part of the family when their husband live. This practice is supported by various ethnic customs across these plus many other developing nations. When women are denied their rights to property, they are denied their right to self-employment since most of the developing world subsistence farming is almost the sole source of a livelihood.
Laws and Policies
Developing nations have the ability to end gender inequality so that marginalized women can have a chance to support in national development. As their goal, therefore, governments have to come up with laws and policies that could enhance women’s role in development. However, there is a need to identify the sources of gender inequalities so as to make viable laws and policies. More focus should be on key areas that women have been sidelined such as education and employment. This article has suggested and explained some of the laws and policies that developing nations could use to attain gender parity to enhance women and development, and they are as follows;
Strengthening opportunities for education for girls and eliminating digital divide
Education is the most important element that could be the best weapon for women to enhance their position in the society. It is the governments in developing countries that run the education sector hence they should come up with an educational policy that ensure that every child, boy or girl, have equal access to education. However, the main aim is to ensure that everyone in its population achieves the universal primary education that is a top priority goal in the United Nations millennium development goals. Universal primary education would ensure that every child regardless of gender completes primary schooling course by the end of 2015. Developing nations can adopt this goal and even further modify it to ensure that every child attains a secondary or tertiary level of education without disparities of gender.[12]
Other important actions by governments to enhance education for women are; to improve school infrastructure, build more schools so that distance to schools is reduced, and making schools affordable. Schools can be made affordable through subsidized school fees or total free learning in some or all levels of education. Further, governments can facilitate girl education through scholarships to those who come from low-income families.
While pushing for universal education, developing countries should also enlighten the society about the importance of education for both genders. The school curriculums should provide equal chances to boys and girls by encouraging girls to take up technical subjects. They should also encourage the girl child that she can make it in any career since she has equal capabilities like the boy child. Most importantly, developing nations should work towards reducing and eliminating digital divide that exists in this technological era. Digital divide segregates women who not knowingly could be better at ICT than the males.[13] Technology is poised to be the pillar that improves the level of development in developing countries hence for the countries to achieve maximum development; they have to give equal opportunities for both male and female to be technologically literate.
Laws on legal age of marriage
Governments in developing nations need to handle the issue of exploitation of underage girls. As indicated in UNICEF’s report, young girls of as low as ten years and below get married.[14] This means that a young generation that could be better with an education are married to bear children who normally survive on poverty. The governments can, therefore, pass stringent laws that punish parents and men who are involved in giving out girls to be married before attaining majority ages of 18to 21 years. They can use local area leaders such as chiefs or regional commissioners who could ensure that families abide by the law. Such law would then always prevail while old customary laws in support of young marriages would cease to be in force.
Legal protection
In some communities of the developing countries, some of the things that happen at the society level do not have legal consequences. Property rights related subjugation, for instance, happens in many countries across Africa and the government does not offer reasonable legal protection. For instance, some communities send away widows after the demise of their husbands since they consider the women not part of them anymore.[15] This means that the widow’s land is taken away leaving her with no home. These cases happen yet most governments let the perpetrators go scot free. Here, governments in the developing nations should enact laws that protect the women from such harm so that they can enhance their development.
Dowry-related reforms
Cohen gives an insight of the plight of Indian women who struggle to keep up with the requirement from the society to pay a dowry for men. This is stigmatizing for women especially for those who cannot afford since they are bound to stay single and unmarried. This is an unfair custom that hampers women development in an economy like India, which is flourishing very fast. To protect women from such laws; therefore, the government can pass a law that abolishes such dowry payment so that it can give room for any woman to get married and develop. Also, other dowry payment customs in other countries whereby a man pays for a bride should be as well as abolished so as to attain equality.[16]
Offering equal employment opportunities
Developing nations should work towards eliminating gender disparities in their labor force. Women can be productive just like men, but they are denied the opportunity to work or access job opportunities. Policies and measures should be aimed at creating more opportunities for women. Governments in those countries can also set up women institutions that will focus on imparting various skills to women so that they could become productive members of the society. In elective posts to government or leadership offices, the government can enact a law that can ensure that there is a substantial representation of women in regional and national levels. Some of the governments especially in African countries have set aside some elective posts for women only.
Stopping gender violence against women
Developing countries are male dominated countries and often characterized by violence on women. Men beat up and harass women because they are considered to be weaker and cannot defend themselves. Most of the violence on women go unpunished because there are no particular laws to protect the women. In addition, there are cases of rape or sexual harassment whereby male take advantage of women. Most of these cases of violence on women causes them stigma, and they cannot develop. Governments in developing nations, therefore, should enact punitive laws to protect women from any form of violence subjected to them from their male counterparts.
Improving maternal health and ensuring environmental sustainability
Gender equality cannot be achieved if women continue to face problems with ill-health and pregnancy. Women in developing countries for a long time have not had access to proper medical and maternal care leading to some of them losing their lives and those of their babies. Governments in these countries can enhance women development by establishing proper women health care facilities. In addition, it is important to offer women a sustainable environment that can enable them feed their families since they are the main food producers. A sustainable environment, for example, should be free of pollution so that women remain healthy and productive.
Conclusion
The roots of gender inequality are the society because it is the people who perpetrate issues to do with gender discrimination. Therefore, women discrimination is an issue that can be solved. Governments in the developing countries should take the responsibility of setting up laws and policies that can help eradicate women subjugation and rather enhance their development. However, educating women is the key to gender equality since education would enable them realize their potential and see new opportunities. Thus, the governments should come up with policies to see that every child regardless of gender gets a quality education. Education is what will be then used enable women enjoy parity in the job market with well-paying jobs, and be able to take up public offices through elections because they can.
Bibliography
De Vitaa, Luisa, Michela Mari, and Sara Poggesi. “Women Entrepreneurs in and from Developing Countries: Evidences from the Literature.” European Management Journal 32.3 (2014): 451–460.
Dubey, Mukta. “Globalization and the Changing Status of Women Sustainable Development in Developing Countries.” International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research 1.10 (2012): 153-164.
Fram Cohen, Michelle. “The Condition of Women in Developing and Developed Countries.” The Independent Review XI.2 (2006): 261– 274.
Gaddis, Isis. Essays on Inequality and Female Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries. Optimus Verlag, 2012.
Hilbert, Martin. “Digital Gender Divide or Technologically Empowered Women in Developing Countries? A Typical Case of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” Women’s Studies International Forum 34.6 (2011): 479 – 489.
Luci, Angela, Johannes Jütting, and Christian Morrisson. “Why Do So Many Women End Up in ‘Bad Jobs’? A Cross-country Assessment for Developing Countries.” European Journal of Development Research 24 (2011): 530–549.
Staudt, Kathleen A, and Jane S Jaquette. Women in Developing Countries: A Policy Focus. Routledge, 2013.
Stromquist, Nelly P. Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2014.
Quisumbing, Agnes R. “A Review of Empirical Evidence on Gender Differences in Nonland Agricultural Inputs, Technology, and Services in Developing Countries.” Gender in Agriculture. Ed. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Terri L. Raney, André Croppenstedt, Julia A. Behrman, and Amber Peterman. 2014. 145 – 186.
[1]De Vitaa, Luisa, Michela Mari, and Sara Poggesi. “Women Entrepreneurs in and from Developing Countries: Evidences from the Literature.” European Management Journal 32.3 (2014): 451–460.
[2]Stromquist, Nelly P. Women in the Third World: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Issues. 1st ed. Routledge, 2014.
[3][3]Dubey, Mukta. “Globalization and the Changing Status of Women Sustainable Development in Developing Countries.” International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research 1.10 (2012): 153-164.
[4]Stromquist. Women in the Third World
[5]Fram Cohen, Michelle. “The Condition of Women in Developing and Developed Countries.” The Independent Review XI.2 (2006): 261– 274.
[6]Hilbert, Martin. “Digital Gender Divide or Technologically Empowered Women in Developing Countries? A Typical Case of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” Women’s Studies International Forum 34.6 (2011): 479 – 489.
[7] Hilbert. “Digital divide”
[8]Gaddis, Isis. Essays on Inequality and Female Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries. Optimus Verlag, 2012.
[9]Luci, Angela, Johannes Jütting, and Christian Morrisson. “Why Do So Many Women End Up in ‘Bad Jobs’? A Cross-country Assessment for Developing Countries.” European Journal of Development Research 24 (2011): 530–549.
[10]Staudt, Kathleen A, and Jane S Jaquette. Women in Developing Countries: A Policy Focus. Routledge, 2013.
[11]Quisumbing, Agnes R. “A Review of Empirical Evidence on Gender Differences in Nonland Agricultural Inputs, Technology, and Services in Developing Countries.” Gender in Agriculture. Ed. Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Terri L. Raney, André Croppenstedt, Julia A. Behrman, and Amber Peterman. 2014. 145 – 186.
[12]Staudt, Kathleen A, and Jane S Jaquette. Women in Developing Countries: A Policy Focus. Routledge, 2013.
[13]Hilbert, Martin. “Digital Gender Divide or Technologically Empowered Women in Developing Countries? A Typical Case of Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.” Women’s Studies International Forum 34.6 (2011): 479 – 489.
[14] Fram Cohen, Michelle. “The Condition of Women in Developing and Developed Countries.” The Independent Review XI.2 (2006): 261– 274.
[15]Fram Cohen, Michelle. “The Condition of Women in Developing and Developed Countries.” The Independent Review XI.2 (2006): 261– 274.
[16] Fram Cohen, Michelle. “The Condition of Women in Developing and Developed Countries.” The Independent Review XI.2 (2006): 261– 274.