Gender, Development and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

A plethora of scholars have attempted to discern the causes of slow growth in the sub-Saharan Africa region. The effects of global economic integration, corruption, geography and ethnic diversity have been widely explored. Mainstream growth analyses, however, have not yet integrated the body of scholarship that identifies the linkages between gender, economic development and growth. This paper explores the theoretical and empirical macrogrowth effects of gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa. It further identifies two key policy avenues for promoting gender equality and thus growth: public investment to reduce the gender gap in care burdens, and a shift in emphasis of central bank targets to employment.

Do Macroeconomic Structures and Policies Shape the Employment Intensity of Growth Differently for Women and Men?

“…Elson and Cagatay (2000) describe how a male "deflationary bias" arises from a central bank's aim of maintaining credibility in international financial markets, which prevents governments from dealing effectively with recessions (see also Seguino and Were 2014;Braunstein and Heintz, 2008;Epstein 2007;Seguino and Grown 2006). The lack of ability to enact expansionary monetary policy disproportionately impacts women's employment relative to men's because "women in the formal sector tend to lose their jobs faster than men, and usually have worse access than men to social safety nets" (Elson and Cagatay, 2000: 1354-1355.…”

“…Seguino and Were (2014) summarize the ways in which targeted fiscal policies impact growth, which is insightful for this employment intensity study. In addition to the large body of work suggesting that gender equality in educational investment can stimulate productivity and economic growth, they suggest that any fiscal policies that equate the unpaid labor burden will positively impact growth.…”

Assessing the food security outcomes of industrial crop expansion in smallholder settings: insights from cotton production in Northern Ghana and sugarcane production in Central Ethiopia

“…The survey included a detailed list of all food items and quantities consumed in the preceding seven days from the respondent's own production, purchased, or received as a gift. We then estimated the caloric intake following the methodology developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute using a modified version of the HES that determines the caloric intake per household per day (Smith and Subandoro 2007). Male adults with moderate activity were selected as the baseline to obtain an adult equivalent household family size, as this baseline reflects the type of agricultural labor conducted at the study sites.…”

“…Finally, men traditionally dominate IC production in SSA and often depend on women to help with farming activities (Doss 2002;Seguino and Were 2014;Lambrecht 2016), thereby reducing their contribution to daily household chores and increasing women's responsibilities. To capture the gender-related effects of IC expansion, we assess the potential calorie gains from the opportunity cost of women having paid work (e.g., as a hairdresser or microbusiness owner) instead of the unequal burden of unpaid care work (e.g., fetching water, collecting firewood, or caring for children) aggravated by household involvement in IC.…”

“…For example, we discarded 18% of questionnaires in Ghana and 15% in Ethiopia before analysis. Challenges within modules were reflected through missing information essential to estimate caloric intake, often resulting from interviewee fatigue and inability to recall consumption details (i.e., recall bias) (Smith et al 2006). The spread between modules of critical data needed to produce the study outcomes (e.g., household composition and HES modules) further contributed to the discarding of entire questionnaires.…”