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Engendering Macroeconomic Theory and Policy

May 2019
Feminist Economics 26(4):1-35

DOI:10.1080/13545701.2019.1609691

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University of Vermont

Over the past two decades, economists have turned their attention to exploring the role of gender in the macroeconomy. This paper reviews the salient findings of that literature. Research shows that gender gaps in education, health, unpaid labor, employment, and wages have economy-wide consequences and influence the rate of growth. The effects are transmitted via both the supply side of the economy – principally through labor productivity – and the demand side – through business spending, exports, saving, and the balance of payments. In turn, a broad array of macro-level policies, including fiscal, monetary, and trade policies have differential effects by gender that, if unheeded, can undermine macro-policy goals. Their impact depends on the structure of the economy and the gender division of labor in paid and unpaid work. This survey makes clear that incorporation of gender into macro models improves the relevance of macroeconomic theory and can yield better policy results.

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Engendering Macroeconomic Theory and Policy

Stephanie Seguino

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Feminist Economics, 2019

https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2019.1609691

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY AND

POLICY

Stephanie Seguino

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, economists have turned their attention to exploring

the role of gender in the macroeconomy. This paper reviews the salient ﬁndings

of that literature. Research shows that gender gaps in education, health, unpaid

labor, employment, and wages have economy-wide consequences and inﬂuence

the rate of growth. The effects are transmitted via both the supply side of

the economy – principally through labor productivity – and the demand side

– through business spending, exports, saving, and the balance of payments.

In turn, a broad array of macro-level policies, including ﬁscal, monetary,

and trade policies have differential effects by gender that, if unheeded, can

undermine macro-policy goals. Their impact depends on the structure of

the economy and the gender division of labor in paid and unpaid work.

This survey makes clear that incorporation of gender into macro models

improves the relevance of macroeconomic theory and can yield better policy

results.

KEYWORDS

Macroeconomics, gender differences, structural economics

JEL Codes: E1, E5, F41

INTRODUCTION

Interest in the gendered repercussions of macroeconomic policy surged in

the 1980s and 1990s, largely inﬂuenced by the unanticipated consequences

of structural adjustment policies. Research underscored that macro policies

might not reach their goals if gender effects were ignored (Elson 1995).

This spawned a body of scholarship undertaken by the International

Working Group on Gender and Macroeconomics aimed at “engendering”

macroeconomic and trade theory, resulting in special issues of World

Development in 1995 and 2000. This growing body of work has elucidated

the critical role of the gender division of unpaid and paid labor for

understanding how the macroeconomy functions. The result has been

the emergence of a new subﬁeld of gender and macroeconomics, which

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

identiﬁes the two-way causality between gender relations (and disparities)

and macroeconomic outcomes. This survey paper reviews the main threads

of that literature on gender and macroeconomics.

First, I look at the research linking the gender relations that are

embedded in institutions at every level of the economy (for example,

the household, labor, and credit markets) to economic development

and growth. I then examine the reverse causality – the impact of

macro-level policies on men and women as a form of intra-group

inequality. This review is not exhaustive, given the size of this body of

research. Rather, I focus on key research publications that have shaped

the way we understand the two-way causality between gender and the

macroeconomy.

As reviewed in this paper, theoretical and empirical research ﬁnds

that the degree of gender equality in education, health, unpaid labor,

employment, and wages has substantial economy-wide effects. Theoretical

perspectives inﬂuence the way gender gaps are incorporated into models,

with heterodox economists emphasizing the demand and supply side in the

short and long run, while neoclassical economists tend to focus on long-run

supply-side effects.

Regarding supply-side macroeconomic effects, gender gaps in education

and health are largely transmitted via their dampening effect on labor

productivity. Growth can also be hampered by gender employment gaps

due to the effect on misallocation of talent and thus productivity. Indirect

effects on the macroeconomy are transmitted via the impacts on women’s

fertility, as well as on children’s well-being, and thus long-run labor

productivity. On the demand side, gender inequalities in education, wages,

and employment affect consumption, saving, investment, exports, and the

balance of payments, with the net effect on growth inﬂuenced by the

structure of the economy, as well as a country’s gender division of labor.

Moreover, macroeconomically relevant measures of gender inequality

differ according to a country’s structure of production and stage of

development.

Macro-level policies, in turn, may have different effects on women and

men. In this paper, I focus on new areas of research that have extended

and expanded lessons learned from the earlier gender analysis of structural

adjustment. These new areas include the effects of physical and social

infrastructure spending, monetary and exchange rate policy, and a variety

of demand-management tools, such as Employer of Last Resort (ELR)

policies. The research reviewed here highlights the importance of viewing

macro-level policies through a gender lens to make policies concordant

with the goal of promoting gender equality. Given the role that gender

plays in inﬂuencing macroeconomic outcomes, the lesson that emerges

is that policy goals can be thwarted if gender effects are not taken into

consideration.

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THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO MODELING THE

MACROECONOMIC ROLE OF GENDER

Three distinct theoretical approaches to modeling the macroeconomic role

of gender have emerged. Neoclassical growth models emphasize the long

run. With the assumption of full employment and perfect competition

in product and labor markets, the focus is on the supply-side effects of

greater gender equality. The neoclassical approach generally builds on an

augmented Solow growth model to incorporate the role of human capital:

Y=Af (K,H,L)(1)

where Yis output, Ais technological change, Kis physical capital, H

is human capital, and Lis the quantity of labor. Typically, the models

emphasize gender variables that inﬂuence the quality or quantity of the

labor supply – in particular, education and labor force participation rates

(Klasen and Lamanna 2009;Bandara2015). While the models do not

explore how gender affects technological progress (A) or the growth of the

capital stock (K), they do incorporate the gender dimensions of care and

reproductive labor and the implications for children and long-run labor

productivity growth.

A second methodology is overlapping generation (OLG) models,

a type of representative agent economic model that captures the

effect of household decision making on schooling and work. OLGs

permit an analysis of resource allocation and output per capita across

generations (and in this way, capture growth effects). Models are

engendered by incorporating women’s time allocation between productive

and reproductive work (Agénor and Canuto 2012;Khera2016;Kim,

Lee, and Shin 2016). Some incorporate bargaining power differentials

between women and men that can inﬂuence the allocation of household

resources, including time (Agénor and Canuto 2012). Models vary in their

assumptions regarding labor market distortions, wage discrimination, and

job segregation. Most assume labor market ﬂexibility and full employment

(thus ignoring demand-side effects of gender inequality). Several authors

have calibrated these static, long-run models for simulation to investigate

the quantitative impact of policies.

The insights of a number of neoclassical growth and OLG models are

circumscribed in their application to the policy realm as they ignore real-

world macroeconomic problems, such as aggregate demand deﬁciencies

and balance of payments constraints, which produce feedback effects

and alter gender relations. To some extent, these vagaries are accounted

for in the third theoretical approach, Keynesian/Kaleckian short- and

long-run growth models that incorporate the role of aggregate demand

in inﬂuencing output and employment (Braunstein 2000; Blecker and

Seguino 2002;Seguino2010; Braunstein, van Staveren, and Tavani 2011;

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Braunstein, Bouhia, and Seguino 2017). A distinct feature of the latter

models is their allowance for excess capacity and thus unemployment.

These models also account for imperfectly competitive product and

labor markets and differentiated saving rates by gender. Short-run

models engender the macroeconomic equilibrium condition in an open

economy:

S+T+M=I+G+X(2)

where Sis saving, Tis taxes, Mis imports, Iis business spending, Gis

government spending, and Xis exports. By engender, I mean that these

macroeconomic aggregates are modeled in a way that captures the impact

of a change in relative women’s/men’s well-being (such as wages or access

to credit).

For example, gender differences in savings propensities affect levels of

consumption and saving, and therefore demand. Gender differences in the

marginal propensity to import similarly affect the import bill and balance

of payments. Gender gaps in access to agricultural resources may also affect

food production and therefore the import bill in subsistence agriculture

economies. On the investment side, gender wage and employment gaps

have a positive impact on proﬁts and therefore investment in some types of

economies.1There are similar effects on export demand, especially when

coupled with gender-segregated employment.

These models can be used to assess the total effect of a shift

in gender equality, based on the impact on each macroeconomic

aggregate, allowing for both positive (demand-stimulating) effects as well

as negative (contractionary) effects. This category of models typically

focuses on variables that are amenable to change in the short run, in

particular, gender gaps in wages and employment. The models differentiate

economies by their economic structure and corresponding gender division

of labor. They are thus structuralist macro models that reﬂect the

variation in the impact of gender by economic structure and stage of

development.

Long-run Kaleckian models have been developed as well and are

distinguished by separate functions for aggregate demand and output

growth, allowing for divergence (Seguino 2010).2Thus,thistypeof

model takes into account both supply- and demand-side factors affecting

growth. They differ from neoclassical models by incorporating various

forms of gender inequality, including fast-moving variables such as wages

as compared to slower-acting variables like gender educational gaps.

In the discussion that follows, I identify the methodologies and major

ﬁndings on the macroeconomic impact of gender disparities in education,

employment (often proxied by labor force participation rates), wages, and

job segregation.

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Neoclassical Solow growth and OLG models

Education

A large theoretical and empirical literature explores the various channels

by which gender equality in education is hypothesized to stimulate growth.

Much of this literature derives from the view that due to selection bias,

gender gaps in education depress economy-wide productivity (Hill and

King 1995; Klasen and Lamanna 2009; Baliamoune-Lutz and McGillivray

2015). The models assume competitive labor markets, such that greater

educational equality will be followed by a narrowing of gender wage gaps.

Greater educational equality is also hypothesized to affect growth by

reducing fertility rates, as the opportunity cost of children rises with

greater education for women (Galor and Weil 1996; Lagerlöf 1999;Kim,

Lee, and Shin 2016). Lower fertility rates improve the quality of labor,

it is hypothesized, given that more resources are invested in the reduced

quantity of children, thereby raising economy-wide productivity.

Measures of education vary in the empirical studies. Klasen and Lamanna

(2009) use total educational attainment of those age 25 and older – a

stock variable that captures the accumulated historical gender bias in

access to education. Baliamoune-Lutz and McGillivray (2015), in contrast,

adopt primary and secondary enrollment rates, which are ﬂow variables

– that is, they reﬂect gender gaps in enrollment for a given age group

and year. Despite using different measures of education and controls that

cover different time periods and countries, the studies reach the same

conclusion: gender equality in education is a stimulus to growth over the

long run. The effects on growth can be large indeed – up to 1 percentage

point in annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates

(Klasen and Lamanna 2009).

Overall, the positive effect on growth of gender equality in education

seems to be a settled issue in the theoretical and empirical neoclassical

research, but some puzzles remain. First, if educational gaps are the

only explanatory gender variable in regressions, the coefﬁcients could

be capturing the effect of omitted gender variables, such that empirical

estimates of educational effects on growth are overstated. This is likely,

given research that shows other measures of gender equality also impact

growth. Second, an issue that is as yet unexplored is the implication of

gender reversals in education. In some Latin American and Caribbean

countries, women’s educational attainment exceeds men’s (Duryea et al.

2007). Research has yet to explore the growth implications of men falling

behind women in formal education.

In addition, despite the narrowing of the gender educational

gap, the female/male employment-to-population rate ratios rose only

modestly from 1991 to 2010 (Seguino 2016). Figure 1shows the

distribution of countries by female/male employment rates as compared

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Figure 1 Distribution of countries by female/male gross secondary enrollment and

employment rates, 2010.

Source:Seguino(2016).

to gross secondary school enrollment rates in 2010. This suggests that

closing educational gaps is not sufﬁcient to ensure women’s economic

empowerment via employment. Other impediments must be addressed as

well, including women’s unpaid labor burden and insufﬁcient aggregate

demand.

Employment, job segregation, and wages

A number of studies have explored the macro effects of gender differences

in access to paid work and job quality. Those gaps may be the result

of constrained choice at the household level due to (a) women’s

disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work, (b) stereotypes that

steer women and men into different occupations and sectors of the

economy, or (c) wage gaps in favor of men, with unpaid care work

obligations leading families to select the lowest-paid adult to provide this

work. Alternatively, gaps may be the result of external constraints such as

employer discrimination and insufﬁcient aggregate demand and thus job

vacancies.

Empirical studies primarily employ labor force participation rather than

employment rates as a measure of gender differences in access to paid work.

A weakness of both measures is that they do not reveal hours of paid work,

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remuneration rates, or employment-related beneﬁts. Nor do they indicate

much about job quality, such as working conditions and opportunities for

training and promotion. We also lack data to assess gender differences

in employment in the formal versus informal sectors (Heintz 2006).

The latter in many countries reﬂects residual unemployment rather than

employment, and thus, employment rates are overestimated, especially in

developing countries. The employment data used in the studies discussed

here are only a rough approximation of a person’s engagement with the

productive sphere of the economy and the returns that yields. Labor force

participation data have the same problems, with the added challenge that

they obscure what the employment status of the person is – unemployed or

employed. This rough indicator of gender equality should be viewed with

some caution.

With that caveat in mind, several authors using panel data for developing

countries have found that gender differences in access to paid work

(measured as labor force participation rates) have sizeable negative effects

on growth (Klasen and Lamanna 2009;Bandara2015). Bandara (2015)

uses gender gaps in effective labor – that is, the gap between male

and female labor force participation rates, adjusted by the gender gap

in average years of schooling – as an explanatory variable. While the

gender gap in labor force participation can reduce economic growth, the

combined effect of gender gaps in labor force participation and education

appears to have even larger negative effects. Bandara’s results indicate

that the gender gap in effective labor has a negative effect on economic

output per worker in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with annual economic

losses estimated to be 5 percent of GDP.

While much of the neoclassical research leads us to infer that greater

gender equality in education and employment raises economy-wide

productivity, a critical question remains: to what extent is women’s

greater relative productivity reﬂected in higher wages? It is possible that

women who tend to be segregated in more labor-intensive industries in

some countries (semi-industrialized economies [SIEs] with labor-intensive

export sectors) or in part-time, seasonal work are unable to obtain

wages commensurate with their skills. If so, the stimulus to growth from

higher relative women’s employment may be due to the positive effect of

discriminatory gender wage gaps on proﬁts and investment.

On the theoretical side, some authors have modeled access to

employment using an OLG approach, where women’s time allocation

between home production, childrearing, and market work is inﬂuenced

by access to infrastructure (Agénor, Canuto, and da Silva 2010;Agénor

and Canuto 2015). Better infrastructure (clean water, roads, electricity)

reduces women’s time spent on unpaid labor (men only do market work),

thereby freeing up time to spend in remunerative economic activities. In

the models, children’s human capital accumulation depends on mothers’

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

human capital, while their health status depends on mother’s health and

her time allocated to care. Women’s bargaining power relative to adult

men in the family depends on the relative level of human capital, which

is itself determined by the relative amount of time mothers allocate to

boys’ childrearing. If more time is invested in sons than daughters in one

generation, in the next generation, men’s and women’s human capital

differ with implications for relative bargaining power within the household.

The models assume that women have higher saving rates than men and

that saving has a positive effect on capital accumulation and growth. There

is, however, a paucity of research on the topic of gender differences in

saving rates, making such an assumption of questionable validity. At a

minimum, more research would be required to clarify this relationship.

Several studies ﬁnd evidence of gender differences in the marginal

propensity to save, albeit with divergent results. On the one hand, in

SIEs where young women are the primary source of labor in export

factories, higher relative women’s wages increase aggregate saving (Seguino

and Floro 2003). On the other hand, evidence for Kenya shows that

female-headed households have the highest spending, with expenditures

concentrated on food (Kiringai 2004). Such contradictory results make

it difﬁcult to generalize about gender differences in saving rates. What is

clear, however, is that household structure will inﬂuence gender behavior

in time allocation, saving rates, and spending patterns.

The assumption of a positive effect of savings on growth is also a

questionable one as it ignores the possibility of hoarding – that savings

may fail to be channeled into investment and capital accumulation. It

also ignores the type of investment. For example, speculative ﬁnancial

investments may not have positive growth effects, as the Great Recession

in Europe and the United States and Asian ﬁnancial crises have shown.

The more general point is that many neoclassical models fail to account

for country-speciﬁc macroeconomic conditions and structures, thereby

limiting the applicability of results.

An exception is Khera (2016), who employs a dynamic stochastic general

equilibrium OLG model to study the impact of gender-targeted policies

on female labor force participation, the gender wage gap, and aggregate

economic outcomes. The model uses Indian data where informality rates

are very high and female labor force participation rates have been falling.

This two-good model (home and market goods, the latter consisting of

formal tradable goods, informal non-tradable goods, and imported goods)

emphasizes the role of labor market rigidities. Formal sector employers are

modeled as having a relative preference for male workers.

Policies such as those to reduce gender discrimination in formal

employment are found to increase women’s labor supply. However, lack

of sufﬁcient formal job creation due to labor market rigidities leads to an

increase in unemployment and informality, and further widens gender gaps

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in formal employment and wages.3This outcome emerges due to the fact

that the model is able to capture short-run effects of policy (unlike OLG

models discussed above). Combining gender-targeted policies that lower

constraints on female labor participation with reforms that boost formal job

creation (through labor market deregulation), however, improves gender

equality in the labor market and leads to signiﬁcantly larger gains in GDP,

employment, and formality.

One might quibble with the mechanism by which increased labor

demand is induced in Khera’s (2016) model. Labor market deregulation

is not always associated with greater labor demand;4a more important

determinant of ﬁrms’ willingness to hire is aggregate demand (Piasna and

Myant 2017). Labor market deregulation that lowers wages may dampen

spending, resulting in slower employment growth.

Another related set of OLG models explores the growth effects of various

labor market distortions or rigidities and in particular job segregation, with

a key assumption that men and women have the same talent distribution

(Esteve-Volart 2004; Cuberes and Teignier 2016). Esteve-Volart (2004), in

addition, models feedback loops whereby women’s limited access to jobs

contributes to lower investment in women’s education.

Incorporating the role of macroeconomic context

One weakness of these models is the limited focus on occupational

segregation as a micro-level phenomenon, thereby missing the important

role of macro-level factors and structural change. It is notable that gender

job segregation is persistent in countries around the world (International

Monetary Fund [IMF] 2013). Recent evidence is suggestive of increased,

not decreased, job segregation with a rising share of women excluded

from industrial sector jobs that typically offer higher wages and more

opportunity for training and job-related beneﬁts than agricultural work

and service sector jobs (Seguino 2016). The falling ratio of female to

male shares is taking place in a number of countries where manufacturing

employment had become “feminized” in the 1980s and 1990s – Mauritius,

Hong Kong, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic, for example. Results

are consistent with Tejani and Milberg’s (2016) research highlighting the

trend of “defeminization” in the manufacturing sector in middle-income

countries as the capital intensity of production rises.

Defeminization of higher quality jobs is occurring despite narrowing

gender education gaps. Why might this be happening? Given the skill

demands of industrial sector jobs characterized by on-the-job learning,

employers may inaccurately (or accurately) predict that men are the

major breadwinners and, therefore, be unwilling to hire women workers

who are expected to leave the labor market at higher rates due to care

responsibilities. This is more likely to occur in capital-intensive ﬁrms

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

since the ﬁrm’s sunk costs in worker training will yield a lower return

than investments in men. It could also be suggestive of ongoing gender

stereotypes about who has a right to a job when jobs are scarce.

Accompanying the trend of defeminization of manufacturing jobs is the

evidence of premature deindustrialization (Rodrik 2016). According to

Rodrik, the latter is attributable to globalization, due to a decline in the

relative price of manufactured goods on world markets despite productivity

growth, leading to deindustrialization and a decline in labor demand.

This “job squeeze” trend makes it more difﬁcult to eliminate the gender

employment gap.

The cause of falling manufacturing prices is worthy of some additional

exploration since it is macro-level dynamics that structure opportunities for

women to gain access to not only ajob, but also a good job. Future research

seeking to understand gender inequality in employment must take into

consideration to a much greater extent the macro environment, including

the effects of the changing global structure of production as a result of

trade and investment liberalization.

In sum, two themes emerge from a review of this literature: there

is no one-size-ﬁts-all impact of gender equality (however measured) on

growth, and research must take into account a country’s structure of

production, which inﬂuences the degree of gender job segregation and

gender income gaps. In addition, there are several weaknesses in the

studies discussed here. First, most models fail to account for the fact that

adequate aggregate demand is required to ensure that increases in female

labor force participation are matched by sufﬁcient labor demand. Second,

increased employment may not reﬂect an improvement in well-being if

women continue to carry the full load of unpaid labor and if the conditions

of employment and remuneration are poor. And ﬁnally, the ﬁnding that

an increase in relative women’s labor supply stimulates growth may be due

in part to the effects of gender wage discrimination, which reduces the cost

of labor, thus raising proﬁts and stimulating investment (Braunstein 2012).

Gender and growth in feminist heterodox macro models

The architecture of feminist macroeconomics is suited to the focus

on demand-side factors inﬂuencing gendered employment and wages.

This framework is in the tradition of Kalecki (1971), a contemporary

of Keynes, who developed a body of work that investigates how

income distribution affects output, employment, and growth in demand-

constrained economies. Feminist economists have adapted this framework

to account for gender differences in income and employment.

The key mechanism for engendering macro models is to account for

the gender division of labor in both paid and unpaid work. In addition,

models incorporate gender differences in spending patterns. The gender

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differences are then integrated into structuralist macro models, which

reﬂect the stylized structural features of economies (Taylor 2004). The

resulting models account for the key features of economies: economic

structure (agricultural, semi-industrialized, postindustrial), macro-level

policies that inﬂuence relations with the rest of the world (rules

governing trade and cross-border investment and ﬁnance), market

structure (oligopolistic versus competitive ﬁrms), trade and resulting price

elasticities, balance of payments constraints, key social relationships (such

as intergroup inequality along racial/ethnic lines), and the form and extent

of gendered job segregation. The effects of gender relations in these

models also depend on whether we evaluate the short or the long run.

Further, women’s bargaining power vis-à-vis employers and their access to

important resources such as jobs and credit depend on other macro-level

policies, including monetary and ﬁscal policies.

The incorporation of the effects of household dynamics and caring

labor also distinguishes these macro models. Though they share basic

assumptions about household bargaining with neoclassical OLG models,

they additionally evaluate the relationship between household structure,

bargaining, and care work, on the one hand, and a country’s economic

structure and macro policy environment, on the other (Braunstein 2015).

Gender job segregation, wage inequality, and economic structure

Several papers emphasize the interaction of gender job segregation, gender

wage inequality, and the structure of production (Braunstein 2000; Seguino

2000a,2000b; Blecker and Seguino 2002; Seguino 2010). Blecker and

Seguino (2002) develop a model of a two-sector economy, representing

conditions in many SIEs where women, to the extent that they gain access

to paid work, are segregated in the labor-intensive manufacturing export

sector, while men are in non-tradables and the capital-intensive export

sector. Markets are oligopolistic, with ﬁrms adopting markup pricing. This

combination of labor market and export industry structure has led to

the “feminization of foreign exchange earnings” (Samarasinghe 1998).

Product demand is price elastic in the female export sector, and thus higher

wages for women “squeeze” proﬁts, while, in contrast, “men’s” goods are

price inelastic, and wage hikes for men do not negatively affect proﬁts and

thus investment or employment.

The model shows that under some conditions, higher wages for women

contribute to a decline in export demand that is not offset by an increase in

domestic demand. As such, gender wage equality in this type of economy is

contractionary. That is, it leads to output and employment losses. Both men

and women are likely to be negatively affected by these job losses. When

the female–male wage ratio and the real exchange rate are endogenized,

the model reveals the possibility for exchange rate policy to accommodate

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

a higher wage for women. Ultimately, the results depend on the model’s

parameters, which can be calibrated to reﬂect economic structure and the

impact of shifts in the distribution of income between wages and proﬁts, as

well as between female and male workers.

In a previous study, I extended the two-sector model approach

to consider the role of gender inequality in low-income agricultural

economies (LIAEs) as compared to SIEs (Seguino 2010). I incorporated

both fast-acting gender variables in the short-run model (wages and

employment) as well as capabilities measures that have effects only in the

longer run. In LIAEs, it is men who are concentrated in the export sector,

while women work as subsistence farmers. The effects of gender equality on

the balance of payments differs signiﬁcantly from SIEs, since improvement

in women’s well-being, access to credit, and other productive resources can

raise domestic food output, reducing the demand for imports (Seguino

and Were 2014).5Because of this difference in structure, and the role

of women in inﬂuencing the balance of payments, in the short and long

run, gender equality stimulates growth in LIAEs. In the long-run models,

gender equality is a stimulus to growth in both types of economies, which is

consistent with the ﬁndings of the neoclassical models discussed above.

The critical question considered in these models is how economic

structure constrains the possibility for gender wage equality, with a goal

of identifying nodes where public policy may be brought to bear to relax

those constraints. One weakness of these models is that they do not

incorporate the role of social reproduction – that is, the contributions

of time, commodities, and money required to produce, maintain, and

invest in the labor force. Social reproduction affects labor productivity in

the short term – by replenishing workers – and has long-run productivity

effects resulting from the effect of care on human development. This work

includes both paid and unpaid care work and is gendered insofar as women

in particular are tapped to perform caring labor.

Gender, social reproduction, and growth

A new vein of research has emerged, however, to explore the role of

social reproduction in inﬂuencing growth (Braunstein, van Staveren, and

Tavani 2011; Braunstein 2015; Braunstein, Bouhia, and Seguino 2017).

The analytical emphasis is on how the distributions of production and

reproduction among women, men, and capital determine investment

and growth and how gender inequality is both cause and consequence

of these relationships. The models show that higher wages for women

not only directly affect aggregate demand, but also could raise labor

productivity and reduce unit labor costs via greater investment in human

capacities. Unlike neoclassical models, which explore the effect of changes

in the distribution of unpaid labor, this model helps to understand the

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endogeneity of both paid and unpaid labor and their feedback effects on

the economy, taking account of demand and other structural features of

economies. Results show that a win–win outcome (greater gender equality

and output growth) is more likely when (1) women and men share

social reproduction more equally, (2) gender wage gaps are small, (3) an

extensive high-quality paid care sector exists, and (4) there is sufﬁcient

investment in reproductive infrastructure to reduce care burdens.

Empirical heterodox studies

Several papers empirically test the theoretical models discussed in the

following. In a previous study, I evaluated the hypothesis that education-

adjusted gender wage inequality had a positive effect on growth in a set of

SIEs for the period 1975–95 via the stimulus to export demand (Seguino

2000b). The sample was restricted to SIEs so as to isolate the role of wages

in these economies where the type of gender job segregation and economic

structure differs from low- and high-income countries. GDP growth is

positively related to gender wage inequality, controlling for standard

variables deemed to inﬂuence growth. Congruently, Berik, van der Meulen

Rodgers, and Zveglich (2004) and Busse and Spielmann (2006) found that

gender wage inequality is positively associated with comparative advantage

in labor-intensive goods and thus has a positive effect on economic growth.

The effect of women’s low wages on export demand (produced

predominantly by female labor) and growth should not be surprising. We

might construe these low wages as substituting for currency devaluation, a

policy stance that is more widely understood to have a positive effect on

export demand.6More speciﬁcally, in an economy in which women are

concentrated in the labor-intensive export sector, export demand is:

X=AeP∗

Pxψ

Wε(3)

where Xis export demand, Ais a constant, eis the nominal exchange rate,

Px∗is the foreign currency price of competing export products from other

countries, ψis the price elasticity of demand for exports, Pxis the export

price, Wis the level of world income, and is the (foreign) income elasticity

of demand. The export price equation, assuming export industries employ

only women and simplifying to exclude intermediate input costs, can be

written as:

Px=τ[wFb](4)

where PXis the domestic price of exports, τis the markup over unit costs in

the export sector, and bis the labor coefﬁcient. It is clear from Equations 3

and 4 that higher women’s wages negatively affect export demand.

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Women supply labor in export sectors in SIEs, which accounts for the

positive effect of gender wage inequality on growth. This result is entirely

consistent with a positive effect of educational equality on growth, since

higher education without commensurate increases in wages lowers unit

labor costs, raises ﬁrms’ proﬁts, and stimulates exports and investment.

The moral of this story is not that women’s wages should be suppressed

as a way to stimulate growth, but rather that gender wage inequality is in

part responsible for the rapid growth of SIEs, especially Asian economies.

Promoting gender wage equality requires development and structural

change policies that would make higher women’s wages compatible with

growth.

Mitra-Kahn and Mitra-Kahn (2009) add a new twist to the gender wage

inequality-export-growth nexus. They ﬁnd that the relationship between

the gender wage gap and growth is nonlinear, and in particular, as

countries move up the industrial ladder, the gender wage gap no longer

has a signiﬁcant effect on growth. This ﬁnding could result from (a) gender

employment discrimination in capital- and skill-intensive industries or (b)

simply the lesser importance of the labor-intensive manufacturing sector in

stimulating growth as a result of the process of technological and structural

change.

Schober and Winter-Ebmer (2011) replicate Seguino (2000b), using

data from a meta-study on gender wage discrimination, and do not ﬁnd

any evidence that gender wage discrimination might stimulate economic

growth. However, there are several problems with their analysis. First,

they use gender wage residuals from wage decomposition regressions as

the measure of gender wage inequality. Many of the underlying studies

control for variables that are themselves indicative of discrimination (such

as occupational segregation), and so the residuals are not a good estimate

of gender wage gaps. Second, the underlying micro-level studies have

heterogeneous sectoral coverage instead of being restricted to the export

sector, as in Seguino (2000b). In addition, the analysis does not control for

countries’ economic structure, which, at a minimum, should be interacted

with the wage gap variable.

Some have argued that in the longer run, increased demand for

female labor in SIEs will eventually lead gender wage gaps to close. If

relative women’s wages were to rise, however, this would dampen export

demand and investment, resulting in higher unemployment and thus wage

stagnation. This feedback effect is the central problem to be overcome.

Globalization makes this problem worse insofar as ﬁrms are now more

easily able to relocate to other lower wage countries, should wages rise.

This “threat effect,” and ﬁrm mobility more generally, hold down wage

growth especially in labor-intensive export industries in which women are

concentrated (Seguino 2007). In any case, the evidence is not strong that

discriminatory gender wage gaps are closing (Braunstein 2012). Despite

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substantial gains in education in South Korea, for example, women’s wages

continue to be more than 35 percent below that of men’s (Organisation for

Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] n.d.), a gap that has

narrowed only modestly over the last ﬁfty years despite a strong demand

for female labor. This is also the case in Brazil and other SIEs.

In sum, unlike the neoclassical gender and macro literature that ﬁnd that

all forms of gender equality stimulate growth, heterodox macro research

portrays a more complex picture. These models allow a more speciﬁc

rendering of real world macroeconomies in contrast to neoclassical models,

which assume a homogenous structure and gender division of labor.

Heterodox and neoclassical macro models do agree on one thing, however:

gender is a salient macroeconomic variable. Moreover, because gender

equality matters for growth, macro-level policies that inﬂuence gender

differences in well-being at the micro level have feedback effects on the

macroeconomy. If we ignore those feedback loops, macro policy could fail

to achieve its goals.

MACRO-POLICY EFFECTS ON GENDER EQUALITY

The most informative studies have explored the impact of globalization

policies (trade, investment, and ﬁnancial liberalization) and, more

recently, the effects of ﬁscal and monetary policy.7

Globalization policies

A variety of macro-level policies can contribute to growth and their effects

may conﬂict. A methodology for capturing macroeconomic impacts is to

employ as explanatory variables the speciﬁc policies in question, such as the

degree of trade, investment, and capital account liberalization as measured

by trade shares of GDP, foreign direct investment (FDI), and cross-border

ﬁnancial ﬂows. Below, I identify the key pathways by which these three

policy indicators produce gender-differentiated effects.

Trade and investment liberalization

Several studies have explored the employment and wage effects of trade

and investment liberalization, the latter measured as FDI. Here I simply

identify some of the major results of this literature, which more than in

other areas, are contradictory. It is not easy to disentangle trade effects from

investment liberalization; it is best instead to analyze the joint effects of

these two policy variables. This is because a large share of FDI to developing

countries is vertical. That is, its purpose is to shift production to lower-cost

production venues with the intent to export to foreign markets.

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Standing (1989) was among the ﬁrst to note the link between trade

liberalization and the feminization of global labor, referencing the

increased demand for female workers and the downward harmonization

of the quality of men’s jobs to those women held. He identiﬁed intensiﬁed

ﬁrm competition in an increasingly globalized economy as a cause for these

trends, emphasizing the ﬁrm’s search for least-cost female labor as a means

to achieve export competitiveness. Since that time, numerous studies have

validated the positive effect of expansion of exports on women’s relative

employment in labor-intensive manufacturing and services (such as tourism

and call centers; Braunstein 2006; Aguayo-Téllez 2011; Staritz and Reis

2013).

Positive effects on women’s share of employment should be viewed with

some caution, however, because the data typically do not account for job

quality. International data on employment fail to capture the full extent of

informal employment (Heintz 2006). Facing intense global competition,

ﬁrms have adopted ﬂexible and informal work arrangements that are

temporary, seasonal, casual, and based on unregulated labor contracts.

Due to gender norms about men’s role as breadwinners and women’s as

secondary earners, women tend to be slotted for those jobs (Carr, Chen,

and Tate 2000; Balakrishnan 2002). Of course, as Standing (1989)notes,

the process of informalization has also affected men, leading to a downward

harmonization of labor conditions. Thus, some evidence of greater gender

equality is due to men’s labor market outcomes rather than women’s

improved conditions (Kongar 2007).

Wamboye and Seguino (2015) show that the impact of trade and

investment liberalization on employment depends on the structure of

the economy. They empirically explore the gender employment effects

of trade liberalization in SSA, dividing their sample into three types

of economies: (a) nonmineral non-oil exporters (NMECs), (b) non-oil

mineral exporters (MECs), and (c) oil exporting economies. Results

indicate that trade expansion has a negative effect on women’s absolute

and relative employment chances in NMECs but not MECs. Consistent

with these results, Bussolo and De Hoyos (2009) found that labor-intensive

manufacturing jobs were lost in a number of African economies as a

result of trade liberalization due to competition from Asia, with negative

effects on women’s employment. Further, in agriculture-based African

economies, men are better positioned to produce export cash crops

due to underlying asset ownership patterns, resource inequalities, and

gender roles. These ﬁndings are consistent with studies that indicate

trade liberalization has not been as beneﬁcial to women and gender

equality in Africa as in other regions, such as Asia (Aguayo-Téllez

2011).

With regard to the effects of trade and FDI on gender wage inequality,

again, the results are contradictory. In a cross-national study, Oostendorp

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(2009) found that an increase in trade and FDI led to narrower gender

wage gaps for richer countries, but not for developing economies. Given

that trade and investment liberalization have increased the relative demand

for women’s labor in developing countries, this is surprising. One might

theorize that over time, gender wage gaps should narrow as a result.

And yet, studies on Asian economies have found evidence that while in

some cases, gender wage gaps have narrowed with increased trade and

FDI, the discriminatory portion of the wage gap has increased (Maurer-

Fazio, Rawski, and Zhang 1999; Berik, van der Meulen Rodgers, and

Zveglich 2004;Liu2004). Menon and van der Meulen Rodgers (2009),

using a theoretical model of competition and industry concentration,

ﬁnd that trade openness contributes to a widening of residual gender

wage gaps in India’s manufacturing industries. In Mexico, too, after

initially narrowing,8gender wage gaps have widened in the context of a

declining capital intensity of production and increased share of FDI in

investment (Artecona and Cunningham 2002; Domínguez-Villalobos and

Brown-Grossman 2010).

What might explain the failure of wage gaps to narrow with greater

gender equality in education – especially in rapidly growing export-

led economies that disproportionately employ women? With trade and

investment liberalization, labor-intensive ﬁrms that employ primarily

women have become increasingly mobile or “footloose.” The mobility of

ﬁrms reduces workers’ bargaining power and thus holds down their wages

(Choi 2006). Insofar as women’s employment is concentrated in mobile

industries, the possibility for trade and investment liberalization to improve

gender equality appears limited.

Baliamoune-Lutz (2007) explored the triangular relationship between

trade, growth, and gender differences in youth and adult literacy rates. SSA

trade effects are compared to those in other regions with a panel dataset

using 3SLS techniques. Her empirical evidence showed that globalization

(measured as trade shares of GDP) and growth have had no effect on

gender equality in non-SSA developing countries and a negative effect

in SSA. That is, integration with the global economy has caused gender

inequality in literacy rates to increase in that region.

In sum, while there has been a feminization of employment in export

industries that are labor intensive, such as garment manufacturing, women

are often stuck in low-wage dead-end jobs with limited opportunities for

skill development. As economies move up the industrial ladder to more

capital-intensive production, there is some evidence that men are the

preferred labor supply, with women’s share of manufacturing employment

declining (Tejani and Milberg 2016). Expansion of the tourism sector and

call centers provides employment for women, but often such employment

is also more precarious and less well paid than men’s jobs in the sector

(Staritz and Reis 2013).

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

The most important lesson to be drawn from this literature is that

trade and investment liberalization effects differ by country, depending

on variations in the gender division of labor and the position of the

economy in world trade, partly related to a country’s economic structure.

Insofar as gender equality is a stimulus to growth, trade and investment

policies – via their effect on wages and employment – have the potential to

promote or undermine that goal. Because there is no one-size-ﬁts-all trade

or investment policy that would promote gender equality, countries must

carefully identify how their own economic structures will be affected by

policies to liberalize or regulate trade and investment and trace out the

likely gendered impacts based on the gendered job segregation that exists.

Financial liberalization

Financial liberalization policies have been widely adopted over the last two

decades and have led to the opening up of capital markets to external ﬂows

and, concomitantly, pressures to keep inﬂation rates low as a means for

countries to attract those ﬂows. A good deal of research links the growth

of household income inequality to ﬁnancial liberalization (Gonzales et al.

2015).

Scholars have also underscored that ﬁnancial liberalization brings with it

a number of problems that worsen gender equality (see Elson and Cagatay

[2000]; Braunstein [2012]). First, macroeconomic volatility may increase

with liberalization of capital ﬂows, and women are particularly vulnerable

during such times because (a) they tend to have control over fewer assets

and saving to smooth income, (b) they have greater responsibility for care

of the family, and cuts in public sector budgets during crisis further increase

women’s care responsibilities, and (c) when men lose jobs during crises,

women are often propelled into the labor force to take on more precarious

forms of work.

Second, ﬁnancial liberalization contributes to a deﬂationary bias.

Because wealth holders’ real rates of return are negatively affected by

inﬂation, central banks in countries with liberalized capital accounts feel

pressure to keep inﬂation low. This leads to contractionary monetary

policy that has negative job growth effects. Tracing out these dynamics

theoretically and empirically should be high on the priority list for gender

and macroeconomics research.

A third channel by which ﬁnancial liberalization may produce differential

gender effects is the increased opportunity cost of maintaining a higher

level of foreign exchange reserves to self-insure against a speculative

currency attack. According to Rodrik (2006), the opportunity cost of those

reserves is roughly 1 percent of GDP. Any analysis of the costs and beneﬁts

of capital account liberalization would then have to factor in the trade-

off of holding reserves as compared to their alternative use, such as for

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public investment. An additional cost of capital account liberalization is

the impact of increased macroeconomic volatility and risk of crisis on

households. Countries must do a cost–beneﬁt analysis to reconcile the

beneﬁts of capital account liberalization with their substantial costs, not

only to public spending, but also to vulnerable groups, such as women,

most affected by economic volatility. This would suggest the importance

of funding income-smoothing social safety net programs if ﬁnancial

liberalization were deemed the appropriate policy stance. Conversely,

governments may beneﬁt from managing capital ﬂows via a wide variety of

techniques that act as “speed bumps” to reduce volatility and its subsequent

costs.

Impact of globalization policies on unpaid labor

Floro (1995) was one of the ﬁrst scholars to note the relationship between

economic restructuring (induced by globalization) and gender effects of

time allocation. Economic restructuring inﬂuences the distribution and

intensity of women’s work. Cuts in public sector budgets, for example,

can increase women’s care burden to replace what had been publicly

provided services. Because time use is outside national income accounts,

macroeconomists miss this important policy effect. Moreover, women

may engage in “distress” sales of labor to make up for male partners’

lost income, falling wages, or the higher product prices induced by

devaluations. The lengthening and intensiﬁcation of women’s labor time

in such cases may have negative effects on children’s well-being, imposing

long-run economic costs. Unfortunately, the paucity of time-use data makes

it difﬁcult to empirically assess the impact of various macroeconomic

disturbances and public sector budget cuts on gender inequality in

time use.

Two studies assess the gendered impact of the Great Recession on time

use in the US and Turkey, respectively. Berik and Kongar (2013)ﬁnd

that during the US recession, married mothers increased their paid hours

mainly by spending less time on household tasks – childcare, housework,

and shopping. Married fathers, on the other hand, worked fewer hours in

the labor market but did not take on additional unpaid work, which meant

their total work hours declined. As a result, mothers and fathers worked

similar numbers of paid hours. Since mothers were doing less unpaid work

than previously, the recession contributed to greater unpaid labor time

equality. But with the decline in their total workload, fathers had more

leisure time than before the slump and relative to mothers.

In Turkey, increases in men’s unemployment risk have been found

to directly affect their female spouses, who must then spend more time

in both paid and unpaid work (Kaya Bahçe and Memi¸s2013). Men’s

time spent in paid and unpaid work also rises in response to a spouse’s

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

unemployment, but by a much smaller amount. Using nationwide averages

in absolute terms, women’s total work time rises approximately eleven times

more than that of men in Turkey in response to spouses’ unemployment.

While these studies do not directly assess the impact of globalization on

unpaid work, there is an indirect link related to the increased volatility

of macroeconomies, as well as the deﬂationary impact of some aspects of

globalization.

The critical issue is that governments, in weighing policy options, must

take into account the costs of globalization policies and their potential to

undermine the goal of gender equality. The welfare effects of globalization

policies, and in particular, the impact on women’s relative well-being,

are important in their own right. However, insofar as macro-level policies

related to economic openness widen the degree of gender inequality,

long-run growth may be hampered even if, in the short run, there are

expansionary demand-side effects of inequality.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy – that is, government spending and taxation – had until two

decades ago been seen as gender neutral in its effects. That changed

with the research on the impact of structural adjustment in developing

countries. More recently, the economic crisis and responses to it have led

to an exploration of this issue in developed economies. For expositional

purposes, I discuss the relevant research by delineating several distinct

categories of government expenditures: public investment in physical

and social infrastructure, ELR programs, and countercyclical and full-

employment policies (and their converse, ﬁscal consolidation or austerity).

Public investment in physical infrastructure

Public investment typically stimulates employment as businesses hire more

workers to meet increased demand. Moreover, targeted public investment

can leverage or “crowd in” private investment by lowering production costs,

further stimulating aggregate demand and employment growth. Because

public investment can raise economy-wide productivity (Bayraktar and

Moreno-Dodson 2010), it has two beneﬁcial features. It creates ﬁscal space

in the long run by stimulating income growth, expanding the taxable

income base. Second, well-targeted investment can be anti-inﬂationary if

it addresses supply bottlenecks that drive up prices. Apart from these

general effects of public investment, the state has the potential to redress

inequalities and discrimination in the household, in asset ownership, and

in labor markets through targeted budget allocations.

The distributional effects of public investment in physical infrastructure

have received attention in recent years, with research identifying a strong

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link between measures of physical infrastructure spending, women’s

unpaid care burden, employment, and the growth of potential output

(Fontana and Natali 2008; Agénor, Canuto, and da Silva 2010; Fontana

and Elson 2014). Using data from Tanzanian time-use surveys, Fontana

and Natali (2008) simulate the employment effects of targeted physical

infrastructure investments that reduce time spent on unpaid care activities.

They demonstrate that such investments, by reducing the time spent

on fetching water, fuel, and other unpaid household maintenance

activities, reduce the care burden and, as a result, raise the earnings

potential of both women and men. According to their simulations, the

time released from unpaid work would raise women’s income by 17.7

percent relative to the economy-wide average, and men’s by 1.6 percent

annually.

Using Brazilian data to simulate the effect on growth of changes in

government spending on infrastructure as a share of GDP, Agénor and

Canuto (2015) ﬁnd that a 1 percentage point increase could raise annual

output growth between 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points, via the induced

changes in women’s time allocation (to paid work) and their bargaining

power over family resources.

These studies, however, do not estimate feedback loops from increases

in women’s relative employment to other macro variables such as growth,

the trade balance, and inﬂation. That said, they conﬁrm the modeling

assumption that public investment in infrastructure can promote gender

equality with beneﬁcial economy-wide effects. As such, public investment

of this nature can be self-ﬁnancing over the longer run due to the positive

growth effects of greater gender equality. The size of effects will depend

on country-level conditions – the types of infrastructure spending and the

impact on men’s and women’s time use.

The evidence does not suggest, however, that gender gaps in employment

will automatically close as a result of jobs created by physical infrastructure

investment. Chakraborty (2010) found that in India, infrastructure

investment lessened unpaid care work, but women’s employment did not

increase. She concludes that complementary employment policies (of the

demand-management type) are also required to ensure the substitution of

market work for unpaid work.

The effects of public infrastructure investment on women’s employment

vary, and there is as yet no consensus on whether the effect is signiﬁcantly

positive. There is greater agreement, however, that public infrastructure

investments that reduce time spent on hauling water in developing

countries also have beneﬁcial effects on children’s education and, in

Ghana, girls’ school attendance (Koolwal and van de Walle 2010;Nauges

and Strand 2013). This growing body of research is useful for identifying

the kinds of public sector expenditures that would be beneﬁcial for gender

equality in time use and employment, as well as health.

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Public investment in social infrastructure

Social expenditures, because they contribute to gender equality and

long-run productivity growth, could also be classiﬁed as infrastructure

investments rather than merely discretionary spending. Investments in

people’s capabilities have a public goods quality with positive spillover

effects on economy-wide productivity. By expanding the productive base of

the economy, such investments generate a ﬂow of revenues into the future,

made easier if increases in human productivity can be converted to higher

incomes.

Social infrastructure spending can relieve women’s unpaid care burden

through publicly funded social services, freeing up time for paid

employment. Further, due to gendered patterns of employment, such

investment creates job opportunities that differentially beneﬁt women

workers. Several studies explore the impact of social spending on job

creation by gender. ˙

Ilkkaracan, Kim, and Kaya (2015) investigate the

potential employment effects of a 20 billion Turkish lira expenditure on

childcare centers and preschools versus housing (the construction sector).

They estimate that an expenditure of this magnitude in the construction

sector would create a total of 290,000 new jobs while the same amount

invested in childcare and preschool would generate 719,000 new jobs. Of

the new jobs created via investments in the childcare and preschool sector,

73 percent would go to women, compared to roughly 6 percent of the

new jobs created via expenditures on public infrastructure and housing

construction.

Similarly, Antonopoulos et al. (2010) ﬁnd that, for the US, investment

in social service delivery sectors, such as early childhood development and

home-based healthcare, could create twice as many jobs as the same level of

expenditures on physical infrastructure, which creates jobs in construction

and energy. Women are more likely to get these jobs, and among women

who are employed, more disadvantaged women beneﬁt the most. In terms

of efﬁciency per dollar spent, social infrastructure spending is likely to have

a larger job multiplier and greater effect on gender employment gaps.

De Henau and Himmelweit (2016) develop a macro–micro input–output

model to estimate the impact of public investment in care for a set of

advanced economies. The potential effects of such investment are short

term (women’s unpaid work falls, more jobs are created that women are

able to ﬁll), medium term (wages in the care sector rise, gender wage gaps

fall, and more men enter care work), and long term (gender roles become

less dependent on a gender division of unpaid care work, with beneﬁts for

long-run growth). In their model, two-thirds of newly created jobs go to

women in the care sector compared to one-third in the construction sector.

These studies show that a demand-side stimulus can increase job

opportunities for women and men and, when appropriately targeted,

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produce a differential demand for women’s labor. It serves the additional

purpose of absorbing the increased women’s labor supply that results from

publicly funding care services. This is especially important since efforts to

open up employment opportunities for women in the paid economy, if they

do not address the care burden, can either fail to attain their goal or reduce

women’s well-being due to the “double burden” (Cook and Dong 2011).

Publicly funded care services can also address the problem of the typically

lower wages in that sector as compared to other sectors of the economy.

Evidence shows that wage rates in publicly funded jobs are higher than in

the private sector (Budig and Misra 2010).

Is social infrastructure spending even feasible in the context of the ﬁscal

austerity environment? It may be, if we rely on a longer time frame than

is typical in terms of the manageability of public sector deﬁcits. This is

because social infrastructure spending can create ﬁscal space by raising

the productive capacity of the economy (Roy, Heuty, and Letouzé 2009).

Much of the spending on the care sector raises longer-run productivity

by improving the quality of the current and future labor force. Heckman

and Masterov (2007) identify substantial paybacks from early childhood

education, for example. By raising labor productivity, such expenditures

increase incomes, generating tax revenues with which to pay down the debt

incurred to ﬁnance the original investment.

Under current rules advanced by institutions such as the IMF, the degree

of ﬁscal space is circumscribed by limits placed on a country’s public

debt relative to GDP. This approach to establishing debt ceilings deﬁnes

ﬁscal sustainability for the short term and ignores the effect of targeted

public spending on growth over the longer term. As a result, the ﬁscal

sustainability of this type of public investment is underestimated. Relatedly,

current guidelines for assessing ﬁscal space and sustainability ignore what

the ﬁscal space is used for. The result is restrictive ﬁscal targets, and this has

led to a decline in public investment/GDP ratios in many countries.

To effectively make the rigorous case for the ability of social

infrastructure expenditures that promote gender equality to expand

medium- and long-run ﬁscal space, more focused empirical research is

required. Targeted studies that estimate the payback of gender equality

investments are pivotal to expanding the discourse and consensus on ﬁscal

space.

Countercyclical and full-employment policies

A concerning feature of recessions is the resulting widespread destruction

of jobs. How gender interacts with job losses during a recession depends

on the structure of a country’s economy and the sectoral nature of gender

job segregation. In cases where downturns ﬁrst affect demand in female-

dominated labor-intensive export industries (as a result of crisis among

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

trading partners), women’s job losses are likely to exceed men’s. This

occurred during the Asian ﬁnancial crisis and in developing countries

during the Great Recession of 2008. In contrast, during the most recent

global recession, which began in industrialized countries in the housing

sector, job losses ﬁrst hit the construction and then manufacturing

industries. Because they are male-dominated in employment, men’s job

losses exceeded women’s at the beginning of the recession (Pearson and

Sweetman 2011).

Employment effects by gender may differ along the trajectory from

downturn to trough to expansion, however. Regardless of which sectors

are ﬁrst affected by job losses due to downturns, prolonged recessions that

lead to strains on public sector budgets and therefore budget cuts may have

more negative effects on women than men. This is due to women’s greater

employment concentration in government jobs (Grown and Tas 2011).

Prolonged recessions can also lead to hysteresis, thereby lowering long-

run growth rates due to the impact on labor productivity. Insofar as

gender is a stimulus to growth and well-being, the effects of macro-

level phenomena such as business cycles and recessions will need to be

addressed, and countervailing policies to alleviate the burdens of such

downturns developed. Thus, gender-sensitive countercyclical policies are

of interest.

ELR programs are one example of such policies, cushioning the

effects of downturns and reducing gender conﬂict over scarce jobs. ELR

programs can be used to prevent deskilling and to strategically invest in

infrastructure. The gender effect of such programs has been noted in the

literature. A prominent program in developing countries is the Indian

government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). This

act establishes a legal job guarantee for 100 days of employment every

year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work

(mainly unskilled) at the statutory minimum wage. Women’s participation

rate in the program is double their participation rate in the casual

labor market. In 2009–10 women comprised about 48 percent of those

employed by this job guarantee scheme (Dutta et al. 2012; Das et al.

2015).

Full-employment policies more generally are an important component

of any program to promote gender equality. Several studies lay out a set

of macro-level policies to achieve the goal of employment (as compared

to GDP) growth (Onaran 2017). Pollin et al. (2007), for example, develop

an employment-targeted growth strategy for South Africa, using innovative

ﬁscal and monetary policy tools. Such programs can be tailored to target

women’s relatively more limited access to employment. The main tools

of an employment-targeted program include loan guarantees to facilitate

the expansion of credit to key sectors of the economy (such as small-

and medium-sized enterprises and women farmers) and asset reserve

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requirements to stimulate the extension of credit to ﬁrms with large

employment multipliers, along with public investment in infrastructure.

Monetary policy

Regardless of the factors that inﬂuence monetary policy (such as

ﬁnancial liberalization), it is likely to have gender-differentiated effects

on employment, consumption, and children’s well-being with resulting

feedback effects on growth. Only a handful of papers have explored

the impact of contractionary monetary policy on gendered outcomes

(Braunstein and Heintz 2008; Takhtamanova and Sierminska 2009;

Seguino and Heintz 2012), while two papers explore the relationship

between gender representation on monetary policy committees and the

conduct of monetary policy (Diouf and Pépin 2016; Masciandaro, Profeta,

and Romelli 2016).

Braunstein and Heintz (2008), pioneers in this research, found that

after controlling for long-term employment trends, the ratio of women’s

to men’s employment tends to decline during contractionary inﬂation

reduction in the majority of the developing countries examined. For

the US, Seguino and Heintz (2012) ﬁnd evidence of a disproportionate

increase in women’s relative unemployment in response to contractionary

monetary policy. In contrast, Takhtamanova and Sierminska (2009)do

not ﬁnd a link between short-term interest rates and employment in nine

OECD countries (nor do they ﬁnd signiﬁcant gender effects).

In terms of the conduct of monetary policy, Diouf and Pépin (2016)and

Masciandaro, Profeta, and Romelli (2016) provide evidence that gender

diversity in central bank boards and chairs affects the conduct of monetary

policy and hence macroeconomic outcomes. Greater relative women’s

representation on central bank boards is inversely associated with inﬂation

rates and money growth. Diouf and Pépin (2016) suggest that because

women central bankers are more concerned with price stability than their

male counterparts, they are (a) more resistant than men to political

pressures, and (b) this could explain the underrepresentation of women

as central bank chairs. These papers inform about the role of gender

in shaping key macroeconomic institutions. This issue can beneﬁt from

more research, however, to better understand (a) gender preferences on

inﬂation and unemployment and (b) the relationship between monetary

policy in terms of short-term interest rates and other policy tools, such as

asset-based reserved requirements designed to target credit to key sectors

or groups (Epstein 2007).

More generally, a research agenda that assesses the relationship between

inﬂation targeting and gendered well-being is a major gap in our

understanding of the relationship between macro policy and gender. The

importance of this area of research is that monetary policy is one of

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

the feedback loops that explains gender equality, which then inﬂuences

growth. In the absence of gender-aware monetary policies, governments

could unintentionally undermine their gender equality goals.

Moreover, whether it is men or women who are most negatively affected

by employment losses due to contractionary monetary policies, household

dynamics are affected. Some research shows, for example, that increases

in men’s unemployment lead to greater domestic violence (Macmillan

and Kruttschnitt 2004;Aizer2010), the macroeconomic costs of which

have been estimated to be very high (Duvvury et al. 2013). The effect of

unemployment on domestic violence and household dissolution is not yet

settled. In a study on the United Kingdom, Anderberg et al. (2013) ﬁnd that

an increase in men’s unemployment decreases the incidence of intimate

partner violence, while higher women’s unemployment increases the risk

of domestic abuse.

There is as yet little research on gender and exchange rate policy. One

recent study, however, looks at the effect of depreciations and appreciations

of the Uruguayan real exchange rate on gender wage gaps with impacts on

domestic violence rates (Munyo and Rossi 2015). In their empirical model,

men are concentrated in tradable industries, such as manufacturing, while

women are more likely to work in nontradable industries, such as the

service sector. Taking account of household bargaining dynamics, they

argue that an increase in the real exchange rate can improve men’s

household bargaining power relative to women, with evidence that this

raises the frequency of domestic violence.

Few macroeconomists take into account the less visible costs associated

with employment loss, wages gaps, and domestic violence. This area

therefore deserves more attention and inclusion in macro models that

evaluate the relationship between gender, family dynamics, and growth.

CONCLUSION

Synopsis of ﬁndings

Research demonstrating the effect of gender on the macroeconomy

has invigorated the study of macroeconomics and inequality. Gender

inequality’s effects on the macroeconomy differ in some key ways

from other forms of inequality. A key transmission mechanism is

through the impact on children’s well-being and long-run productivity

growth. Moreover, gender norms and stereotypes that buttress the

gender division of labor with women segregated in low-wage and

unpaid work produce notable supply- and demand-side effects on the

macroeconomy. The challenge going forward is for economists to integrate

the robust ﬁndings of this literature into macro models and empirical

research.

ARTICLES

Further, in terms of the reverse causality from the macro economy

to gender relations, the evidence shows that a variety of macro-level

policies contribute to (or undermine) gender equality. This research

demonstrates that inequality is not simply a micro-level problem and that

the macroeconomy operates as a structure of constraint on closing gender

gaps in well-being. Gender-aware policies can play an ameliorative role.

Public sector spending on physical infrastructure and social infrastructure

(through public investment in care services), if well targeted, could reduce

the unpaid care burden, enabling women to take on employment. Social

spending on health and education can both reduce gender gaps in these

areas and stimulate demand for women’s labor. Despite public sector

budget constraints, such expenditures are likely to pay for themselves in

the longer run, due to the positive feedback effects of gender equality on

macroeconomic growth. Other tools exist as well, including ELR programs.

Research shows that monetary policy – including both interest rate and

exchange rate policy – also affects gender employment equality. Given

that macro-level policies can narrow and close gender gaps, and that

gender equality under some conditions is a stimulus to growth, effective

policymaking requires that gender dynamics be given a key role in policy

formulation.

Areas for future research

While progress has been made in understanding the relationship

between gender and the macroeconomy, several areas require further

investigation.9Many studies explore gender inequality in employment,

but employment data do not identify the quality of work, including

wages, job security, and other forms of compensation. Second, more

research is needed to understand wage dynamics in models as well

as in empirical work, a task that is hampered by the lack of sex-

disaggregated wage data across time and countries. What factors, for

example, explain the slow pace at which wage gaps have narrowed, despite

the virtual closure of educational gaps? And what is the impact of higher

relative women’s wages on output and employment? Does this differ

according to a country’s economic structure and the pattern of gender

job segregation? Also, while we know more about the gender impact of

some aspects of ﬁscal policy – such as physical and social infrastructure

investment – additional research is required to quantify those effects.

Further, the impact of macro policies is channeled through a country’s

gender norms and stereotypes. How do norms and stereotypes change

over time? What policies can facilitate gender-enabling changes (such

as attitudes toward a woman’s right to a job when jobs are scarce)?

These questions require answers to better target and design macro-level

policies.

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

Perhaps one of the largest policy research gaps is in the conduct

of traditional macro policy – in particular, full-employment policies,

monetary and exchange rate policy, and conﬂicts between ﬁscal policy and

ﬁscal consolidation. The assumption that macroeconomic policymaking

is gender neutral requires greater scrutiny, as evidenced by several of

the studies reviewed in this survey. Although policymakers may not be

intentionally gender biased, the evidence shows gender-differentiated

effects of macro policy.

And ﬁnally, an area not mentioned in this review due to lack of

research on the topic is gender and ecological macroeconomics. Ecological

macroeconomics is an emerging interdisciplinary ﬁeld that examines the

macroeconomy as part of the ecosystem, accounting for the ﬁnite limits of

the planet. Fontana and Sawyer (2016) have authored one of the few papers

on this topic from a Kaleckian/post-Keynesian framework, noted for its

ability to explore distributional dynamics. Although their model does not

address gender, it provides a starting-point for much-needed research that

integrates gender, distribution, the environment, and macroeconomics.

Stephanie Seguino

Economics - University of Vermont

Old Mill 227, Burlington, VT 05401, USA

e-mail: sseguino@uvm.edu

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTOR

Stephanie Seguino is Professor of Economics at the University of Vermont,

USA, and Research Associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Political Economy Research Institute. Her research explores the two-way

relationship between intergroup inequality by class, race, and gender,

and economic growth and development. She is instructor in the African

Program for Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE); Associate

Editor for Feminist Economics,Journal of Human Development and Capabilities,

and Review of Keynesian Economics; and past president of the International

Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE). She has consulted with a

number of international organizations, including the UNDP, UNRISD,

UNCTAD, World Bank, and USAID.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Caren Grown, Tamoya Christie, Benedicte Leroy De La

Briere, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments and to the

World Bank, which supported this work.

ARTICLES

FUNDING

This work was supported by World Bank Group: [grant number NA].

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.

1080/13545701.2019.1609691.

NOTES

1In the literature, investment is positively related to both proﬁts and sales (demand).

Theoretically, wider gender wage gaps may reduce aggregate demand and thus sales,

thereby dampening investment through the accelerator effect. The net effect of

gender gaps is therefore ambiguous. Though there is little evidence in the literature

that the accelerator effect dominates the proﬁtability effect in terms of gender, the

reader should have in mind that both effects are possible, with the net effect an

empirical question.

2This refers to the Harrod-Domar model, whereby actual growth rates may diverge

from warranted growth rates.

3Policies include increased investment in women’s education and stronger

enforcement of laws against gender discrimination, thereby raising demand for

women’s labor. On the supply side, improvements in safety for women and mobility

raise women’s labor supply.

4Kotwal, Ramaswami, and Wadhwa (2011), also ﬁnd evidence that labor market

deregulation stimulated job growth in India in the post-reform period.

5Numerous authors have identiﬁed the positive effect of gender equality on

agricultural production. See, for example, Doss and Morris (2001)andWorldBank

(2011). Darity’s (1995) noteworthy contribution is a micro-level model for LIAEs with

gender segregation, whereby men seek to maximize their income from export cash

crop production by drawing women out of household/social maintenance activities

including subsistence agriculture production.

6Currency devaluation does not always produce a positive demand-side stimulus,

especially in developing countries with rigid imports. The effect may in fact be

contractionary (Krugman and Taylor 1978). A fall in women’s wages might also

be contractionary, but for different reasons – lower women’s wages may reduce

aggregate consumption. However, in export-led economies, that decline is unlikely

to outweigh the positive effects on investment and exports.

7Earlier work econometrically explored whether economic growth itself was found to

improve gender equality. That research yielded ambiguous results, and it became

clear that growth itself is too broad a category, necessitating a focus on speciﬁc

policies (Duﬂo 2012).

8Aguayo-Téllez, Airola, and Juhn (2010) ﬁnd evidence that trade liberalization

(speciﬁcally, the NAFTA agreement) increased the demand for women’s labor

in the labor-intensive manufacturing sector in Mexico and reduced gender wage

inequality.

9The Supplemental Online Appendix discusses in greater detail avenues for future

research, focusing on areas where adding a gender dimension would sharpen macro

models and increase the relevance of their results.

ENGENDERING MACROECONOMIC THEORY

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1–30.

Seguino, Stephanie and Maria Sagrario Floro. 2003. “Does Gender Have Any Effect

on Aggregate Saving? An Empirical Analysis.” International Review of Applied Economics

17(2): 147–66.

ARTICLES

Seguino, Stephanie and James Heintz. 2012. “Monetary Tightening and the Dynamics of

US Race and Gender Stratiﬁcation.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 71(3):

603–38.

Seguino, Stephanie and Maureen Were. 2014. “Gender, Development and Economic

Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of African Economies 23(Supplement 1): i18–61.

Standing, Guy. 1989. “Global Feminization Through Flexible Labor.” World Development

17(7): 1077–95.

Staritz, Cornelia and José Guilherme Reis, eds. 2013. Global Value Chains, Economic

Upgrading, and Gender: Case Studies of Horticulture, Tourism, and Call Center Industries.

Washington, DC: World Bank.

Takhtamanova, Yelena and Eva Sierminska. 2009. “Gender, Monetary Policy, and

Employment: The Case of Nine OECD Countries.” Feminist Economics 15(3): 323–53.

Taylor, Lance. 2004. Reconstructing Macroeconomics: Structuralist Proposals and Critiques of

the Mainstream. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Tejani, Sheba and William Milberg. 2016. “Global Defeminization? Industrial Upgrading

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24–54.

Wamboye, Evelyn F. and Stephanie Seguino. 2015. “Gender Effects of Trade Openness

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La Política de Cuidado como pilar de una recuperación transformadora: sostenible, justa e igualitaria

Chapter

Jan 2023

Alicia Isabel Adriana Bárcena Ibarra

“Los cuidados sostienen la vida y contribuyen al bienestar físico y emocional de las personas y del planeta. Es un trabajo esencial para el funcionamiento de nuestra sociedad, el cual, históricamente, tanto si se realiza de manera remunerada o no remunerada, ha recaído en las mujeres”, escribe Belén Sanz, representante de onu Mujeres en México. La COVID-19 evidenció que sólo los sistemas de cuidado pueden reparar el daño causado por las desigualdades que laceran nuestra sociedad. El concepto de cuidado ha cobrado así fuerza analítica en las discusiones políticas, académicas e institucionales. Este libro ofrece diversos acercamientos al tema. Subraya el papel del Estado en la construcción de sistemas de cuidados, el valor de las comunidades que lo enfrentan cada día, de la sociedad civil que cuida generaciones y el medio ambiente, de las y los creadores que cuidan la palabra y la memoria. Ubica las fuerzas contenidas y alertas, en clave de género, ante la necesidad de cuidados diversos e integrales que nos permitan construir una sociedad igualitaria, incluyente y respetuosa de los derechos humanos, hasta que —como señalan las mujeres zapatistas— “la dignidad se haga costumbre”.

The Gendered Inequality Impact of the Cost-of-Living Crisis: A Comparative Analysis

Preprint

Full-text available

Apr 2025

This paper explores the distributional and welfare impact of the cost-of-living crisis in Europe, differentiated by gender, thereby addressing the gap in the literature on gender-specific effects of inflation. Using household consumption data linked to price changes between April 2021 and July 2023 across six European countries, it examines how different consumption patterns between male-and female-headed households influence their exposure to inflation. By relying on the full distribution of household-specific inflation rates and quantile regression approach, the results show gender-specific disparities in inflation exposure and inequality. Across countries, women-led households are more impacted by heating and electricity inflation, while men are more affected by motor fuel and services inflation; in both cases, gender disparities diminish with rising income. The paper further evaluates the welfare changes attributable to inflation by estimating a behaviourally-adjusted welfare effect. Building on the Atkinson welfare measure, we decompose the change in welfare into equity and efficiency components, differentially for male-and female-headed households. By doing it, the paper enriches our understanding of the differential impact of inflation across household types, providing information for designing better and more targeted policies. JEL Codes: D12, D31, D60, E31, I30, J16

Real effective exchange rate shocks and job quality by gender in Latin America

Article

Mar 2025
Struct Change Econ Dynam

Gender multipliers of informal employment: an analysis with the total-flow model for the Turkish case

Article

Jan 2025
Econ Syst Res

This article analyses gendered patterns of informal employment in Türkiye using the Total-Flow model to account for deliveries to both final demand and intermediate demand. We presume that informal employment is sustained in the economy due to the cost advantage not only for the employer but also for the purchasers of its products. We explore patterns of upstream transmission of gendered informal labour. We address the gendered formal–informal divide with demographic characteristics to unravel the intertwined social norms and economic realities. A noteworthy finding, based on cross-sectoral multipliers, is that informal employment in agriculture is highly associated with outputs of all other sectors. We introduce the rent gain from informality into our model and estimate the liability of formalization in employer sectors under three scenarios. We draw attention to the significance of the gender pay gap with the estimated high value of supplementary compensation for transition to formalization.

Por uma macroeconomia feminista: a economia política do trabalho doméstico e de cuidados e a sua medição

Chapter

Full-text available

Dec 2024

Este trabalho faz parte do esforço por evidenciar, discutir e analisar as diversas conexões e implicações da macroeconomia e as desigualdades de gênero. Entendemos que há dimensões da macroeconomia que evidenciam estas disparidades de maneira mais clara que outras, ainda quando isto não garante decisões políticas alinhadas a diminuir ou erradicar as mencionadas desigualdades. Entendemos que, ainda quando não aparentes, estas disparidades são transversais à economia toda. Desigualdades não visíveis referem, por excelência, ao trabalho doméstico e de cuidado não remunerado, restrito à esfera doméstica e ignorado pela economia mainstream. O empenho em visibilizar as desigualdades de gênero é uma empreitada de longa data na economia feminista e, particularmente, na macroeconomia. Diversas autoras têm contribuído para a teorização e conceituação do setor doméstico e do cuidado na economia. Esta perspectiva destaca a dependência das sociedades em relação aos trabalhos de cuidado e doméstico realizados pelas mulheres de forma não remunerada, defendendo assim sua importância na economia do mundo real (GONZÁLEZ, 2020). Trata-se de atividades marcadas por relações de gênero que impacta o mercado ao reproduzir a força de trabalho, atual e futura. Estas propostas desafiam o entendimento e o funcionamento da economia dominante ao expor a desigualdade de gênero preexistente e que molda as dinâmicas econômicas nos níveis definidos como micro e macro (DOSS, 2021a; SEGUINO; HEINTZ, 2012).

Autonomía Económica y Política de las Mujeres en América Latina: Un Análisis Multidimensional de la Evolución y Desigualdades

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2024

En los últimos años, ha surgido un creciente interés a nivel internacional por comprender la desigualdad de género en diversas esferas sociales, en este sentido las Organizaciones se han dedicado a fomentar el desarrollo económico de los países buscando alternativas para fortalecer la igualdad, impulsando acuerdos políticos y acciones. El objetivo fue analizar la autonomía económica y política de las mujeres latinoamericanas. La metodológica cuantitativa con alcance exploratorio, mediante la técnica estadística multivariante Statis, la interacción multidimensional existente entre 10 indicadores de autonomía económica y política de mujeres latinoamericanas, según cifras compiladas por el Observatorio de Género de la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe de las Naciones Unidas. Resultados, se analizaron indicadores de género en 16 países latinoamericanos entre 2005 y 2019, donde se observaron mejoras en la participación política de mujeres en ciertos países y un aumento en mujeres en sectores de alta productividad, la autonomía económica y política mostró una relación independiente, estos resultados son relevantes para abordar la equidad de género en la región. concluyendo que existen diferencias considerables entre las naciones, que implican una evolución heterogénea en la búsqueda de la paridad de género en los ámbitos político y económico de la región.

Textile offshoring along global value chains (GVCs): Impacts on employment and gender wage gaps

Article

Sep 2024
Struct Change Econ Dynam

‘Power of economics without power in economics’: examinations of gender/power in the neoliberal economic order

Article

Jul 2024

Mel Langworthy

Gender is a powerful governing principle in neoliberal economic logics yet is most often employed as a characteristic of economic agents rather than constitutive of a powerful economic rationale. In this paper, I utilize feminist typologies of power to explore the ways in which the normative and operational neoliberal economic logics directly address women’s access to power. I employ the term ‘gender/power’ to indicate that gender and power cannot be understood as distinct treatments, but that gender is always implicated in and foundational of power structures and relationships. Through this analysis, I show that neoliberal ideologies neutralized much of the collective power-with of early feminist movements and have primarily acted to reinforce power-over women, as labourers, mothers, entrepreneurs, and subjects. I argue that neoliberal promises of market empowerment have been realized not in power to, as is emphasized in neoliberal discourses, but in power-within cultivated through gendered neoliberal feminist subjectivities of self-confidence and self-responsibility. In situating this analysis within prevailing neoliberal family rationalities, I suggest that feminist conceptualizations of power-through be expanded to include not just social relational dimensions, but market relations as well (e.g. managers, clients). Finally, I suggest three gendered standpoints of gender/power that should be engaged by economic analysis, academics, and policymakers to look past ‘one-size-fits-all’ logics and to increase the power of gender in economics.

Reviewing feminist macroeconomics for the twenty-first century

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2024

Izaskun Zuazu

Feminist macroeconomics draws on the notion that the gender system is both cause and consequence of macroeconomic structures, outcomes, and policies. In contrast, mainstream and heterodox macroeconomics have done little to integrate gender as an analytical tool in macro-modelling. This paper defines the subfield of feminist macroeconomics, explores its origins, and provides a systematic review of its literature. Drawing on Seguino (2013), the paper divides the subfield in three main strands: (i) feminist growth theory and gender dimensions of macro-level policies , (ii) macro-modelling and theoretical foundations of the care economy , and (iii) social infrastructure and intra-household allocation . The paper discusses potential ways to expand the foci of feminist macroeconomic research and considers challenges to the subfield such as methodological issues regarding male-biased metrics and limited data availability and the tensions with mainstream approaches to gender and the macroeconomy.

Why Care for the Care Economy: Empirical Evidence from Nepal

Article

Jun 2024

Using data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey-2010/11, and an instrumental variables approach, we find gender-differentiated impact of unpaid care work on employment outcomes. While for an additional hour of caregiving per week, women and men experience commensurate declines in their weekly employment hours, the employment likelihood decreases only for women. The conceptual framework, motivated by the Capability Approach, delineates contemporaneous effects of undertaking unpaid care work on the caregiver and its wider intergenerational and societal effects in a developing country context. The study employs time-use data to provide evidence on the impact of unpaid care work; it is also the first of its kind in the context of Nepal.

On gender and growth: The role of intergenerational health externalities and women's occupational constraints

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2014
Struct Change Econ Dynam

JEL classification: I18 J16 J22 O41 Keywords: Gender inequality Public capital Endogenous growth Multiple equilibria a b s t r a c t This paper studies the growth effects of externalities associated with intergenerational health transmission, health persistence, and access to infrastructure (or lack thereof), which affects women's occupational choices. Following a brief review of the evidence on these issues, a gender-based overlapping generations (OLG) model of endogenous growth that captures these interactions is presented and its properties characterized. The endogeneity of mothers' rearing time and rearing costs implies that improved access to infrastructure has in general an ambiguous effect on growth. Numerical experiments, based on a calibrated version of the model for low-income countries, show that it is possible for higher investment in infrastructure to actually reduce the steady-state growth rate. The possibility of multiple equilibria induced by an endogenous survival rate is also discussed, and so is the role of public policy in that context.

Myths of employment deregulation: how it neither creates jobs nor reduces labour market segmentation

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2017

This book looks at the effects of changes in employment regulation on levels and forms of employment in ten EU countries (Spain, Italy, Estonia, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, France, Denmark, and the UK). It demonstrates that reducing employment protection has brought neither labour market nor economic benefits. Moreover, post-crisis changes were accompanied by increases in precarious employment in those countries that were most enthusiastic in their deregulatory efforts.

Reconstructing Macroeconomics

Book

Dec 2004

Lance Taylor

Reconstructing Macroeconomics: Structuralist Proposals and Critiques of the Mainstream

Book

Jun 2009

Lance Taylor

Threat Effects of Capital Mobility on Wage Bargaining

Chapter

Oct 2020

Minsik Choi

An employment-targeted economic program for South Africa

Chapter

Sep 2009

A Model of Gender Inequality and Economic Growth

Article

Jan 2016

This paper introduces a model of gender inequality and economic growth that focuses on the determination of women’s time allocation among market production, home production, child rearing, and child education. The theoretical model is based on Agenor (2012), but differs in several important dimensions. The model is calibrated using microlevel data of Asian economies, and numerous policy experiments are conducted to investigate how various aspects of gender inequality are related to the growth performance of the economy. The analysis shows that improving gender equality can contribute significantly to economic growth by changing females’ time allocation and promoting accumulation of human capital. We find that if gender inequality is completely removed, aggregate income will be about 6.6% and 14.5% higher than the benchmark economy after one and two generations, respectively, while corresponding per capita income will be higher by 30.6% and 71.1% in the hypothetical gender-equality economy. This is because fertility and population decrease as women participate more in the labor market.

1. Introduction - Gender and the Economic Crisis

Chapter

Jan 2011

Gender Equality and Economic Growth

Article

Jun 2011

Elissa Braunstein

Gender and central banking

Article

Feb 2017
ECON MODEL

Female Central Bank chairs represent but a tiny minority. To understand why, this article analyzes socio-economic and socio-political characteristics of the countries where women have chaired Central Banks. Then, it suggests that gender differences in preferences as regards monetary policy goals may have some influence. This hypothesis is based on an empirical analysis showing that female Central Bank chairs focus more than their male counterparts on achieving the price stability goal. This means, then, that women are more resistant than men to political pressures. Finally, it concludes that gender differences in degree of conservatism may be an explanatory factor in female underrepresentation in the Central Bank chairs.

Engendering Macroeconomic Theory and Policy

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