Gender in economic sphere: Some key issues for developing countries

THIS year marks 30 years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (FLFP) at the Fourth World Conference on Women that laid out broad frameworks as well as concrete objectives for countries the world over to ensure greater equality and opportunities for women. This was a significant recognition of the gross inequalities and severe discrimination that women face the world over.

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Subsequently the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out targets to be achieved with regard to gender equality.

Even as such international pol-icy frameworks and objectives for countries have rolled out, there have been repeated episodes and periods over which the condi-tions of women have deteriorated and they have borne the brunt of economic downturns and crises. In countries of the global south, the asymmetric global power relations have resulted in adverse impacts of debt crises, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change on women’s abilities to participate in labour force, and be accorded equal access, conditions and rights in the economy. At a policy level, while there is a recognition of the urgent need to address issues that affect women and their participation in the economy, different views on how this can be done and what interventions can substantially challenge the fundamental caus-es of gender inequality in the economy.

Let us consider some key gender issues that emanate from econom-ic conditions that are under discus-sion in regions of the global south, and South Asia and Sri Lanka in particular. Low Female Labour Force Participation Rates (FLFPR) and the need to enhance them; circumstances and conditions of paid and unpaid work by women; the gender discourses on finan-cial inclusion and the means to ‘include’ women within the finan-cial system; the recognition of care work and the structure of the care economy.

Female labour force participation rates