Gender

• Women in the developing world are greatly disadvantaged compared with women in the developed world
• Disadvantages for women in the developing world

  • In some developing countries, men have a higher life expectancy than women
  • Women are routinely paid a lot less than men and spend a lot fewer years in education, if they get any education at all
  • Women have poorer health chances and less access to healthcare than men
  • Girl foetuses are more likely to be aborted, because they are seen as being of less value
• Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM)


  Looks at various social indicators relating to women's role in society and compares different countries
• Gender-related Development Index (GDI)


  Collates things like female life expectancy, years spent in school, literacy levels, employment and income
• Both GEM and GDI measures show that there is still great inequality between women and men in the developing world but also that significant progress has been made in recent years
• Functionalist sociologists (modernisation theorists)


  • They tend to put gender inequality in the developing world down to cultural differences and the difference between the norms and values of traditional societies when compared with modern societies
  • They see the patriarchal values inherent in some traditional religions and cultures as being yet another internal barrier to development, and more gender equality as being one of the western norms that facilitates economic growth
• Cultural practices in parts of the developing world that reinforce gender inequality


  • Dowry burning
  • Female genital mutation (FGM)
  • Purdah
  • Lack of reproductive rights and birth control
  • Lack of property rights for women
  • Infanticide of girls
• Dowry burning is a form of domestic violence where a husband and/or husband's family burns his wife if her family does not pay an additional dowry
• Female genital mutation (FGM) involves removing all or part of a girl's external genitalia, usually before she reaches the age of 5
• Purdah is a practice in some Islamic countries and communities, as well as some Hindu communities, where women are shielded or curtained from men
• In many parts of the developing world, there are significant restrictions on birth control and reproductive rights abortion for women, meaning women are very likely to perform a domestic role because of motherhood, rather than being able to pursue a career
• In many developing countries, women are not able to inherit property and instead it is passed down to male relatives, further entrenching male privilege in society
• In some countries, such as India and China there have been significant cases of female infanticide, where parents kills very young girls because they are a financial burden and they want sons
• Modernisation theorists


  • They argue that through aid and investment, gender equality can be improved, particularly because a new, forward-thinking urban middle class would promote progressive values including the value of gender equality
  • They argue that developing countries with significant gender inequality were patriarchal long before the age of Empire and countries/regions that did not become colonies are often patriarchal too
  • They argue that, even if some aspects of patriarchy were down to the adoption of religions that were not native, the solution still lies in embracing Western values which, today, are much more egalitarian in relation to gender
• Feminists who back the marginalisation thesis (e.g. Leonard)


  • They argue that Western patriarchal values were exported to the developing world by imperialism (both historical and current neo-imperialism)
  • They argue that this reinforced or combined with patriarchal values that were always present, but in some places it replaced more equal or even matriarchal cultures
• Marxist-feminist exploitation thesis


  • They focus on the exploitation of third-world women by trans-national corporations
  • They argue that capitalism has pushed women into sweatshops and very low-paid roles with minimal rights
  • They argue that TNCs favour female employees in occupations such as textile factories because they tend to be more docile and flexible, and may require little training
• There is lots of empirical and anecdotal evidence of women suffering terrible hardships in sweatshops, including beatings, sexual harassment and assault
• Export Processing Zones (EPs) have been described as a new form of exploitative colonialism
• The comparative powerlessness of women in LEDCs is a big question - is it because of flaws in the LEDCs themselves (the power of local men) or because of the state of dependency which LEDCs have been placed in by MEDCs (the power of global men)?