Knowledge economy and gender inequality

Abstract

The paper analyzes how gender inequality is created in the knowledge economy through forms of exclusion of women from certain areas of knowledge, and the simultaneous higher social valuation of men’s monopolized knowledge as against women’s knowledge in the commons. Gendered knowledge inequality has consequences for other forms of inequality, such as in status, ownership of property, distribution of labor and even consumption. Besides explicit exclusions, the definition and responsibility of women as bearers and nurturers of children and for domestic care work becomes a severe constraint in their ability to access and use forms of monopolized knowledge.

Keywords:

• Knowledge economy
• monopolized knowledge
• gender inequality
• caste knowledge
• intersection of caste and gender

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Indra Munshi, Kumkum Roy and the two reviewers for detailed comments. Thanks also to Monica Green for forwarding some of her work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dev Nathan

Dev Nathan, an economist, currently works on global development, knowledge, and inequality. He is co-author of Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism: Gender, Labour and Environmental Injustice in Global Garment Production (2022), and Witch Hunts (2020).

Govind Kelkar

Govind Kelkar, a feminist scholar, works on gender issues in development, including in India and China. She is co-author of Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation (2020) and several other books and papers. She was the founding editor of Gender, Technology and Development.

Pallavi Govindnathan

Pallavi Govindnathan, a Ph.D. Candidate at Texas Woman’s University, is a visual artist, and a scholar, and teacher in gender studies. Besides numerous exhibitions, she published a book, Corrode, combining paintings, interviews, and analysis of acid survivors in Bangladesh, and a paper in the journal Public Culture. Currently she is working on her dissertation on Acid Violence in India.