Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Women’s Status and the Changing Nature of Rural Livelihoods in Asia

Agnes Quisumbing

International Food Policy Research Institute

Manila, Philippines

8 August 2007

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Diversity and change

• It is difficult to characterize “women’s status” in Asia because women’s conditions within Asia are very diverse, and they are also changing

• This presentation:

1. Presents a snapshot of women’s status in Asia based on the World Gender Gap Report 2006

2. Summarizes returns to closing the gender gap in terms of reducing child malnutrition, and increasing incomes and productivity

3. Identifies three trends in rural livelihoods

4. Based on these trends, discusses appropriate policies and interventions to empower women

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Contrasts and contradictions

• Gender Gap Index 2006 (Hausman, Tyson, and Zahidi 2007) examines the gap between men and women in 115 countries,in four categories: • economic participation and opportunity• educational attainment• health and survival• political empowerment

• Although the Philippines is among top 10 countries, out of 8 regions, Asia ranks third from the bottom overall• Lowest performance on the health and survival subindex• Second to the lowest in the economic opportunity and

participation subindex• Third from the lowest in the educational attainment subindex.

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These results driven by countries with large populations

• China: ranks 114 out of 115 because of sex ratio at birth, “missing women”

• Bangladesh, India, Pakistan: large disparities between men and women in all four areas of the index

• Why should we care?• Evidence worldwide shows that increasing resources

controlled by women yields large benefits in reducing child malnutrition and increasing rural incomes and productivity

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Reducing child malnutrition: The Asian Enigma

• Why is South Asia’s child malnutrition rate so much higher than Sub-Saharan Africa’s, when it does so much better with respect to many of the long-accepted determinants of child nutritional status, such as national income, democracy, food supplies, health services, and education? (Ramalingaswami et al. 1996)

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Child malnutrition and women’s status across regions

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

SouthAsia

SSA LAC

Underweight

Stunted

Wasted

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

SouthAsia

SSA LACNorway

Women'sdecisionmaking power

Societalgenderequality

Source: Smith et al. 2003

Percentage of children under 5 Indicators of women’s status

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The link between women’s status and child malnutrition

• Regression analysis shows that women’s status has a significant, positive effect on children’s nutritional status in all three regions.

• Women’s status improves child nutrition because women with greater status have better nutritional status, are better cared for themselves, and provide higher-quality care to their children.

• Women’s status has the most influence where it is lowest. The strongest effect is found in South Asia followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, and it is weakest in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Increasing rural incomes and productivity

• In Bangladesh, untargeted technology dissemination was more likely to benefit men and better-off households (Hallman, Lewis, and Begum 2007). Efforts designed to reach women within poor households—such as through NGO provision of training and credit for vegetable improvement—achieved greater impacts on poverty.

• In China, where women-managed households have equal access to family labor, quantity and quality of land, irrigation, and credit, there is no significant difference in plot-level crop revenues between men and women-managed farms (de Brauw et al. 2007).

• In the rural Philippines, where girls have higher educational attainment than their brothers, they are more likely to enter nonagricultural occupations and earn higher incomes from nonagriculture than from farming (Quisumbing, Estudillo, and Otsuka 2004).

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Three trends in rural livelihoods

• Increasing male migration from rural to urban areas

• Declining importance of agriculture and growth of nonfarm sector

• Increasing female migration to urban areas (and overseas)

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Policies to empower women will differ by context

• Areas of male outmigration• Ensure access to land and

credit• Economic development

strategies that encourage competitive and efficient markets

• Female agricultural extension agents to deliver technology and information directly to women

• Areas of declining importance of agriculture• Reduce barriers to female

participation in nonfarm enterprises and nonfarm employment

• Invest in women’s human capital through schooling and continuing education programs

• Access to credit, markets, and information

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Policies and context

• Areas of female outmigration• Invest in women’s education• Encourage competitive and efficient labor

markets• Invest in infrastructure to enable families to

maintain social support networks (roads, communications, banking)

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General policies

• Extend and strengthen schooling systems in rural areas

• Promote competition in non-farm labor markets so as to eliminate discrimination against women

• Reform property rights systems to be more equitable towards women

• Develop agricultural technologies which increase the returns to female labor, whether through increased demand or increased labor productivity.