Mind the Gender Pay Gap

As has been highlighted in the comments of several of my previous blog posts, one of the biggest barriers to gender equality is financial inequality. 

As was stated by Asongu et al. in their paper "Inequality and gender economic inclusion: The moderating role of financial access in Sub-Saharan Africa", 'women in the sub-[Saharan] region are the poorest and least included in the formal economy in the world and the exclusion of women represents a significant waste of development resources. No society can sustainably develop (politically, economically and socially) if the majority of its population is excluded from contributing to economic development' (2020). 

In fact, 'the cost of gender exclusion in the sub-region is estimated at about 2.5 trillion USD' (ibid).

This amount of money would make a huge difference to achieving targets 6.1 and 6.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), referring to access to drinking water and sanitation. In fact, a Unicef WASH report (2020) estimated that it would take just shy of 20 billion USD annually in order for sub-Saharan Africa to reach and maintain basic levels of sanitation (Unicef, 2020). For context, if there was financial inclusion of women in the sub-region, levels of sanitation could be maintained for 125 years (without the additional assumed economic input of jobs held by women annually). 

  Image title: "We'll Never End Extreme Poverty Without Tackling Gender Inequality, Too"

On a more local level, the sparse population density across much of Africa makes finding employment outside of the major cities difficult. In many cases, families generate income and resources through subsistence farming. Interestingly, under these circumstances it is the women and children that perform most of the work in the fields (Boserup, 1985). The responsibility for women and their daughters to work on the family farm, and perform tasks such as water collection, has huge implications for female career progression. A case study examining the effects of water collection across four remote villages in South Africa found that children were spending an average of 15 hours and 58 minutes collecting water per week (Hemson, 2007). This is time that comes out of a child's education, and the same study found that children that collected water for long hours were often 'unable to concentrate in class', suffered from 'poor morale' and regularly had to 'leave school as early as possible to collect water' (ibid). 

Image Title: "Gender gaps in African agriculture are holding back progress"

As has been highlighted in previous articles, the effect of education on development, both personal and society-wide, is vast. As stated by Browne & Barrett, 'education is the key to the process of human-centred development [and] lack of education and poor education undermine all other developmental efforts' (1991).

It is well documented that 'employment increases with an increasing number of hours in school', and therefore women expected to work within the home at household chores have a significantly diminished chance of securing reasonably paid employment compared to their male counterparts (Blum, 2007). 'Women are less likely to access wage employment; to work in higher-productivity sectors; and to be full-year/full-time employed' (Van den Broeck & Kilic, 2019). 

It is no surprise that with financial stability, women are afforded more freedoms than those financially dependant on male partners or family members. The exclusion of women from 'higher-productivity sectors' significantly inhibits the likelihood of achieving gender equality as there remains a reliance on men to make the "important decisions" both locally and nationally (ibid). Operating under this framework, issues faced by women and the female experience are significantly underrepresented. This leads to a lack of motivation to tackle issues pertaining specifically to the female experience such as period poverty, as discussed in my previous blog posts. 

It is time to close the gender pay gap and take the necessary steps to include women in the workforce.