Effects Of Gender Inequality On Social And Economic Development

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ity reduce development and economic growth?
Gender issues have become one of the most widely discussed subjects for the past few decades. Despite the considerable economic and social progress of the last century, gender inequality still remains a problem around the world and many countries face difficulties with this. Gender inequality rate is different for every region, but it is more or less related to a country’s level of development. Although the developed world shows a high level of gender equality, it is hard to find the developing country where women have absolutely the same social, economic and legal rights as men. This problem is more acute in underdeveloped regions where the gender gaps are significantly higher in every area. In many …show more content…

First of all, It is important to distinguish between sex and gender. Sex is a property of the biological characteristics of an organism while gender is constructed and created by society. Also, it is necessary to take into account that the term gender and women are not interchangeable. Gender refers to both women and men and the relationship between them. Gender equality refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for financial independence through work of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same, but that their rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female (Mikkola, Miles, 2007). In many countries, however, the difference between men and women is too large. The distinct roles and behavior further increase this difference and are the reasons of gender …show more content…

One way to find out how gender inequality affects development is to look at the countries at different development stages. At the beginning, I will compare gender inequality index in different regions of the world. As already mentioned above, higher score reflects a higher level of gender inequality. Let’s start a discussion from North America. In this region, gender inequality index varies from 0 to 0.2. Europe has the same rate of inequality, but the situation is rather different in other regions. In South America, GII changes from 0.4 to 0.6. Central Asia also reflects a higher level of gender inequality than North America and Europe and the Index there is the same as in South America. South Asia and Africa have more complicated condition, because they show the highest rate of gender inequality over the world. It varies from 0.6 to 1.0 (See the map 1

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