SWBP: Living Conditions of Women

an ongoing series of book reports (just like grammar school, lol)
Ch. 20, Living Conditions of Women, by Brinda Viswanathan,
of the Madras school of economics. (only 3 posts to go..)
SWBP is Solutions for the World's Biggest Problems,
edited by Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Commission.
Summary and Commentary

Women take back the night (and the day, too)! If women ruled the world...

Compared to men, women have benefited less around the world during various courses of economic development. Women have a lowered status within the house, in the workplace, and in the community. This status differential has been proven to NOT be due to their biological or physiological differences, but rather is due to society and culture. Women have been kept down.

As this book, (and the chapter's author), have an economic emphasis, 2 examples of improving women's living conditions that profitably reduce the gender gap are:
(1) Reducing the gap between male and female education, especially at the primary level
and
(2) Providing childcare facilities to allow more women to participate more effectively in the labor market.

Other measures to improve women's living conditions that are harder to quantify cost:benefit ratios for are: reductions in sex trafficking and domestic violence, improved access to reproductive healthcare, and a less clear-cut definition of gender roles and the consequent overburdening of women with things like carrying firewood and water and agricultural labor like hoeing the fields or whatever, while men spend a proportionally larger time with leisure activities. The deeply-rooted gender biases cause women with similar education levels to be paid less than men, and not advance as high (the glass ceiling).

1. Educating away "gender inequality"
I heard a Grateful Dead song this morning with a refrain about women being smarter than men. That very well might be true, I don't know (I'm a man, lol).

The benefits of education are 1) a higher return on human capital investment (the cost of education, I assume vs. the cost of being less/un-educated), and the consequently higher rates of economic growth, 2) sexual knowledge, i.e. refusal tactics and recognizing dangers involved in risky behavior (with consequently less HIV infections and sexual exploitation and unwanted pregnancies), 3) better health, 4) increased ability to bargain / participation, in household decisions as well as the public sphere, 5) better employment opportunities and a lesser chance of workplace discrimination, 6) improved nutrition and health status of children, and 7) eliminating discrimination between boys and girls in the household.

Here's number 8, a macro-level result:
"Gender inequality in education acounts for a sizable portion of the empirically observed growth differences between countries and regions."

and
2. Childcare Facilities
Specifically, improving the access to, and affordability of, them.
This gives women a choice of if they want to work or not, and then whether part-time or full-time. Childcare-provision also reduces absenteeism and improves the chances of retaining jobs.

I have tables that show CBR's (cost benefit ratios) for South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Rep. of Korea, and Argentina, for both solutions. Whatever, you get the idea. Just do it. There is so much opportunity for insanely helpful, and rewarding, investment in the human condition, it's maddening to not be living in a virtually perfect world. Please stop, everyone, with the wasteful selfish expenditure, that's all I have to say right now. You're not sinners in the hands of an angry God, and I have no plans at this time to smite everyone (at least not all at once). I come from a place called Hope, lol.

You know, the culture could be reversed, with women having more power, and men staying home taking care of the kids. Who knows, right?