This study aims to find significant relationships between gender inequality and some economic indicators. More specifically, the labor force participation rate of females, maternal mortality ratio, and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments are mainly used as gender inequality indicators while employment rate and GDP constitute the economy dimension. For this purpose, instead of using a single variable, multiple variables are mainly preferred, which will lead to a better understanding of the relationship between gender inequality and economic indicators. In order to measure these multiple correlations, canonical correlation analysis is performed which analyzes the relationship between two sets of variables. The rationale of using more than one variable for gender inequality and economy is that using only one variable is not sufficient to explain these concepts, so a variable set is needed.
TopIntroduction
The relationship between gender inequality and economic development has been widely investigated by using several variables and applying different models. This effort is very critical since, in the countries where gender equality does not seem, severe economic problems may come into question. Further, the differences between economic behaviors of men and women may have an influence on macroeconomic policies including the tax system, social insurance program, regulatory policies, and structural reforms (Stotsky, 2006). Therefore, to be able to reveal the underlying reasons for gender inequality, and reveal the economic factors that can represent economic development is essential in order to understand the relationship between those two concepts.
Gender inequality defined as “gaps in opportunities (education, the legal system, access to finance) as well as outcomes (employment and political empowerment)” by Hakura et al. (2016) is a long term phenomenon nearly for all countries and nations since it is closely related to the development levels of the countries. The phenomenon which is also defined as a major barrier to human development by the United Nations Development Program (Gaye et al., 2010) is observed in several dimensions such as health, education, political representation, labor market. Moreover, women and girls face unfavorable consequences about the development of their capabilities and freedom of choice due to discrimination. In this direction, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has started to report the gender inequality index since 1990 for several countries. While building this index, three dimensions are mainly considered, which are health, empowerment and labor market, and their indicators are identified as maternal mortality ratio, adolescent birth rate, female and male population with at least secondary education, female and male shares of parliamentary seats, female and male labor force participation rates.
Further, Van de Kerk and Manuel (2008) form the sustainable society index (SSI) by using three dimensions which are human, environmental, and economic wellbeing. While forming the economic wellbeing dimension, two different categories are used namely, transition (organic farming and genuine savings) and economy (GDP, employment, public debt).
In the light of this information, the present study aims to reveal the associations between the concepts which are gender inequality and economic development by considering several indicators. In this direction, to measure gender inequality, the labor force participation rate of females, maternal mortality ratio, and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments are mainly while employment rate and GDP are considered as economic indicators. While creating the gender inequality index, UNDP determines three main aspects of human development as health, empowerment, and labor market. In line with these aspects, the present study chooses some of the indicators of each aspect, which are labor force participation rate of females, maternal mortality ratio, and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. In several types of research, the labor force participation of females is mostly considered as an indicator of gender inequality, and the other indicators are neglected. However, it is only related to the labor market dimension. To be able to obtain strong representativeness, one should also consider other aspects of gender inequality which are health and empowerment, so the present study also considers the indicators of these aspects which are maternal mortality ratio and proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments, respectively. On the other hand, Van de Kerk and Manuel (2008) develop the sustainable society index (SSI) which consists of three main dimensions (human welfare, environmental welfare, and economic welfare). From these dimensions, the economic welfare dimension consists of two different sub-dimensions which are transition and economic development. While transition sub-dimension composes of organic farming and genuine savings, economy sub-dimension composes of the indicators of GDP, employment, and public debt. The SSI is considered to be a well-suited tool informing the decisions regarding achievement of human and economic growth (Saisana and Philippas, 2012). They also assert that the SSI is formed as a comprehensive method that can measure and monitor the health of coupled human-environmental systems. It also approaches sustainability in its broad sense by considering 21 indicators, 8 policy categories, and 3 dimensions (human, environmental, economic) for 151 countries which accounts for 99 percent of the world population.