Gender Equality

The Roots of Gender Inequality

The roots of gender inequality are hotly contested (not least within feminist thought itself). Irrespective of any consensus that gender equality should be the overall sociopolitical objective, causal interpretations of why it is such a perennial problem are located along a broad spectrum. These range from essentialist [Page 337]arguments (including biological reductionism and evolutionary psychology) whereby women's societal experience, with and in relation to men, is a reflection of innate biological or physiological and psychological sex differences, through to more cultural accounts of gender inequality that claim that men and women are largely herded into different or unequally valued roles because of constructed social norms, and legal and institutional obstacles.

Gender in Context

The manifestation of gender inequality is multidimensional, and illustrations of it vary extensively depending on context. In industrialized democracies with highly developed legal systems, there is a contemporary preoccupation with women's employment experience, in particular the perpetual issue of pay and status gaps between men and women in labor-market hierarchies (vertical occupational segregation) and the problems of balancing the demands of paid work and domestic life. In developing countries, the onus has been on educational opportunity, independent financial means for subsistence (particularly relative to motherhood), and health.

Amartya Sen delineates seven forms of gender inequality:

• Mortality inequality—a disproportionate female death rate, particularly in North Africa and Asia compared with other less gender-biased societies.
• Natality inequality—the consequences of parents' preference for male children facilitated by fetal sex selection technology, particularly in East Asia, China, and South Korea.
• Basic facility inequality—the underrepresentation of females in state-coordinated services such as schooling, prevalent in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• Special opportunity inequality—even where both sexes have access to basic facilities, in many environments substantive opportunities to acquire specialized knowledge and skills such as higher education and professional training are more likely to be open to men. This is a tendency found even in environments framed by extensive gender equality initiatives, such as in the United States.
• Professional inequality—gender inequality in employment is a universal phenomenon and relates to the persistent pay inequities between men and women and to the fact that women are more likely to be clustered in low-status occupations with diminished career opportunities, irrespective of the quality of equality legislation. Even after approximately thirty years of progressive gender equality policies across European Union (EU) member states for example, women are still heavily underrepresented in political posts and high-powered positions in public life.
• Ownership inequality—this refers to the fact that most privately owned property across the world is held by men, illustrating domestic inequity and the limitations on women's capacity to prosper commercially and even socially.
• Household inequality—this form of inequality is often the most difficult to quantify because it may not be blatant. Even in an environment where women and men are equally represented in educational, monetary, and professional terms, the division of labor within households is still likely to be heavily skewed between the sexes. Women predominate as the primary domestic workers and child carers irrespective of other roles they may have outside of the home. This again is a global phenomenon, and many argue it is the most fundamental form of unequal gender relations.

Policy Approaches

Many of Sen's seven forms of gender inequality—for example, mortality inequality or basic facility—could be called issues of human rights and that in attempts to increase the well-being of humans, it is vital that women are not subject to less concern and respect than men—nominally the equal treatment approach. Gender mainstreaming, another general policy, relates to the systematic incorporation of gender issues at both the planning and implementation stage of all organizational policies. In the context of less extreme forms of gender inequality, such as professional inequality, particularly in environments where equality legislation is long-standing and sophisticated, the major debate lies in the degree to which women should be granted special provision and exclusive benefits to equalize background conditions. These provisions take the form of, for example, affirmative [Page 338]action programs that aim to implement specific measures to boost women's chances of success in employment, and specific protection rights such as paid maternity leave with a right to return to work. The emphasis here shifts from equality of access and of opportunity to creating conditions deemed more likely to result in equality of outcome. However, skeptics of this approach grapple with the extent to which exclusive benefits for women lend themselves to the exacerbation of gender divides without the comparable provision of benefits for men.

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