Level I

Chapter 6
Listening Speaking

IC3 Section

English | Vietnamese
IC3 | IT | TOEFL | Best Answer
Vietnamese Translation of IC3
Assessment

Guiding Question

What are the priorities of a developing country in its course of renovation?  

Câu hỏi hướng dẫn: 

Các nước đang phát triển phải ưu tiên những gì trong công cuộc đổi mới của mình?

Skills:

In this chapter you will do these things:

Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice

Intercultural Communicative Competence

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Vietnam consciously or unconsciously may be struggling with the “ Đổi mới of Gender,” but it is not struggling alone. In fact, itstruggles with the entire world to confront the challenges of bringing gender equality to the development process. In 2001, the World Bank published the following report that argues for gender equality as being essential for development initiatives. Ponder the following questions as you read the summary of this report, then discuss the questions.

1. What gender discrimination and inequality exists in sectors of your country?
2. Does it hinder development or progress? If so, in what way? If not, do things as they are have a bright future for your country?
3. What countries or cultures demonstrate the most gender equality? Do you find the achievements of these countries admirable or undesirable? Why?
4. What countries or cultures demonstrate the most gender inequality? Do you find the achievements of these countries admirable or undesirable?
5. Do you agree or disagree with the premise of this report—that to more fully develop as a nation, gender equality must be part of the process?
6. Would gender equality be a possibility in your country?
7. How would your nation go about achieving such equality?

Việt nam, có ý thức hay vô thức, đang vật lộn với “Đổi mới về giới”, nhưng không phải một mình. Thật ra, cả thế giới đang đối mặt với những thách thức của việc đưa bình đẳng về giới vào quá trình phát triển. Năm 2001, Ngân hàng Thế giới ra báo cáo trong đó lập luận rằng bình đẳng về giới là thiết yếu đối với những sáng kiến phát triển. Hãy suy nghĩ về những câu hỏi sau đây khi đọc bản tóm tắt của báo cáo nói trên, sau đó hãy thảo luận những câu hỏi này.

1. Có những phân biệt và bất bình đẳng về giới nào trong các lĩnh vực đời sống ở nước bạn?
2. Điều đó có hạn chế sự phát triển hoặc sự tiến bộ không? Nếu có, hạn chế như thế nào?
3. Những nước nào hay nền văn hoá nào có sự bình đẳng nhất về giới? Bạn thấy thành tựu phát triển của họ có đáng ngưỡng mộ không hay cũng bình thường? Tại sao?
4. Những nước nào hay nền văn hoá nào có sự không bình đẳng nhất về giới? Bạn thấy thành tựu phát triển của họ có đáng ngưỡng mộ không hay cũng bình thường?
5. Bạn đồng tình hay phản đối quan điểm của bản báo cáo là - để quốc gia phát triển một cách toàn diện hơn, bình đẳng về giới phải là một phần của quá trình phát triển?
6. Bình đẳng về giới có thể thực hiện được ở nước bạn không?
7. Nước bạn sẽ làm như thế nào để đạt được sự bình đẳng đó?

Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice

A World Bank Policy Research Report (21776)

January 2001

Summary (pp. 1-14)

Gender discrimination remains pervasive in many dimensions of life—worldwide. This is so despite considerable advances in gender equality in recent decades. The nature and extent of the discrimination vary considerably across countries and regions. But the patterns are striking. In no region of the developing world are women equal to men in legal, social, and economic rights. Gender gaps are widespread in access to and control of resources, in economic opportunities, in power, and political voice. Women and girls bear the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities—but the costs cut more broadly across society, ultimately harming everyone.

For these reasons, gender equality is a core development issue—a development objective in its own right. It strengthens countries’ abilities to grow, to reduce poverty, and to govern effectively. Promoting gender equality is thus an important part of a development strategy that seeks to enable all people—women and men alike—to escape poverty and improve their standard of living.

Economic development opens many avenues for increasing gender equality in the long run. A considerable body of evidence around the world supports this assertion. But growth alone will not deliver the desired results. Also needed are an institutional environment that provides equal rights and opportunities for women and men and policy measures that address persistent inequalities. This report argues for a three-part strategy for promoting gender equality:

• Reform institutions to establish equal rights and opportunities for women and men. Reforming legal and economic institutions is necessary to establish a foundation of equal rights and equal opportunities for women and men. Because the law in many countries continues to give unequal rights to women and men, legal reforms are needed, particularly in family law, protections against violence, land rights, employment, and political rights.
• Foster economic development to strengthen incentives for more equal resources and participation. Rising income and falling poverty levels tend to reduce gender disparities in education, health, and nutrition. Higher productivity and new job opportunities often reduce gender inequalities in employment. And investments in basic water, energy, and transportation infrastructure help reduce gender disparities in workloads.
• Take active measures to redress persistent disparities in command over resources and political voice. Because institutional reforms and economic development may not be sufficient—or forthcoming—active measures are needed to redress persistent gender disparities in the short to medium term.

Gender Equality—in Rights, Resources, and Voice

Gender refers to socially constructed roles and socially learned behaviors and expectation associated with females and males. Women and men are different biologically—but all cultures interpret and elaborate these innate biological differences into a set of social expectations about what behaviors and activities are appropriate, and what rights, resources, and power they possess. While these expectations vary considerably among societies, there are also some striking similarities. For example, nearly all societies give the primary responsibility for the care of infants and young children to women and girls, and that for military service and national defense to men.

Like race, ethnicity, and class, gender is a social category that largely establishes one’s life chances, shaping one’s participation in society and in the economy. Some societies do not experience racial or ethnic divides, but all societies experience gender asymmetries—differences and disparities—to varying degrees. Often these asymmetries take time to change, but they are far from static. In fact, they can at times change quite rapidly in response to policy and changing socioeconomic conditions.

The term gender equality has been defined in a variety of ways in the context of development. This report defines gender equality in terms of equality under the law, equality of opportunity (including equality of rewards for work and equality in access to human capital and other productive resources that enable opportunity), and equality of voice (the ability to influence and contribute to the development process). It stops short of defining gender equality as equality of outcomes for two reasons. First, different cultures and societies can follow different paths in their pursuit of gender equality. Second, equality implies that women and men are free to choose different (or similar) roles and different (or similar) outcomes in accordance with their preferences and goals.

This report uses a a variety of types of data and analyses to discuss issues related to gender inequality across the developing world. But measuring and assessing the many dimensions of gender inequality are tricky and difficult, and the lack of gender-differentiated data and analyses in several important aspects of gender equality is a real obstacle. Since empirical evidence is often richer and more available for more developed countries than for less developed countries, the report also reviews the experience of industrialized countries. It presents a combination of micro, country-level, and cross-country analyses, and reviews the empirical work from several social science disciplines.

Despite Progress, Gender disparities Remain in All Countries

The last half of the 20 th Century saw great improvement in the absolute status of women and in gender equality in most developing countries.

• With few exceptions female education levels improved considerably. The primary enrollment rates of girls about doubled in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa, rising faster than boys’ enrollment rates. This substantially reduced large gender gaps in schooling.
• Women’s life expectancy increased by 15-20 years in developing countries. With greater investments in girls and women and better access to health care, the expected biological pattern in female and male longevity was emerged in all developing regions; for the first time, in the 1990s, women in South Asia are living longer than men, on average.
• More women have joined the labor force. Since 1970 women’s labor force participation has risen on average by 15 percentage points in East Asia and Latin America. This growth was larger than for men, thus narrowing the gender gap in employment. Gender gaps in wages have also narrowed.

Despite the progress significant gender inequalities in rights, resources, and voice persist in all developing countries—and in many areas the progress has been slow and uneven. Moreover, socioeconomic shocks in some countries have brought setbacks, jeopardizing hard-won gains.

Rights

In no region do women and men have equal social, economic, and legal rights. 1 In a number of countries women still lack independent rights to own land, manage property, conduct business, or even travel without their husband’s consent. In much of Sub-Saharan Africa, women obtain land rights chiefly through their husband as long as the marriage endures, and they often lose those rights when they are divorced or widowed. Gender disparities in rights constrain the sets of choices available to women in many aspects of life—often profoundly limiting their ability to participate in or benefit from development.

Gender Inequalities in Basic Rights Persist in All Regions

Index of gender equality

 

Note: A value of 1 indicates low gender equality in rights, a value of 4 high equality.

Source: Rights data from Humana (1992); population weights from World Bank (1999d)

*OECD MEMBER COUNTRIES

Twenty countries originally signed the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on 14 December 1960. Since then a further ten countries have become members of the Organisation. The Member countries of the Organisation and the dates on which they deposited their instruments of ratification are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

Resources

Women continue to have systematically poorer command over a range of productive resources, including education, land, information, and financial resources. In South Asia women have only about half as many years of schooling as men, on average, and girls’ enrollment rates at the secondary level are still only two-thirds of boys’. Many women cannot own land, and those who do generally command smaller landholdings than men. And in most developing regions female-run enterprises tend to be undercapitalized, having poorer access to machinery, fertilizer, extension information, and credit than male-run enterprises. Such disparities, whether in education or other productive resources, hurt women’s ability to participate in development and to contribute to higher living standards for their families. Those disparities also translate into greater risk and vulnerability in the face of personal or family crises, in old age, and during economic shocks.

Despite recent increases in women’s educational attainment, women continue to earn less than men in the labor market—even when they have the same education and years of work experience as men. Women are often limited to certain occupations in developing countries and are largely excluded from management positions in the formal sector. In industrial countries women in the wage sector earn an average of 77 percent of what men earn;’in developing countries, 73 percent. And only about a fifth of the wage gap can be explained by gender differences in education, work experience or job characteristics.

Voice

Limited access to resources and weaker ability to generate income—whether in self-employed activities or in wage employment—constrain women’s power to influence resource allocation and investment decisions in the home. Unequal rights and poor socioeconomic status relative to men also limit their ability to influence decisions in their communities and at the national level. Women remain vastly underrepresented in national and local assemblies, accounting for less than 10 percent of the seats in parliament, on average (except in East Asia where the figure is 18-19 percent). And in no developing region do women hold more than 8 percent of ministerial positions. Moreover, progress has been negligible in most regions since the 1970s. And in Eastern Europe female representation has fallen from about 25 to 7 percent since the beginning of economic and political transition there.

Gender Disparities Tend to Be Greater Among the Poor

Gender disparities in education and health are often greatest among the poor. A recent study of boys’ and girls’ school enrollments in 41 countries indicates that within countries gender disparities in school enrollment rates are commonly greater among the poor than among the non-poor. Similar patterns across poor and non-poor households are seen with respect to boys’ and girls’ mortality rates for children under 5.

Similar patterns also emerge when comparing poor and non-poor countries. While gender equality in education and health has increased noticeably over the past 30 years in today’s low-income countries, disparities between females and males in school enrollments are still greater in those countries than in middle-income and high-income countries. And despite the links between economic development and gender equality, women’s representation in parliaments remains minimal. A few low-income countries, such as China and Uganda, have made special efforts to open parliamentary seats to women, achieving levels of female representation even higher than those in high-income countries. They demonstrate the potential impact of a social mandate for gender equality.

Gender Inequalities Harm Well-Being, Hinder Development

Gender inequalities impose large costs on the health and well-being of men, women, and children, and affect their ability to improve their lives. In addition to these personal costs, gender inequalities reduce productivity in farms and enterprises and thus lower prospects for reducing poverty and ensuring economic progress. Gender inequalities also weaken a country’s governance—and thus the effectiveness of its development policies.

Well-Being

Foremost among the costs of gender inequality is its toll on human lives and the quality of those lives. Identifying and measuring the full extent of those costs are difficult—but a wealth of evidence from countries around the world demonstrates that societies with large, persistent gender inequalities pay the price of more poverty, malnutrition, illness, and other deprivations.

• China , Korea, and South Asia have excessively high female mortality. Why? Social norms that favor sons, plus China’s one-child policy, have led to child mortality rates that higher for girls than for boys. Some estimates indicate that there are 60-100 million fewer women alive today than there would be in the absence of gender discrimination.
• Mothers’ illiteracy and lack of schooling directly disadvantage their young children. Low schooling translates into poor quality of care for children and then higher infant and child mortality and malnutrition. Mothers with more education are more likely to adopt appropriate health-promoting behaviors, such as having young children immunized. Supporting these conclusions are careful analyses of household survey data that account for other factors that might improve care practices and related health outcomes.
• As with mothers’ schooling, higher household income is associated with higher child survival rates and better nutrition. And putting additional incomes in the hands of women within the household tends to have a larger positive impact than putting that income in the hands of men, as studies of Bangladesh, Brazil and Côte d’Ivoire show. Unfortunately, rigid social norms about the appropriate gender division of labor and limited paid employment for women restrict women’s ability to earn income.
• Gender inequalities in schooling and urban jobs accelerate the spread of HIV. The AIDS epidemic will spread rapidly over the next decade—until up to one in four women and one in five men become HIV infected, already the case in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• While women and girls, especially the poor, often bear the brunt of gender disparities, gender norms and stereotypes impose costs on males, too. In the transition economies of Eastern Europe men have experienced absolute declines in life expectancies in recent years. Increases in male mortality rates—the largest registered in peacetime—are associated with growing stress and anxiety due to rapidly worsening unemployment among men.

Productivity and Economic Growth

The toll on human lives is a toll on development—since improving the quality of people’s lives is development’s ultimate goal. But gender inequalities also impose costs on productivity, efficiency, and economic progress. By hindering the accumulation of human capital in the home and the labor market, and by systematically excluding women or men from access to resources, public services, or productive activities, gender discrimination diminishes an economy’s capacity to grow and to raise living standards.

• Losses in output result from inefficiencies in the allocation of productive resources between men and women within households. In households in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Kenya more equal control of inputs and farm income by women and men could raise farm yields by as much as a fifth of current output.
• Low investment in female education also reduces a country’s overall output. One study estimates that if the countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa had started with the gender gap in average years of schooling that East Asia had in 1960 and had closed that gender gap at the rate achieved by East Asia from 1960-1992, their income per capita could have grown by 0.5-0.9 percentage point higher per year—substantial increases over actual growth rates. Another study estimates that even for middle- and high-income countries with higher initial education levels, an increase of 1 percentage point in the share of women with secondary education is associated with an increase in per capita income of 0.3 percentage point. Both studies control for other variables commonly found in the growth literature.

Governance

Greater women’s rights and more equal participation in public life by women and men are associated with cleaner business and government and better governance. Where the influence of women in public life is greater, the level of corruption is lower. This holds even when comparing countries with the same income, civil liberties, education and legal institutions. Although still only suggestive, these findings lend additional support for having more women in the labor force and in politics—since women can be an effective force for rule of law and good government.

Women in business are less likely to pay bribes to government officials, perhaps because women have higher standards of ethical behavior or greater risk aversion. A study of 350 firms in the republic of Georgia concludes that firms owned or managed by men are 10 percent more likely to make unofficial payments to government officials than those owned or managed by women. This result holds regardless of the characteristics of the firm, such as the sector in which it operates and firm size, and the characteristics of the owner or manager, such as education. Without controlling for these factors, firms managed by mena are twice as likely to pay bribes.

Why Do Gender Disparities Persist?

If gender inequalities harm people’s well-being and a country’s prospects for development, why do harmful gender disparities persist in so many countries? Why are some gender inequalities much more difficult to eliminate than others? For example, improvements have been rapid in such dimensions as health and access to schooling, but much slower in political participation and equal rights to property. What factors stand in the way of transforming gender relations and eliminating gender inequalities? Institutions, households, and the economy.

Societal institutions—social norms, customs, rights, laws—as well as economic institutions, such as markets, shape roles and relationships between men and women and influence what resources women and men have access to, what activities they can or cannot undertake, and in what forms they can participate in the economy and in society. They embody incentives that can encourage or discourage prejudice. Even when formal and informal institutions do not distinguish explicitly between males and females, they are generally informed (either explicitly or implicitly), by social norms relating to appropriate gender roles. These societal institutions have their own inertia and can be slow and difficult to change.—but they are far from static.

Like institutions, households play a fundamental role in shaping gender relation from early in life and in transmitting these from one generation the next. People make many of life’s most basic decisions within their households—about having and raising children, engaging in work and leisure, and investing in the future. How tasks and productive resources are allocated among sons and daughter, how much autonomy they are given, whether expectations differ among them—all this creates, reinforces, or mitigates gender disparities. But families do not make decisions in a vacuum. They make them in the context of communities and in ways that reflect the influence of incentives established by the larger institutional and policy environment.

And because the economy determines many of the opportunities people have to improve their standard of living, economic policy and development critically affect gender inequality. Higher incomes mean fewer resource constraints within the household that force parents to choose between investing in sons or in daughters. But how precisely women and men are affected by economic development depends on what income-generating activities are available, how they are organized, how effort and skills are rewarded, and whether women and men are equally able to participate.

Indeed, even apparently gender-neutral development policies can have gender differentiated outcomes—in part because of the ways in which institutions and household decisions combine to shape gender roles and relations. The gender division of labor in the home, social norms and prejudice, and unequal resources prevent women and men form taking equal advantage of economic opportunities—or from coping equally with risk or economic shocks. Failure to recognize these gender-differentiated constraints when designing policies can compromise the effectiveness of those policies, both from equity and efficiency perspectives.

So, societal institutions, households, and the broader economy together determine people’s opportunities and life prospects, by gender. They also represent important entry points for public policy to address persistent gender inequalities.

Taking it Further

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Chapter 6 – Adding another Dimension with Pictures :

Borrow a digital camera again. As a class, take a tour of your community. Take some more representative pictures of all that informs your lifelong learning experience. On and around the EMU campus, students might well take pictures of both agricultural and industrial occupations, historical and cultural aspects of the Shenandoah Valley, or typical parts of campus life – athletics, dorm life, theater, chapel, musical performances, art exhibits, and ultimate Frisbee on the front lawn. On and around the AGU campus, students could explore the river life of catfish houses, the history of Tiger Island, the local and city market, the paddies of rice farmers, as well as typical aspects of campus life – football, dorm life, performances and exhibits, and sipping café sua da along the streets. On and around the Iranian campuses that are just beginning to sample the possibilities of IC3 learning. Qom is a rich, historical, and holy city. In the same way, follow your imagination (and our IC3 web template) to capture with the digital camera some images that could begin to open up your world for Vietnamese and American students.

Edit to the 200 x 200 pixel limit. Edit the IC3 Profiles to include this increasingly “three-dimensional” portrait of others participating in this learning platform.

Information Technology

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Lessons and Exercises for this chapter are found in Level 1 Writing Chapter 6 in the IT Exercises and Activities for Developing Ideas Section

TOEFL Exercises

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Input for TOEFL

"Best Answer"

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After you have completed the Reading, Listening/Speaking, and Writing chapters 6, how would you answer the following question?  

What are the priorities of a developing country in its course of renovation?  

Các nước đang phát triển phải ưu tiên những gì trong công cuộc đổi mới của mình?

FORUM

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