Efficiency arguments for gender equality: an introduction

In the last decade, the case for promoting gender equality has increasingly taken on broad efficiency arguments to bolster the intrinsic or social justice argument for gender equality. Through analyses that have grown in sophistication, these efficiency arguments have demonstrated the benefits to the economy, businesses and societal wellbeing of reducing gender inequality and the costs of not doing so. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Economic Forum and major corporations have all begun to tout the wide-ranging gains of promoting gender equality through what are commonly referred to as “the business case” or “gender equality is smart economics” arguments. These efficiency gains are cast in terms of economic growth, corporate performance and development goals. While the articulation of these win-win synergies is promising in gaining wider support for pursuing gender equality, their widespread circulation has also raised concerns and unease among feminist scholars. Feminists have expressed concern over the instrumentalisation and cooptation of feminist arguments and the difficulties they present for feminist economists or development practitioners (Barker 2006; Eisenstein 2009; Fraser 2009; Chant and Sweetman 2012; Prügl 2015). Many are apprehensive about the desirability of relying on efficiency arguments to draw attention to persistent gender inequalities. As Chant and Sweetman (2012) argue, by calling attention to gender inequality only if it serves organisational mandates, smart economics risks undermining the primacy of gender justice and rights. There are also questions as to whether and under what conditions gender equality and efficiency goals are compatible and, if there are trade-offs between the two goals, what kind of case could be made to keep gender equality as the priority or what kind of policies could be pursued to weaken or eliminate the trade-off. An additional concern is to what extent the World Bank and IMF rhetoric on gender equality matches their practice.

This special section of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies brings together six perspectives on the reliance on efficiency arguments to make the case for gender equality in an attempt to further discussion on the topic among feminists. The special section grew out of a roundtable at the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) Conference in Galway, Ireland, in June 2016. This introduction provides an overview of the arguments made by the contributors with differing experiences and policy and scholarly backgrounds. Valeria Esquivel, Cheryl Doss, Shahra Razavi and Günseli Berik focus on international policy agendas, while Jill Rubery reviews the record of EU policy since the 1990s and Haroon Akram-Lodhi focuses on gender-awareness training of policy makers in low-income countries. Esquivel, Doss, Razavi and Berik are sceptical that gender equality and efficiency are necessarily compatible goals, while Rubery’s account of the EU’s record shows that the social justice argument for gender equality nearly disappeared when austerity became the macroeconomic policy regime in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Berik also draws attention to the dissonance between the rhetoric of international financial institutions (IFIs) that embraces gender equality as integral to a prosperous society and the policy practice of the same IFIs.

Esquivel (2017) presents a general critique of win-win arguments that pair gender equality and economic growth. Her evaluation shows the contingent nature of the win-win arguments that are emphasised by IFIs: they hold for particular supply-side dimensions of gender equality (education, labour force participation), depend on a definition of output growth that leaves out unpaid care work and presume that the macroeconomic policy regime generates good jobs, for which gender equitable access is assured. Moreover, gender equality is often narrowly conceived as equality of opportunity, which is achievable through micro-level interventions, without addressing class and other forms of inequality, and challenging neoliberal macroeconomic framework. Esquivel argues that, once broader considerations are brought in, gender equality does not necessarily promote growth and growth does not necessarily promote gender equality. Esquivel concludes: “Efficiency and gender equality might not be a winning pair after all” (2017, 550).

Similarly, Doss (2017) highlights that promoting gender equality may not always promote efficiency. Drawing on recent research on agricultural productivity in low-income countries, she argues that there are instances when women farmers are less productive than men in using inputs, in which case equitable access to inputs is unlikely to promote efficiency (or may lower efficiency). If such trade-offs emerge from research, however, this does not mean the gender equality goal is to be discarded. Instead, Doss argues, three courses of action may be taken: first, women’s equal access to land may be justified on the basis of a wellbeing goal (for example, as the means to reducing poverty); second, equal access to land may be promoted on moral (social justice) grounds; and third, more ambitious gender equality goals (beyond “women as half the beneficiaries”) can be set in order to tackle sources of women’s lower productivity. Each of these justifications implies developing political strategy by proponents of gender equitable wellbeing, to prevent sidelining of the gender equality goal.

Razavi (2017) contextualises the contemporary efficiency arguments in the long history of instrumentalisation of gender equality. Like Esquivel and Doss, she problematises win-win arguments. One issue concerns the gender dimension of choice in win-win arguments and how it is measured. Singling out the “best illustration of a plausible synergy” (2017, 559) – that gender equality in education promotes economic growth – Razavi calls for a closer look at how education equality is being measured. Aspirations need to go beyond school enrolment rates, to such things as improving school retention and completion rates, quality of education and the right to education by all groups of women. In addition, Razavi reminds us that some gender goals, such as reducing gender wage inequality – an often overlooked dimension in win-win arguments – should be goals in their own right, since they do not have clear cut positive impacts on economic growth. Second, Razavi points out the circulation of both intrinsic and instrumental arguments with regard to alleviating women’s unpaid care work. On the one hand, there is the “meteoric rise” (2017, 561) of attention to alleviating women’s unpaid care work burden in developing countries in the recent global policy agenda. On the other hand, either unpaid work is invisible in win-win arguments that call for increasing women’s labour force participation to enhance growth or reducing unpaid labour is justified in instrumental ways to promote women’s labour force participation. Listing several policies for alleviating women’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care work (without completely substituting market provision of care), Razavi argues for market provision that incorporates the true costs of care and is attentive to adequate caregiver–care recipient ratio and decent pay for care workers. Since these considerations are unlikely to meet the cost efficiency metrics at the firm or industry level, they suggest the need to draw upon intrinsic arguments for gender equality. Indeed, she cautions feminists against using win-win arguments as the main justification for gender equality claims.

Like Esquivel and Razavi, Berik (2017) problematises IFIs’ win-win rhetoric regarding the relationship between growth and gender equality. She first points out the near invisibility of gender wage inequality as a concern in IFI documents that only spotlight gender dimensions that have positive synergies with growth. Yet, gender wage inequality may be instrumental to economic growth and gender wage equality may be difficult to achieve in the context of trade and investment liberalisation. Second, Berik adds another layer of concern about the use of efficiency arguments by IFIs: to what extent does IFI research that emphasises compatibility of gender equality and growth translate into practice in IMF and World Bank programmes? There are reasons to be sceptical, since recent studies show that, despite its rhetoric of providing more policy space and flexibility in macroeconomic management, the IMF continues to insist on the same structural adjustment-type conditionalities that feminist scholars documented to be inimical to gender-equitable wellbeing in developing countries. In particular, feminist macroeconomists have shown that, while these programmes are promoted in the name of economic efficiency, their full costs are likely underestimated by an efficiency concept that solely focuses on market metrics. While both institutions have undergone a remarkable makeover to embrace the importance of promoting gender equality, Berik shows that their record falls short of promoting gender equality, due to their limited conception of gender equality, their narrow assessment criteria and continued insistence on neoliberal and austerity policies.

Akram-Lodhi (2017) approaches the use of efficiency arguments from a pedagogical perspective, focusing on the case of UNDP’s gender and economic policy training programme (2008–2015). Akram-Lodhi’s training exercises with policymakers in low-income countries rely on the efficiency concept, with which policymakers are familiar. He argues that the concept serves as a useful heuristic device in training sessions. Through iterative, experience-based learning techniques (including participants keeping time-use diaries), participants of these sessions examine the sources of gender inequalities in the labour market. They often reach the understanding that these inequalities derive from the unequal care burden in the household as well as labour market discrimination against women. They conclude that gender inequality is inefficient, and that policies that address women’s disproportionate care burden in the household can promote both gender equity and efficiency. While Akram-Lodhi does not engage training participants in cases where gender inequality might promote growth or growth might be inimical to gender equality, his approach goes a long way in raising gender awareness among participants, especially in relation to unequal unpaid care work that tends to be overlooked.

While Doss, Esquivel and Razavi express caution about the use of efficiency arguments to justify policy attention to gender equality, like Berik, Rubery (2017) examines a case of implementation of these arguments. Her overview of the evolution of EU gender equality policies from the 1990s to the present highlights the shift in justifications for attention to gender equality (from institutional catch up with social change in gender relations to achieving a combination of social justice and other goals). She observes that over this period, in EU documents arguments for gender equality increasingly were made on instrumental grounds, including the promotion of childcare provision for women to keep them in the labour force. She observes that the instrumental approach allowed cooptation of gender equality to legitimise flexible labour markets. When austerity hit, however, efficiency (growth) became the driver of EU policy, which actively undermined gender equality gains via cuts in public spending and public sector wages. Rubery’s account is testimony to the fickle nature of the win-win arguments, their durability and political palatability in a growing economy, and the incompatibility of austerity with the pursuit of gender equality. She calls on feminists to move away from gender mainstreaming to broad-based coalition work against neoliberal and austerity policies.

Overall, the compatibility of growth (efficiency) and gender equality may be useful to raise as a first step in raising gender awareness, strengthening the argument for gender equality and identifying paths toward gender equality. However, most of the contributors to the special section problematise the win-win arguments that pair gender equality and efficiency. They caution feminists against relying on instrumental arguments that tout efficiency gains to make the case for gender equality and call for closer attention to the agendas and actual practice of those who do.

Acknowledgements

On behalf of the contributors to this special section I would like to thank the three anonymous CJDS reviewers for useful comments and Haroon Akram-Lodhi for encouraging and facilitating the special section.

Notes on contributor

Günseli Berik is Professor of Economics at the University of Utah. Between 2010 and 2017 she served as co-editor of the journal Feminist Economics. Her latest publications include “Revisiting the Feminist Debates on International Labor Standards in the Aftermath of Rana Plaza” (Studies in Comparative International Development, 2017) and Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered (2015; co-authored with Lourdes Benería and Maria Floro).