JSAPMDD WGP Discussion Paper - Relating Conditions of Women... (June 2013)

8/12/2019 JSAPMDD WGP Discussion Paper - Relating Conditions of Women... (June 2013)

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RELATING CONDITIONS OF WOMEN IN ASIATO ISSUES OF PUBLIC FINANCE, ESSENTIAL

SERVICES, AND CLIMATE CHANGE

A Preliminary Discussion Paper

Photo credits (from top left to bottom right): Gurinder Osan/Cryptome; FDC Philippines; Rajib Singha/Photoshare; Jagaran Nepal; Khaled Hasan/IPS Asia-Pacific; S.Mojumder/Drik/CIMMYT

Jubilee South Asia PacificMovement on Debt and Development

June 2013


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JS-APMDD | Relating Conditions of Women in Asia 2

Photo credits (from above): IFAD; Angela Wylie/International Womens Development

Agency (IWDA); UNICEF

Background

This discussion paper has been prepared as aninitial resource material to support JSAPMDDefforts in developing a campaign in the region onWomen and Gender. It gives an overview ofwomens conditions in various countries in Asiaand some parts of the Pacific, largely using latestdata from the United Nations Economic and Social

Affairs Commission (UNESCAP). In thesubsections, it frames these issues and conditionsfrom a political economic, human rights andfeminist perspective, and in relation to focus ofJSAPMDDs 2012-2014 programs, namely: 1)Global Finance and Public Finance; 2) Rights toEssential Services and Natural Resources; and 3)Ecological Debt, Environmental Justice, ClimateChange.

The discussion paper may be used in its entiretyor by subsections, which were written as stand-alone briefing papers on debt and the internationalfinancial institutions, climate change and finance,and essential services and natural resources.

This is a work in progress and will be updatedfrom time to time as we monitor and addressdevelopments in national, regional and globalcontexts. These include utilizing mainstreamsources, but much more significant are the livedexperiences of the women in our constituencies,organizations and movements. It is important tosurface the intersections of gender, economicstatus, race/caste and other socio-economic

stratifiers, the discriminatory impacts of whichmay remain hidden in aggregates or trivialized bygender-blind assumptions.


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The most damaging and adverse impacts of the globaleconomic crises are likely to be on women in the AsiaPacific region because the highest ratios of women ofworking age are concentrated here. According to ILOestimates, women comprise 38.7 percent or around 730million, of the Asia Pacifics total workforce estimated at

1.9 billion (UNESCAP, 2011).

Increased labor force participation of women is oftencited as one of the gains of womens struggles to realizethe right to work, but the gaps persist and remainsignificant in certain countries. In Asia and the Pacific,womens labor force participation as a share of maleeconomic participation did not budge for 10 years from1991-2000, staying constant at 65 percent. Among sub-regions, North and Central Asia led with a high of 93percent average participation as compared to South andSouth-West Asias 45 percent. Some countries hadfemale labor force participation overtaking mens (e.g.,

Azerbaijan with 101 percent, the Lao PeoplesDemocratic Republic with 102 percent and the RussianFederation with 101 percent). Gaps in adultemployment-to-population rates between men and

women have been largest in South Asia and SoutheastAsia and the Pacific.

The increase in the passage of gender equality lawshas not obviously succeeded in closing gender-basedwage gaps. Although inadequate information does notallow for comparisons across countries, it is well knownfrom womens experiences that those who are able tosecure the relative comfort of wage and salariedemployment are often not receiving the sameremuneration as their male counterparts. ILO 2009 datapoints to strong national evidence that wage gapspersist. Throughout most regions and many occupations,women are paid less money than men for the same job.In a majority of countries, womens wages representbetween 70 and 90 per cent of mens wages, with evenlower ratios in some Asian and Latin American countries(UNESCAP, 2011)Wage differentials intersect with othersocial, economic and cultural factors in the wider contextto deepen disadvantages for women and also girls.These are not likely to gain priority attention in the

current period from policy makers.

What has been growing is informal sector work, with women being the primary targets. Capitalists take advantage ofwomens limited mobility, highly stretchable work hours, and what are considered womens low skills levels that areremunerated accordingly. UNESCAP affirms that [m]any working-age Asian and Pacific women are own-account orcontributing family workers in vulnerable employment, meaning that their incomes are low, unstable and unaccompaniedby social protection or regulation of working conditions (p. 71). Among the biggest informal sectors are in India andIndonesia, where nine out of every 10 women working outside agriculture hold informal -sector jobs, as do half or moreof non-agricultural workers in parts of East Asia (UNDP, 2010, p. 62).

Figure 2. Employment by sector, Asia and the Pacific, 200

Figure 3. Female Participation in the Labor Force, Asia-Pacific subregions, 1991-2009

Figure 4. Fewer Women than Men Participate in theWorkforce, Labour Force Participation Rates of Women andMen, 2007


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Indeed, not only is our dependence on womens work

in agriculture high but it is growing. Men in much

greater extent than women have been moving to

non-farm jobs. In all parts of the world except

Europe, over the past four decades, women workers

have been rising as a proportion of the total

agricultural work forcein some cases gradually, as

in Asia, and in other cases substantially, as in

Oceania and South America... In other words, we are

seeing a move toward the feminization ofagriculture (defined here as a rise in the proportion

of women in the total agricultural work force, even if

the absolute proportion remains half or below).

Clearly, the agrarian transitionthe shift of workers

from agriculture to industry and services, and from

rural to urban areasthat is expected with

development, has been highly gendered (Agarwal,

2011, p. 8).

The gender pay gap is an example of the way patriarchymeshes with capitalism to extract more profit from labor,particularly womens labor.This use of patriarchal socialrelations becomes fundamental to the accumulationprocess itself, which actually requires the continuingimpoverishment of certain sections for its success,wrote Jayati Gosh. She further noted the high growthrates of Asian economies during the boom of the exportprocessing zones, whose labor force consisted in large

part of millions of low-salaried women across manycountries in the region. Another track has been throughcontractualization or flexibilization of labor sources, anarrangement that casts a different light on womensincreased labor force participation as a way by whichcapitalists can extract greater extraction of surplus valuefrom womens labor.

In addition to gaps in employment and access to labormarkets, there are also gender inequalities in sectoralemployment1. Women are overrepresented in theagricultural sector, a sector that has little support,whether from governments or other multilateral

development institutions. UNESCAP data show 47percent of working-age women in Asia and the Pacificengaged in the agricultural sector in 2008, comparedwith 38 percent of men. In addition to being drafted aspart of family labor, women are also much moredependent on agriculture for survival than male workers,due to their lesser access to non-farm jobs (Agarwal,2011, p. 7). For 2008, 57 percent of all female workersworked in agriculture as compared to 49 percent formales. Some countries such as India exhibited evenhigher estimates, with 49 per cent of male workers and65 per cent of female workers depending on agricultural

livelihoods; among Indian rural women workers, theshare was even higher, at 83 percent (Agarwal, 2011).

1Vulnerable employment

However, while a significant number of people continueto rely on the sector for livelihoods, agricultures shareof GDP has been declining worldwide, especially in Asiaand Africa. This divergence between agricultures GDPcontribution and the population it supports, in majordeveloping regions of the world, means that many aretrapped in low productivity livelihood options. And thereis a gendered nature to this trap, given the feminization

of agriculture, UNDESA pointed out (Agarwal, 2011, p7).

Figure 5. Women Earn Less than Men, Ratio of Female-to-MaleEstimated Earned Income in Asia-Pacific, 2007, US$PPP

Source of Figures 2-5: ILO


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Figure 6. Per cent females in total agricultural labour force: world'sregions

In most of South Asia, except Sri Lanka, for

instance, few women own land (Agarwal

1994). In Nepala rare country which

collected information on landownership by

gender in its 2001 censuswomen were found

to own land in only 11 per cent of all rural

households and 14 per cent of landowning

rural households in 2001 (Allendorf 2007). In

India, although there are no comprehensive

data for ownership holdings, the Agricultural

Census 1995-96 shows that women held only

9.5 per cent of all operational (i.e. cultivated)land holdings (GoI 1995-96). In rural China,

women constitute an estimated 70 per cent of

those without access to their own land under

the family land use allotment system (Li 2003:

4).

Within Asia as a whole, the gender gap is much

larger in South Asia than in Southeast Asia;

and within South Asia the gap is larger in the

northern belt (northwest India, Bangladesh,

and Pakistan) than in south India and Sri

Lanka (Agarwal 1994). Underlying theseregional variations are differences in laws,

culture (especially post-marital residence and

the ideology of female seclusion), ecology (e.g.

womens work contribution is more visible in

rice farming systems), ethnic and religious

diversity, political freedoms and overall

development (Agarwal, 2011, pp. 11-12).

Access to Land and Land Ownership

One of the clearest indicators of womens disadvantaged economic positions relative to men lies in their general conditionof landlessness. Women in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, MongoliaPapua New Guinea and Sri Lanka have hardly any access to land. Those who do own land in Asia and the Pacific, whetherwomen or men, make do with small farms of one to two hectares or less. UNDESA reports that based on the limited dataof a few countries, it found substantial gender inequality on land ownership.

Landlessness further edges women out fromaccessing other resources such as accessingfacilities for credit, farm inputs and farmingimplements. While some of these may be ofdoubtful benefit over the long term (e.g., micro-credit), it is the absence of financial options thatrobs women of alternatives especially in times ofconflict, domestic violence, divorce, disasters andillness. This ingrains and increases womenseconomic dependency on husbands, fathers andother male kin, which in turn erodes theirdecision-making over various aspects of theirlives.

Women and Unpaid Work

Women are not only income-poor but also time-poor because of thedisproportionate burden of care labor or social reproduction thatthey bear. Many studies that have attempted to translate this tomoney terms have reached estimates in the billions of dollars, andyet this sphere of work that continues to be socially ascribed towomen remains non-valuated. Even as it produces goods andservices, it does not enter into a countrys System of NationalAccounts and is thus not considered part of the Gross DomesticProduct.

A study by the OECD of unpaid work (largely housework) amongmember-countries and enhanced engagement countries foundTurkish, Mexican and Indian women spending 4.3-5 hours moredaily on unpaid work than the men who were at work. It furthernoted that Indian men also spend considerably more time sleeping,eating, talking to friends, watching TV and relaxing (11). Korean,Indian and Japanese mens unpaid working time amounted to lessthan one hour per day on average.

Source: Based on FAO Statistics (http://faostat.fao.org)


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.

Figure 7. Women do more unpaid work than men

Figure 8. Asian men spend the least hours in unpaid work

Source for Figures 7-8: Miranda, V. (2011), Cooking, Caring and Volunteering: Unpaid Work Aroundthe World, OECD Social,Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 116, OECD Publishing


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Net enrolment rates and gender parity in education haveimproved substantially over the years, with girlsprogress even overtaking boys in several countries inAsia and the Pacific. However, the adult literacy gapsput these gains in question. It appears that whateverimprovements were made in education have not

matched population growth; 527 million illiterates in1998 only went down to 518 million 10 in 2008, makingthe region home to the largest number of illiterate

adults worldwide (49).

Gender asymmetries further underscore how women arefailing to stay in school or access opportunities forbecoming literate later in life. UN data from 2005-2009show that female illiterate adults far outnumbered malesat 65 percent. Significantly, womens share of illiterates20 years ago (1985-1994) was almost the same at 64percent.

Violence against Women, a Culture of Discrimination and Impunity

Various forms of violence against women (VAW) are

known to be perpetuated widely but because of the poor

quality of state documentation and reporting, added to

the secrecy and stigmatization that attends these issues,

statistical evidence of its incidence and prevalence are

not available. It is also a phenomenon that has shown

clear links with womens economic status, as casestudies in specific areas show. For instance, a study in

Kerala (India) found out that 49 per cent of the

property-less women reported long term physical

violence by spouses relative to 18 per cent and 10 per

cent of those owning land or a house respectively, and

seven per cent if they owned both (UNDP, 2010, p. 50).

A disabling factor towards ending VAW is the lack oflegislation and effective enforcement. Almost allcountries in Asia Pacific have signed and/or ratified theConvention on the Elimination of all forms of Violence

Against Women but this has not been fully translatedinto domestic laws on VAW. This applies to almost half

of South Asian countries and more than 60 per cent ofPacific countries. East Asia fares better with three-fourths of countries with national legislation on domesticviolence but problems remain in these countries in termsof the lack sanctions for gender-based violence ornarrowly define the circumstances under which it maytake place(UNDP, 2010, p. 31).

The persistence of VAW even in countries with domesticlegislation in place and other associated laws points toineffectual implementation and enforcement. A deeperconcern is that it implicates the culture of the regionwhere male-privileging norms and practices remaindeeply rooted and continue to hold sway over manyaspects of society, affecting individual lives. Thesepractices include domestic violence, rape, sexuaharassment, trafficking, prostitution of women, honorkillings and sex-selective abortions. Other discriminatoryacts constraining womens enjoyment of their humanrights, such as rights to work, heath, education, etc. are

also broadly considered as acts of VAW

In Nepal, in 2008, 55% of adult women were

illiterate, whereas 29% of men were illiterate;

women were about twice as likely as men to be

illiterate in the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic

(2005) and Pakistan (2008). Out of the 38 countries

in the region with literacy data for the 2005-2009period, 20 are still striving to meet gender parity

while 18 of them have already achieved it. Failure

to address gender disparities in literacy,

particularly for women who are socially and

economically disadvantaged, is hindering the

progress of overall adult literacy improvement

(Agarwal, 2011, p. 50).


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Decades under oppressive debt policies of North

countries and international financial institutions led bythe International Monetary Fund and the World Bankhave reduced many countries in Asia to a state ofrecurring economic crisis, indebtedness, chronic povertyand mal-development. Many countries are still beingbled dry by payments for loans that have, in truth, beenpaid many times over, and continue to be so burdeneddespite the environmental damage and displacement ofcommunities and livelihoods caused by the projects thatthese loans funded. Loan conditionalities then packagedas part structural adjustment programs, continue to bepursued under so-called poverty reduction/alleviationprograms, constraining the possibility for developing

countries in the region to carve alternative developmentpaths and realize long-lasting solutions to poverty anddeprivation.

One of these policy conditionalities imposed onborrowing countries is the privatization of water andpower/electricity. Encouraging investments from theprivate sector, the policy has been clearly driven by theIFIs, among them the International Finance Corporation,the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund. From 1990 to 2002,around 30 percent of the World Bank's 276 water supplyloans in the Philippines required water privatization(Freedom from Debt Coalition, 2010). Even by their ownstandards of favoring the private over the public sector,such as efficiency, less corruption, availability andflexibility of resources to increase coverage, theexperience of privatization in developing Asian countrieshas not been successful.

Designed by the (IFC), the 1997 privatization of thePhilippines Metropolitan Waterworks and SewerageSystem was the first large-scale water supplyprivatization in Asia. Two corporations owned by landedand politically influential elites with massive interests in

the telecommunications, real property, mediacommunications and electricity sectors won in thebidding and took over as the concessionaires over eastand west zones of the National Capital Region. Many oftheir contractual commitments from expanding servicesto universal access by 2006 and reducing unaccounted-for/unbilled water to improving quality to comply withWorld Health Organization water and effluents standardsby 2000, have hardly come close to fulfillment.

Within two years, tariffs began to rise to what is now

more than a 900 percent increase from the original bidIndonesia followed the Manila model and in 1998, withno public consultations conducted, privatized PAM Jayathe public water facility of Jakarta. Suez and Thamesthe European water firms that won the bids for a 25-year concession agreement, have similarly failed todeliver on commitments of increasing the number ofconsumers served but have continually increased theirrates.

Rates have increased ten-fold in Jakarata sinceprivatization, making the citys water rates the mostexpensive in South-east Asia. The trend of rising tariffs

is bound to continue because PAM Jaya has to paycharges to the private water operators; it is now heavilyin debt and may have to pay USD2.04 million by thetime the agreement expires in 2023 (Zamzami, 2012).

From a rights and social justice perspective, privatizationhas proven anti-poor in making services that are criticato human lives and well-being, contingent on the abilityof private firms to profit from their investments and onpeoples capacity to pay. It has also shown itself as anti-

A young girl joins her elders as they display empty plastic bottles with

water drop-shaped placards during a rally commemorating World Water

Day Tuesday, March 22, 2011, in Manila, Philippines. AP / Pat Roque

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/03/world-water-

day-2011.html#storylink=cpy


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women and discriminatory especially to grassroots,economically disadvantaged women whose care burdenshave increased in trying to source cheaper alternativesand who often least prioritize their own rights and needsto ensure the welfare of spouses, children and othermembers of the household. Implicit in the privatizationof social services is the assumption that people willmake do with what they can afford when publicsubsidies are withdrawn; making do has often meant

treating womens time and work as infinitely stretchableand always free.

The lack of options over a resource as essential as waterleads poor households to spread limited finances evenmore thinly, sacrificing other needs such as health care,nutritious food and education; or they limit water useand make do with poor quality water, exposingthemselves to infection and disease. The impacts aremost felt by women who, in many countries in Asia andthe developing world, are known to source and managewater resources for household, community andlivelihood needs. Poor women and girls take on the

additional burden of sourcing affordable water to be ableto keep up with the requirements for water of many oftheir social reproduction activities. Asian and Africanwomen reportedly walk an average of six kilometerseach time they fetch water, risking physical injuries fromcarrying heavy loads, and their personal safety intravelling isolated distances (Project Blue, Roots andShoots Canada Water Campaign).

The provision of essential services is also under threatfrom the widening contagion of the global financial

crisis. Governments usually slash social services budgetsas belt-tightening measures when the economycontracts.

Cutbacks in public social expenditure, including sociaservices, basic health services, education and training,have a disproportionate impact on women and girls andfurther increases their workload as they are expected tocompensate for the lack of public services(Commission

for Social Development Secretariat, 4-13 February2009).

Both men and women immediately benefit fromadequate social services that support their rights toeducation, health, other forms of community services;these facilitate the enjoyment of other rights. But thereare gender differentiated impacts; poor women will beburdened several times over if they cannot access theseservices because they have fewer options, and in manyinstances, none at all.

If services fail, womens well-being can be seriously at

risk. Service delivery systems do not affect women onlyBut they affect women differently and more acutely thanmen, particularly if they are poor because women areoften less able to substitute for poor public provision bypaying fees for better services (Unifem, 2007, p. 35)With the global financial crisis spreading and growthweakening, governments are bound to cut into publicrevenues and limit the ability of developing countryGovernments to make the necessary investments tomeet education, health and other human developmentgoals.

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The ADB has been the primary driver as well in theprivatization of power/electricity sectors in the region. Incompliance with its loan conditionalities, severalcountries passed electricity reform laws that allowed therestructuring or unbundling of the power supply chain tobring in competition and privatization of the unbundledgenerators and distributors.

Similar to the experience with water privatization, powerprivatization has not lived up to its promise of lowerelectricity rates, stable and adequate supply andmissionary electrification projects. One of the functionsof such laws is ensuring the profitable role ofindependent power producers. This has also increasedthe exposure of countries to various risks, resulting insome of the highest electricity rates in the region and

FDC Womens Committee National Day of Action against Electricity Price Hikes.

Photo by FDC Philippines


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the world. A study of several Southeast Asian countriesshowed the Philippines and Indonesia early in thedecade as having the highest risk exposure to changes,among others, in the exchange rate through origin offuel supply and the foreign debt for project financing(Bacon, 2001) Today the Philippines is one of thecountries/locations listed as having the highest electricpower rates, which include Hawaii, Italy, Malta, Japan,Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands and Singapore.

Electric power today has become indispensable to a lifeof dignity. Having little or no access to electricitybecause it is conditioned on full cost recovery and thecapacity to pay, constrains the rights to health,education, food, to leisure, self-development, security ofmovement and freedom from violence.

In the same way that the withdrawal of public subsidiesfor water services adds to womens burdens,privatization of the power sector and the resultingskyrocketing of electric rates bear heavily on poorerhouseholds and women. Women continue to be

assigned the responsibility of seeing to family memberswellbeing which includes energy requirements, andconsequently tend to use energy differently from men.Thus, as principal consumers of electricity, they tend tobe more adversely affected by rates increases.

Womens care labor mostly requires water, and for thisreason, we must be assured not only of a stable energysupply for the supply of water, but an adequate andaffordable energy supply to ensure the access of thegreater mass of grassroots households and communitiesto potable water. Grassroots womens assured access to

energy can free up time from manual labor, as well as

increase potentials for accessing opportunities toeducation and other self-development activities, andlivelihoods for their economic independence. It alsocontributes to improving the quality of life in generathrough better health (particularly reproductive health)services, and increased personal and community safetyand social interaction.

Many Asian countries are signatories and state parties to

the CEDAW and should thus be pressed for compliancewith their legal obligations in the matter of the rights toa decent standard of living (land, food, water, housing,energy), adequate and accessible information, andmeaningful participation in governmental decisionmaking. A large number of states also supported theBeijing Platform of Action, to which they committedsupport for equality of access to a sustainable,affordable energy supply, and improved access bywomen to basic services, which today unquestionablyincludes electricity access.

Privatization of the electric power sector is one such

policy that the government must be pressed to assessfor compliance with the principles of non-discriminationequality, empowerment, participation, andaccountability. Privatization hinges on full cost recoveryby big business and the capacity to pay of consumersBasic human rights cannot be constrained by any suchprecondition. For grassroots women already living inhighly precarious social, cultural and economiccircumstances, the enjoyment of our rights cannot beheld hostage by a policy of privatizing essential servicessuch as electricity, especially by governments that claimadherence to human rights and gender equality


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Climate Change has brought detrimental effects to thelives of many. Landslides, floods and strong hurricaneshave destroyed great agricultural lands, infrastructures,houses and have ended even the lives of the most

vulnerable animals and humans. The phenomenon hasconsequently altered the balance of life in our planet,affecting biodiversity and livelihoods of people.

In this context of increasingly severe and frequentclimate-change induced events, women who constitutethe majority of the worlds poor are at the forefront ofthe most vulnerable.

Their dependence on natural resources for livelihood andsurvival further put their lives and livelihoods at risk.According to the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report,climate change is likely to directly impact children and

women because they are particularly susceptible tovector and water borne diseases. On top of these,women also face various social, economic and politicalbarriers in coping with the negative impacts of climatechange. Most women from developing countries carrythe burden of securing water, food and shelter for theirfamilies despite possessing limited access to decision-making processes and to opportunities for coping withclimate change.

To further illustrate, some of the adverse effects ofclimate change on women are in the following areas:

Food Security. Food supply and access to food hasbeen a pressing concern of women in relation to climatechange. As women comprise majority of farmers andfisherfolk, their livelihoods and incomes are affected bydiminishing agricultural harvests and fishing yields dueto unpredictable weather conditions and frequentoccurrence of disastrous catastrophes. With meagreincome, they are faced with the bigger challenge ofincreased food prices, making food inaccessible to thepoorest sector. Women are also often excluded in thedecision making process in terms of access to and use ofland critical to their livelihoods.

Water Resources. Access to clean and fresh waterresource has been a universal problem of rural womenin developing countries. More than 80 percent ofwomens activities use water including watermanagement at the household level. Mothers anddaughters take the responsibility of fetching fresh andclean water for their families from distant sources (i.e.rivers, streams far from residential areas) and gathering

enough supply for their livelihood for farming anddomestication of animals. The effects of climate changemade it more difficult for them. Fresh water supply hasdiminished as water gets contaminated affecting thehealth condition of women and their families. As forwater needs in agriculture, climate change has made itworse. While some areas receive an overwhelmingamount of water in the form of flood, some experiencedrought drying up harvests and crops, both of whichresult to massive destruction of agricultural lands and

womens livelihood.

Forced Migration. Climate induced migration have agreater impact on women. It has been estimated thatamong the 26 million climate refugees, up to 20 millionare female (Womens Environmental Network, 2009)There are also cases where usually male heads ofhouseholds migrate in order to find alternativelivelihood. Women are left behind with increaseddomestic responsibilities limiting their capacity to doincome-generating work. Although women temporarilybecome heads of households, they still find it difficult tomake ends meet as most women are excluded from

access to services or information and from involvementin decision-making processes.

Health Problems. Climate change in addition to poornutrition and physical demands of water and fuecollection has worsened the quality of health condition ofwomen. Although life expectancy for women is higherthan men, it cannot be denied that health inequalitiesprevail and that women are more prone to diseases

In Bangladesh, (rural) women have to depend on natural resources for their

existence (e.g. food, fuel, fodder, water, medicine and income-generatingactivities), so they have to suffer more for environmental degradation.

Photo and caption by: Parvez Babul/The Daily Star


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brought by climate change. These include malaria,dengue, diarrhoea and other water-borne diseases. Asillness strikes the household, added burden is imposedon women, where care-giving for the sick is expected ofthem.

Given the vast impacts of climate change on women, ithas been noted that they, especially those living inpoverty, are the least responsible for climate change.

Womens consumption patterns and prescribed genderroles like providing needs of the whole family make theircarbon footprint less than men who have higherconsumption patterns in the form of leisure activitiesand business trips to different places.

Likewise, women have also the least contribution inaddressing the problem of climate change due to limitedparticipation in decision making processes both in thenational and international levels. Despite being the mostvulnerable in this whole environmental crisis, womensvoices remain the subtlest in the COP and other climatenegotiations. For more than a decade of climate talks,

the number of women negotiators wasunderrepresented. No significant steps were also madeto include womens concerns by male negotiators.Recent recognition of gender in the climate agreementsdo not truly reflect what women are advocating for, andthat is to systematically transform our current economicsystem that not only exacerbates climate change andbut also perpetuates marginalization, exclusion andoppression of women, especially those from thedeveloping countries. Central to this advocacy issurfacing womens concerns in the negotiations and fullyintegrating women as key agents in making such

transformation happen.

Ultimately, the following womens perspectives must befully integrated in the four pillars of addressing climatechange (Gender and Climate Justice , 2010):

1. Adaptation strategies and policies must besupportive of womens practical and strategicinterests by enhancing the role of local innovationand context specific knowledge as captured byparticipatory research. They would also need toaddress the obstacles to womens participation (suchas poor infrastructure and limited time). Adaptation

must hence focus on:

The different needs of men and women inprescribing funding goals, criteria and deliverymechanisms.

Funding mechanisms should hold to a less thanburdensome criteria for both developing

countries as well as womens projects.

Ensure that there are appropriate easilyaccessible mechanisms for compensating men,poor women and other vulnerable groupsimpacted by climate change.

2. Mitigation must be gender friendly and should stressthe provision of decentralized renewable energy inrural areas and promote the conservation

sustainable livelihoods and natural resourcesmanagement practices of women and indigenouspeoples. Adequate financing, technology andcapacity must be provided to enable mitigationactions in developing countries that enhance genderequality and empower women.

3. Technology funding and projects must seek tofacilitate the elimination of the substantial barriers toentry (i.e. credit, information gaps) and the adoptionof technology faced by women. Womens more sothan mens acquisition of technology is blocked byupfront purchase prices or administrative costs

Within the context of the present negotiationsframework, it is important to:

Establish within funding mechanisms, special orthematic windows dedicated to capacity buildingand the development of projects among cohortsof male and female actors who have beentraditionally marginalized.

Enhancing the endogenous technologies andcapacities of developing countries in a mannerthat enhances the empowerment of women and

indigenous men and women.

Womens groups march during the Climate Talks in Bangkok, Thailand. Octobe

2009.

Photo by: Oxfam Philippines


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It is important that gender equality and womensempowerment and social equity priorities are included askey drivers of climate change financing. Ultimately,poverty reduction, sustainable development, thefinancing of gender equality and womens empowermentoutcome-sensitive adaptation, mitigation and technologydevelopment and transfer necessitates:

Inflows of new, additional, non-debt creatingand predictable funds. Developing countriescannot meet critical poverty reduction andgender equality targets if they are burdenedwith financing climate related adaptation andmitigation.

No diversion of current ODA flows from socialand development imperatives towards climatechange financing.

Adequate scale of financing to meet the agreedfull incremental costs of the adaptation andmitigation measures required for protecting andmaintaining the lives of women and men indeveloping countries and in promoting genderequality and womens empowerment.

Green Climate Fund under the control of theCOP must integrate gender analysis andpriorities into all of its aspects.

A gender and social impact analysis of carbonmarkets and emissions reductions projectscurrently implemented in developing countries.


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Understanding the gender-differentiated impacts of taxation requiresappreciating certain empirical generalizations on how women and men differ intheir economic life and participation in formal and non-formal economicactivities. Grown and Valodia name four:

1. gender differences in paid employmentincluding formal/informalemployment, wages and occupational segregation;2. womens work in the unpaid care economy;3. gender differences in consumption expenditure;4. gender differences in property rights and asset ownership.

Gender differences in paid employment

One major difference is the unpredictability of womensparticipation in paid work, due to a variety of

intersecting factors. [W]omen enter and exit the labourforce more frequently than do men, which means theirparticipation is more discontinuous than is mens, andthey are more likely to be in part-time and seasonaljobs, while men are concentrated more than women infull time positions.

In Asia and throughout the world, it is well recognizedthat employment and wage gaps persist in favor of mendespite efforts at mainstreaming gender equality.Although Labor Force Participation rates for Asianwomen are generally higher than before, their paidemployment still lags significantly behind men.

Increasingly higher womens LFP must also beconsidered in light of wage gaps that make womenslowly paid labor more attractive to business firms.

In 2010, womens labour force participation ratesremain below 30 per cent in Northern Africa andWestern Asia; below 40 per cent in Southern Asia; andbelow 50 per cent in the Caribbean and Central America.The gap between participation rates of women and menhas narrowed slightly in the last 20 years but remainsconsiderable (United Nations, 2010).

This untapped potential of women in Asia lost due todifficulties of participating in formal labor has beenestimated at US$42 US$47 billion per year. Further,though the region boasted of economic growth of 6.2percent from 2000-2007, surpassing the global averageof 4.2 percent, average growth in womens employmentwas left behind at 1.7 percent or lower than the twopercent global average. These deficits are likely to haveincreased during the [financial] crisis,, because women

disproportionately shouldered the impact due to pre-existing gender inequalities. They include discrimination

throughout the regions labour markets, inequalityrooted in social-cultural norms and national policy andinstitutional frameworks that shape the employmentopportunities of Asias 734 million female workers(International Labour Organisation and AsianDevelopment Bank, 2011). Another difference betweenmen and women paid work is the concentration of thelatter in informal to semi-formal labor. Capitalism hasalways been able to constitute its labor supply anddemand, depending on the context; in the currentperiod of crisis, we see the proliferation of laborcontractualization such as home-based piece work (laboflexibilization) and other semi-formal work arrangements

that draw in many women who must also attend tosocial reproduction labor at the same. In developingAsia, women made up the buffer workforce bothwithin labour markets and as flexible and expandedworkers, concentrated in informal jobs and withinhousehold as secondary earners (International LabouOrganisation, 2011). The pay gap or wage gapprivileging male workers has also been marked in itspersistence across many countries. A study by theInternational Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) ofwomens wages in 43 countries reported that onaverage, women are paid 18 percent lower than malecounterparts. According to ITUC General SecretarySharan Burrow: The pay gap remains frozen in timealmost everywhere. Asia is the continent with thegreatest wage differential between men and womenwith no progress made to close the gap for over adecade (International Trade Union Confederation,2012).

In developing Asia, womenmade up the buffer workforce

both within labour markets

and as flexible and expandedworkers, concentrated in

informal jobs and within

household as secondary

earners.

- ILO


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What do all these imply in relation to gender andtaxation? As Grown and Valodia point out: The result ofwomens employment profile their discontinuousemployment, lower relative earnings and predominancein the poorly paid forms of informal employment --means that they are unlikely to bear a large share of thepersonal income or direct tax burden .However, theirinferior employment status may also prevent them fromaccessing certain benefits afforded through the tax

system to employees. Social security benefits, forexample, leave out many women, as these are tied tothe earnings of the formally employed and the higherpaid, most of who are men.

Another gendered inference can be drawn from womens

low LFP rates relative to men and the growing share vis--vis direct taxes, of regressive indirect taxes such asVAT in raising tax revenues. Since more women areunemployed than men, a greater proportion of taxrevenues is sourced from women through indirectconsumption taxes. Moreover, the lower share of directtaxes in total tax revenues discriminates against women

who generally earn less than their male counterparts.

Womens invisible, unpaid work

One of the clear gains made by womens movements is

in the area of formal recognition of the work thatwomen have historically and continue to heavily rendersocial reproduction or what is more commonly referredto as care labor and its importance to the overallfunctioning of human societies everywhere.

For purposes of this discussion paper, we use thedefinition by Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner(1989), which refers to social reproduction as

the activities and attitudes, behaviors and emotions,

responsibilities and relationships directly involved in

the maintenance of life on a daily basis, and

intergenerationally. Among other things, social

reproduction includes how food, clothing and shelter

are made available for immediate consumption, the

ways in which the care and socialization of children

are provided, the care of the infirm and the elderly,

and the social organization of sexuality. Socialreproduction can thus be seen to include various kinds

of workmental, manual, emotionalaimed at

providing the historically and socially, as well as

biologically defined care necessary to maintain life

and to reproduce the next generation (Duggan, 2009).

Recognition of womens care labor has moved intomainstream language of UN bodies and other major

multilateral bodies, and some North governments. UNDPstudies, for example, have arrived at billion-dollarestimates of the economic value of womens unpaidwork. The UN Research Institute for Social Developmentmade a study on six countries (South Africa, TanzaniaArgentina, Nicaragua, India and the Republic of Korea)and found out, among others, that womens unpaidwork, were it given a monetary value, would falbetween an estimated 10 - 39% of GDP (SwedishInternational Development Agency). An OECD study alsoshows that by reducing the household time burdenson women could increase agricultural labour productivityby 15% and capital productivity by as much as 44% insome countries.

Another OECD study reported that [c]ountries with thelargest gender gap in unpaid work are also thosecountries where men devote relatively little time tounpaid work. Mens unpaid working time averages less

than 1 hour per day in the three Asian countries KoreaIndia and Japan, 1.5 hours in China and South Africa,nearly 2 hours in Turkey and the four Latin countries(Italy, Mexico, Portugal and Spain), and 2.5 hours in therest of the countries shown here (Miranda, 2011).

Such discussions of womens care labor that stresswomens huge contributions and the consequences oftime-poverty relative to men are important in advancingcalls for gender equity. However, the recommendations

Photo by UNESCAP


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put forth have been limited to invoking (yet again)established rights and labor protections, increasingwomens access to markets, and/or integrating womenin (neoliberal) development. These have not alsomoved beyond formal recognition into concrete policytranslations and implementation benefiting women hasproven largely problematic and at best, limited andsubstantially disproportionate to the economic, not tomention the inter-generational, fruits of social

reproduction work.

What is missing in these assertions and which are alsorelevant to the issues of women, work and taxation isthe connection between social reproduction andproduction. [w]hat is hidden is not housework and

houseworkers, but the capitalist relationship betweenproduction and reproduction. That is how the centralproblem for any economic system becomes seen as anarrow and peripheral womens issue (Picchio, 95) Shefurther points out:

The nature of this relationship becomes evident in the

context of a surplus approach to profit. Housework is

the production of labour as a commodity, while

waged work is the exchange of labour. To be

exchanged, labour must be produced; to be used in

the production of other commodities, labour must be

produced and exchanged. This is not a question

merely of time sequences but one of functional

relationships between processes. While wages are a

cost of production, housework as unpaid labour is a

deduction from costs.[A] well fed and well clothed

high waged workers costs his employer less than abadly fed, poorly clothed slave(Picchio, 1992)

Many important gender and equity issues arise frombringing social reproduction into a discussion on taxjustice. For example, since household work producessomething of value (e.g. a well-functioning laborer) thatcan be exchanged in monetary terms, or replaced forgoods and services which would otherwise have to bepurchased from the market, should it not be consideredas income of a kind? What would be the implications oftreating womens household work also as incomespecifically as non-market production income, asdifferentiated from taxable market income? What equityissues are involved between households with carelabor/non-market production income and householdsthat have to acquire these from the marketplace? Howare the taxes of male workers implicated, as they benefitfrom such non-market production which subsequentlyallows them to produce labor for other commodities andexchange this for wages? What is the potential for theregulatory function of taxation (the social bads andgoods) to be transformative of the gender division olabor historically disadvantageous and discriminatory towomen?

Further, extending the lifeblood rationale (i.e.recognizing government as a necessary social good andthus authorizing the sovereign power to collect taxes forits maintenance and operations), if care labor isrecognized as an input or an investment in theproduction of labor, how are capitalists who purchaselabor implicated tax-wise?

Gender differences in consumption expenditure

Many studies show that although all people consume

goods and services, there are gender differences in howhouseholds allocate their resources for consumptionexpenditures.

Taking an instrumentalist point of view (i.e., tappingwomen as one of the worlds most underutilizedresources), the OECD in 2008 contributed a report to theUnited Nations Commission on Sustainable Development

(UNCSD) on Gender and Sustainable Development

Maximising the Economic, Social and Environmental Roleof Women.

A study of several Latin American countries womenspending more on health care, food, education andother social goods, securing as much as they can thewell-being of the household.

Sandhya, 31, says women are responsible for doing all the unpaid care

work at home.

Photo: NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati/ActionAid


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Gender differences in property rights and asset ownership

The likelihood of women owning less land than men, orhaving land of poorer quality than men, is a commonand historical occurrence in many regions of thedeveloping world.

As of 2008, FAO estimated Indian women contributing

55-66 percent of total labor in farm production. Citingthe 1995-96 Agricultural Census, it found that womenaccount for only 9.5 percent of 115,580 000 operationallandholders. This was attributed not only to legalobstacles discriminatory to womens access to land butalso to socio-cultural factors, such as the practice offemale seclusion or purdah, [preventing] women fromclaiming their rights to land. Even where women enjoyownership rights, they do not exercise effective controlover land, being unable to lease, mortgage or dispose ofthe land and of its products (Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations).

In Nepal, women gained legal recognition for equal landinheritance rights with men in 1997. Yet, they werereported as of 2006 as comprising 65 percent of theagricultural workforce, and taking charge of up to 70percent of the livestock production.

Tradition limits Pakistani women usufructuary rights overland or the right to the use, and to take the fruits of

land for life only. However, they are also bound by

purdah (seclusion). In some regions, such as Sindh,there are additional restrictive customary practices thatallow womens use and management of land onlythrough an agent, kamdar, and only on behalf of a veryyoung son, if there is no male member in the family.

FAO reported that womens lack of knowledge is oftenused to deny their rights by saying that Quran does notgive women the right to own land. Women work on theland and look after livestock; in many instancespayment for wage work is received by men.

Gender equity in taxationtowards substantive gender equality

Equity, or fairness is a widely accepted parameter inevaluating tax systems. Many tax systems can claim tohave vertical equity, which is to take into considerationthe different economic levels of taxpayers and toaccordingly assess taxes due. What is more difficult isaddressing the hidden gender-discriminatoryassumptions behind horizontal equity, anotherinterpretation of fairness in taxation that taxpayers inthe same economic situations should be treated equallyfor tax purposes. This is problematic because again,formal equality, which we know does not respond toinequalities and therefore does not lead to womensactual enjoyment of their rights, is again being applied.

If we applied this, all households and individuals earningthe same amount of income would be treated the samefor tax purposes. This also contains the notion apatriarchal onethat there is only one kind of family ora householdthe nuclear family, with male and femalespouses and two children, and there is only one kind ofwork that earns income, which does not includewomens social reproduction work or care labor. It also

assumes that households and families are harmoniousunits with equal power relations.

This has resulted in systems, for instance, that use jointfiling systems with the male-female couple considered asa unit. Joint filing also provides labour marketdisincentives to second earners whose initial income istaxed at their spouses marginal rate. Thus, joint filing

introduces a number of other gender inequalitiesFurther, joint filing is likely to reinforce existing intra-household gender inequalities. For this reason, feministeconomists see individual filing as more gender-equitable than joint or family taxation. Grown andValodia quoting Sue Himmelweit (2002: 16):

[S]eparate taxation means men and women are

taxed on and therefore face incentives based on their

own income alone. This can be seen as a step towards

gender equality in employment, since it favours a

household with two earners over a single-earner

household with the same income. Separate taxation

also improves womens bargaining power within their

Photo from IEDP


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households; as women usually earn less than their

husbands, wives will generally gain from being taxed

at an individual, rather than a joint, rate.

The failure to regard womens work as income in kindhas also been shown by studies to foster inequalitiesbetween households, even under tax systems that evenas they use individual filing. Single earner householdsusually pay higher income taxes than two-earner

households as womens work does not come into thefigure though it produces benefits for members and thehouseholds as a whole.

But the idea of quantifying unpaid domestic workremains contested.

Some are concerned that the tax burden of low-

income households would increase more than the tax

burden of high-income households. Phillips (2002:

65) notes that many tax analysts agree that it is

appropriate for one-earner couples with a

breadwinner and stay-at-home spouse to pay

somewhat more tax on their market income in order

to offset the substantial tax-free economic benefits

(goods and services) generated by the stay-at-home

spouses unpaid work. Moreover, as Elson (2006: 82)

points out, taxes have to be paid in money, and

cannot be paid through unpaid domestic work (one

cannot bake a cake and take it to the tax office as

part of the payment of the tax bill). She suggests that

the value of unpaid work can be addressed in other

ways, for instance, through the provision of tax

allowances to women who participate in paid

employment in order to offset some of the costs of

buying substitutes for the unpaid domestic work theywould otherwise do, or through the expenditure side

of the budget in the provision of subsidized

dependent care and other services.

We can further compare households with one earner, adependent spouse and children to households with oneearner, no dependent spouse and children. Theprovision of deductions for a dependent spouse meansthat single-parent households (usually women) end upbearing a larger tax burden than male-breadwinnerhouseholds with financially dependent spouses.

All these points suggest that the issue of horizontaequity must be examined in greater detail so thatadjustments [can be] made to account for differencesin household composition/earning structure and toincorporate unpaid work in the definition of taxableincome.

An important point to make in advocating for womenseconomic empowerment using tax justice issues is thatthe our perspective and analysis must go beyond notingand correcting explicit and implicit biases in tax systemsIt must expansively target substantive equality or thenotion that begins from the recognition that women and

men are differently situated, and that gender-equitablemeasures are therefore needed to ensure genderequality in the enjoyment of results.

Substantive equality is one of the principles of theConvention on the Elimination of all forms ofDiscrimination Against Women (CEDAW). While taxationis not explicit in the Convention, several articles highlightequity in relation to prevailing conditions discriminatoryand disadvantageous to women. Article 1, for exampleclearly states that being married cannot be used as abasis for any distinction, exclusion or restrictions

Theres also General Recommendation 21 that familiesbe founded on principles of equity, justice andindividual fulfilmentfor each member. This meansthat women are citizens in their own right, autonomousand therefore not to be dismissed, as tax policies inmany countries commonly do, as the dependents ofmen.

Article 5 is also worth noting because it requires Stateparties to modify social and cultural patterns of men andwomen to eliminate practices based on the idea of sexrole stereotyping or the inferiority or superiority of eitheof the sexes (Grown and Valodia citing Inter

Parliamentary Union 2003). Thus, since tax measuresare also justified as ways of changing behavior (as in thecase of excise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol) one couldalso develop tax mechanisms and use tax regimes asone of the means towards resisting and transforminggender stereotypical roles.

A maid from the Philippines washes dishes in a flat in the Lebanese capital,

Beirut. Photo by: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images


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Documents

JSAPMDD WGP Discussion Paper - Relating Conditions of Women... (June 2013)