Trends in Global Gender Inequality

Abstract

This study investigates trends in gender inequality for the world as a whole. Using data encompassing a large majority of the world's population, we examine world trends over recent decades for key indicators of gender inequality in education, mortality, political representation, and economic activity. We find that gender inequality is declining in virtually all major domains, that the decline is occurring across diverse religious and cultural traditions, and that population growth is slowing the decline because populations are growing faster in countries where there is the greatest gender inequality.This study investigates whether, globally, women and men are converging or diverging with respect to key dimensions of welfare such as educational attainment, economic activity, length of life, and representation in national legislatures. Several studies find evidence of cross-country or global convergence -or at least the halting of divergence -on a number of welfare indicators, including education (Morrisson and Murtin 2007, Goesling andBaker 2008), income (Firebaugh 2003;Firebaugh and Goesling 2004;Sala-i-Martin 2006), fertility (Dorius 2008;Wilson 2001), and the Human Development Index (Crafts 2002), leading one development scholar to declare that "nearly everything that matters is converging" (Kenny 2005:1). The question is whether Kenny's declaration applies to gender inequality as well.Gender inequality differs from other types of inequality in significant ways, so we cannot tacitly assume that gender inequalities will trace the same path as other inequalities. Gender inequality exists when men (or women) enjoy a disproportionately large share of some valued good such as political power or long life. Men and women can differ in any number of domains, so gender inequality intersects other types of inequality (educational, economic, political, and so on). Women may be gaining on men in some domains and falling further behind in other domains. In a few domains, such as life expectancy, women have the advantage, so "declining gender inequality" in this instance refers to men gaining on women. These features of gender inequality imply that it is important to examine the domains of gender inequality separately.Our objective in this paper is to describe recent trends in global gender inequality, as measured by convergence or divergence in the indicators (described subsequently) that the Direct correspondence to Shawn F. Dorius or Glenn Firebaugh, Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, 206 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802. sdorius@psu.edu and firebaugh@pop.psu.edu. * Authors contributed equally.Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Los Angeles, CA and at the 2007 Mapping Global Inequality: Beyond Income Inequality Conference at University of California, Santa Cruz. 5 Note that number of national legislators is not a constant fraction of population size, since small countries sometimes have more legislators t...

Empowerment of Women and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries

“…These obstacles are the reason women's empowerment is needed because it has been shown through many studies that implementing programs that set out to empower women reduce the gender gap and give women a better social and economic standing in their communities. Dorius (2010) demonstrated the trends in worldwide gender inequality by incorporating 2008 UN data which was used to track the progress in reaching the Millennium Development Goals. Ezeh et al (2012) provides a more specific example which analyze the gender issues in the National Fadama 1 Development Project in the Abia State of Nigeria.…”

“…Ezeh et al (2012) provides a more specific example which analyze the gender issues in the National Fadama 1 Development Project in the Abia State of Nigeria. Dorius (2010) focused on studying whether men and women are uniting or deviating in regards to educational achievements, longevity, economic activity and political participation. By using the GINI index, Dorius (2010) found that 2.1 billion adults in 193 countries, split almost evenly among men and women, only about 45% of the women are literate.…”

“…Dorius (2010) focused on studying whether men and women are uniting or deviating in regards to educational achievements, longevity, economic activity and political participation. By using the GINI index, Dorius (2010) found that 2.1 billion adults in 193 countries, split almost evenly among men and women, only about 45% of the women are literate. Likewise, Ezeh et al (2012) used the GINI index as a variable to find that men had an index of about 0.23 while women had an index of about 0.35, demonstrating that women have lower income levels than men and higher levels of poverty.…”

“…The hypothesis herein is that empowerment of women does lead to poverty alleviation in developing countries. Dorius (2010), Ezeh et al (2012), and Ahmed (2010) have shown that programs focused on microcredit loans and furthering education, health and sanitation, help women progress in their communities and allow them to gain decision-making power and self-confidence as well as higher levels of income and more stable wages.…”

Demographic Convergence and its Linkage with Health Inequalities in India

“…This largely acceptable characterization of demographic transition consists of five components: mortality decline, natural increase in population size, fertility decline, urbanisation and population aging. Although, this conception is only a rough generalization, it has such wide applicability that it has become a central axis of conceptualisation about population trends in world (Notestein, 1945;Davis, 1951;Davis, 1963;Sinding, 2001;Dyson, 2004;Caldwell, 2004;Dyson 2010;Casterline, 2011 (Dyson 2010;Van and Knodel, 1980;Bloom and Williamson, 1998;Wilson and Airey, 1999;Wilson, 2001;Wilson, 2011;Bongaarts, 2003;Weeks et al, 2004;Caldwell, 2004;Moser et al, 2005;Doepke, 2005;Dorius, 2008;Dorius and Firebaugh, 2010;Angeles, 2010). A growing number of studies in India had also assessed the trends and transition in population health indicators (Dyson, 2005;Ghosh, 1956;Rele, 1982;Rele, 1987;Dyson, 1989;Bhat, 1989;Bhat, 1997;Bhat et al, 1984;James, 1995, James andNair, 2005;Guilmoto and Rajan, 2001;Visaria and Visaria, 1994;Visaria and Visaria, 2003;Kulkarni and Alagarajan, 2005;Visaria, 2004b;Visaria, 2011 ...…”