Economic Development and Women Freedom

I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason.
~Stanley Baldwin

I am giving up. I have been reading, for about one month, literature about the relationship between the wealth of a country and the participation of women in that society.

I wanted to find whether there is a relationship between the wealth of a country and the freedom that woman enjoy (or exert). Furthermore, I wanted to find which precedes what, under the “green” (or politically correct?) assumption that the more freedom women enjoy, the wealthier the country is.

According to a 2007 PriceWaterhouseCoopers Women Economic Participation:

It is apparent that any success in promoting gender diversity in the workforce will have a tangible positive impact on economic growth in both the developed and the developing worlds, and that continued focus on this area is therefore warranted

The study compares data from Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. Furthermore, The Economist declares that women contribute more to the GNP that new technology or emergent economies (“The Importance of Sex,” April 12 2006).

There are several indicators about women welfare: government legislation, access to education, availability of child care, good business practices, and positive societal perceptions, but the one we have stats for is participation in the workforce, and we can argue that the participation in the workforce is reflection on how easily women can get in the workforce and how easily they can remain there (benefits, equal payment, maternity leave, etc). I am then comparing data from 1980 to 2005 to see the relationship between working women and the wealth of a nation, as measured as GNP per capita. Sadly, after a month of efforts I cannot prove the thesis and, if any, I have found controversial results.

Let see a map relating the % of women in the workforce and the GNP per capita of all the countries in the world, first from 1980, then for 2007. The data is available at gapminder.org.

In 1980, the wealthiest countries in the world are the Oil-rich Arab states (in green) where women rights are very limited, and the participation of women in the workforce is small. In contrast, the poorest countries in the world have a high participation of women in the workforce, arguably for the need of two incomes in these countries’ families.

25 years later, the difference is not much, except that the Oil-rich countries have less income and more women labour force.

With this evidence I venture that the premise that a rich nation will give its women more freedom (measuring as the % of labour participation) is not completely correct. What about the more accepted view that the more women in the workforce make a nation wealthier? Since the poorer the country, the more participation of women due to economic needs, we need to isolate countries and put them on a time line. Does the condition of the country improve as more women participate on the market force? The results are extremely confusing, let’s look at the eight countries form the PWC report:

The DEVELOPED countries increase women participation AND increase level of income. China gets richer but women stay in home, India gets also richer but sends women home, and Brazil manages to stay as poor as 25 years ago despite the steep increase of women in the workforce. Since the PWC study excludes Africa and the Arab countries, let’s see what happened around the world.

Chile, Canada, and Austria pretty much increase participation of women and level of income…

Mauritius and India increase income but send women home.

Vietnam and Uganda started with pretty much equally in gender in the workforce and then increase the income…

And some Latin American and Arab countries increase the participation of women but remain in the same income bracket.

So, it is in developed and western societies where we can appreciate the relation between women participation and level of income. These societies usually are very open and protective to women’s right, and they keep increasing their level of income, but we have examples when participation of women remains low and the income still increase. The subject is too complex to be analysed here, and surely will continue to generate rivers of digital ink in the coming years.

Anti-Government Demonstrations

I saw today a demonstration against the Government.

It was not a multitude of irate people yelling.

It was not a bunch of angry students shouting slogans.

It was not a gang of mad unions asking for more rights.

 

It was an old woman

She was sitting on her knees outside Manulife Centre,

with a small package of cigarettes, trying to sell them by the piece.

When I came back, she was not there, security had removed her,

In her table may not be food tonight.

 

I thought that those women were in the South

Where corruption, ignorance and nature give poverty,

I said “not here in the True North”,

“with the Strong and Free those things never happen”

 

I never though I would see it here,

I never though there were such demonstrations against the government.

based on a post by Fuentes Aguirre

Wealth Gap and Ecological Footprint

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
Karl Marx

I have left out something important before talking about green consumers and some other economic law’s application: The need of a more equal world. I know this may sound like some kind of leftist moralistic dogma, but there is an economic truth behind. Please keep reading.

In the middle age, all the countries were poor. I am not talking about poor for today’s standards, I am talking about lack of health, short life spams, no roads, no communications, illiteracy… the world was dominated by a few very rich people and the knowledge was guarded by few scientist and monks. This was the feudal system was on and everybody was in pretty much the same poor condition. Enters the bourgeoisie and this changes; a new class is born of merchants and traders. Then the industrial revolution created, in the 1700’s a new powerful class of industrial men and the beginning of the modern world.

These milestones didn’t end the disparity. The gap between the rich and the poor continued to growth and today remains an issue. As a rightist, you may say that yes, the gap is still there, but everyone is growing! The poor of today are rich when comparing with the poor of 100 years ago. All the countries are growing in the long term and people complaining are big girl’s blouses. You may even show us the World Economic Outlook from the IMF and point out a graphic showing the growth of almost all regions in the last 35 years:

So, with the exception of Africa, everybody is growing! So, what if the Industrial Countries are bigger? Who cares?

The world is designed to hold so many people. We are currently 6 milliards (6,000,000,000) people. That is a lot of people! Now, the world surface that is able to sustain human activity is 10.8 billion of what we’ll call biologically productive global hectares, so there are 1.8 BPGHa per person in all the world. In North America, the average Mexican needs 2.5 BPGHa, the average Canadian 8.8 and the average US resident 9.6.

I did the test that the Earth Day Network has developed to calculate your personnel footprint. The results are sad for a poor recent grad!

So, my lifestyle is preventing at least two other persons to live with the minimum basic shelter, food and service. Of course, living in Canada, with the miserable winter, demands more resources that living in Costa Rica, but thit is what we get for living where the wind turns back. There are still so many places, like California, with milder weather conditions and 33 million cars for 35 million people.

So, the wealth gap is no more than stealing natural resources from the third world. The wealth gap is not sustainable and should be addressed before it is too late. That doesn’t mean that we all have to live like Gandhi to cut the gap, but there are more sustainable ways of living that, while keeping us comfortable, helps others to reduce their poverty.

You still don’t care?

Well, the wealth gap also means the following set backs for the rich economies:

• Exporting social injustice,
• Illegal immigrants and terrorism to other nations, as well as the goods.
• Extinction, deforestation and social unrest

These problems affect us at home. Even if we dismiss all the implications of social injustice and inequity, the effects can be felt on our homeland.