Does the Development Process Simply Reinforce Gender Inequality Essay

Does the Development Process Simply Reinforce Gender Inequality - Essay Example According to Lemel and Noll, 1(2002) Gender inequality is widely regarded as being the unequal access to various material resources, privileges, power and status by women as compared to men. Gender inequality is commonly seen to have a number of various interactions with other inequalities such as age, class and ethnic based inequalities. This is seen to indicated that gender inequality happens to have a number of aspects which may include inequalities such as inequalities in wages and income, inequality as pertaining to there being differential access to a given labor market in addition to the labor market having a segregated structure2. Effects of Gender Inequality According to a recent IMF Global Monitoring report that sought to confront among other things the challenges of gender equality, gender inequality in resources, rights and voice can essentially be seen to surface in three key domains. These are in the household, in the society as well as in the markets and economy3. The report further indicates that while gender equality in the household between both women and men helps in changing the basic allocation of the house hold expenditures a factor that results in more resources being devoted to health and children’s education, gender inequality is seen to widely influence the general distribution of the various household tasks, this often results in a limitation of the women’s ability to not only work outside the homes but it also limits their control over fertility decisions. Gender inequality in the market is often seen to be largely reflected in there being unequal access to a number of resources such as labor markets, land, credit and new production technologies. Gender inequality in society is often expressed by there being a number of restrictions that are seen to actively limit women participation in not only civic but also political life. Globalization and the Reinforcement of Gender Inequality Although globalization in developing countries can arguably be viewed as having opened significantly more opportunities for women and has been key in providing women with paid employment in addition to creating a suitable channel that essentially serves to provide an avenue out of their currently restricted lives, it is the common belief of many that most of the work in the current new global economy is mostly exploitative, and in some instances, it actually tends to make life significantly more difficult as compared to before the surge in globalization was experienced. To further emphasize on this aspect Murray (2008)4 quotes a report from the Emory University that states that most critics happen to fear globalization as pertains to its integrati on of all countries into a common world society, the critics fear this will inevitably result in an exacerbation of gender inequality that might potentially harm women and especially so those in developing countries. A number of feminist researchers have managed to demonstrate that globalization is essentially not a gender-neutral process5. Globalization is seen to affect women and men differently under varying circumstances. According to Brock-Utne and Garbo, (2009)6, globalization tends to frequently reinforce the