The topic of the article is "Gender Inequality and Economic Development: Fertility, Education, and Norms." This article was written by Henrik Kleven and Camille Landais from London School of Economics. The final version of the article was published on 7 th of February 2017 and was published by the Economica journal (Kleven & Landais, 2017). I choose this topic because I’m convinced that gender inequality greatly affects economic development and I agree with the findings of the article. Gender inequality is an issue being faced in our society that cannot be ignored. This is something that's discussed almost every day in organizations, the media and the whole nation at large. We cannot think about economic development without gender inequality because it's one of the factors that are affecting our economy in terms of its development.
Method Used
The paper applied survey as the means of research carried out by the authors. It's also a descriptive type of research paper.
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People Studied
The study that was carried out included 248 collections of surveys and it was carried out across 53 countries with a different range in levels of income. The inclusion of the different countries was to help document how gender inequality evolves various economies with different development rates. The surveys were done on collected and documented data in between the year 1967 and 2014 (Kleven & Landais, 2017). The main sources of data collected were Luxembourg Income Studies (LIS), the Socio-Economic Database for Latin America (SEDLAC), the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and the Economic Research Forum (ERF), to cover Arab countries, Turkey and Iran (Kleven & Landais, 2017).. More information was collected from National Statistics offices.
Conclusion
From the research carried out, the analysis of the findings, the article concludes that the evolution of gender inequality in economic development is affected by some factors which include fertility, education, and norms. The lifetime fertility amongst women was seen to decline from six children to less than two per woman depending on the GDP (Kleven & Landais, 2017). Considering the fact that children affect gender gaps, the decline in fertility rates have contributed a lot to gender equality. Education as another factor affecting gender inequality, it impacts a lot on the levels of income. Though the effects of fertility are higher compared to education, the two cannot be separated because they complement each other in the development of the economy. Also, education is said to have an indirect impact on development because it also influences fertility.
Comparison of the income of working men and women show a huge gap when considering the factor of fertility. In most nations, women are penalized after getting children. However, the difference is smaller when considering education because this is provided equally and women have qualifications that men have. While both education and fertility are said to affect economic development, education is also seen to have a direct impact on fertility. Education levels affect fertility choices whereby, the levels of GDP influence choices that women make concerning the number of children they would like to have (Kleven & Landais, 2017). This is passed down to the quality of education provided to the children. For instance, women with low GDP per capita may decide to have fewer children whom they can support comfortably. On the other hand, those with higher income may also be committed to developing their careers thus have no time to raise kids thus the low infertility rates.
Specific Actions
However, norms can be used to bring positive impacts on the development. This can be achieved through the creation of norms and a culture of gender equality especially those practices that support working women with children. This was supported by findings from countries that support working women with young children. Results show that for nations that believe women with under school age babies should stay at home experienced low growth compared to the countries that support that such women should be given chance to work (Kleven & Landais, 2017).
The authors conclude that norms and culture can be used as a remedy to gender inequality if people would change their attitude and provide childcare for mothers. This is a responsibility for the policy makers, institutions and the society. Governments should make policies that support mothers as well as institutions. The society should change attitude towards mothers and create a culture of respect and viewing them as capable of being highly productive at work despite their responsibilities at home.
Application
This issue of inequality has been experienced by almost every woman and even though I have never experienced it personally, I have seen someone very close to me go through the same thing. A very close friend was fired from work because her employer lost confidence in her after getting a baby. She is hard working and was performing quite well at that time. She knew how to balance between being a mother and work and finished all work assignments as expected. However, her employer was never comfortable with the idea of her having a baby and thought that it may affect her performance. Though she managed to find another job it affected her a lot.
Reference
Kleven, H., & Landais, C. (2017). Gender Inequality and Economic Development: Fertility, Education, and Norms. Economica , 84 (334), 180–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12230
