Working Women: Should We Be Combatting Sexism to Stimulate Economic Growth?
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- Published on Monday, 18 March 2019 23:54
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1786 ... March 19, 2019
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Working Women: Should We Be Combatting Sexism to Stimulate Economic Growth?
Meenakshi Krishnan and Benjamin Selwyn
In the run-up to International Women’s Day, it was good to see Christine Lagarde highlight the problems of sexism in the global economy. Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 2011, argues that combatting sexism and bringing more women into the workplace could raise economic growth in some countries by as much as 35 per cent. Greater gender empowerment through changes in state laws and tax accounting contributes to "higher growth, a reduction in inequality, an improvement in the strength of the economy and a more diversified, export-focused country."
Women are now living longer than men in all parts of the world. Over half a... billion women have joined the world’s labour force over the last 30 years, and gender gaps in primary education have closed in almost all countries. But there’s still a long way to go.
Lagarde’s emphasis on combatting sexism is a welcome intervention in public debates. It is refreshing compared to the world’s most powerful politician’s attitudes to women. Yet her message is surprisingly narrow, and in some ways contributes to reproducing sexist attitudes; moreover, there is no sense of where the resources to combat sexism will come from. She is not arguing that the IMF, or World Bank, or core economy states should finance the worldwide re-education of men and boys in feminist principles. Of course, changes to the law are necessary. But so too is an extensive roll-out of pro-women education. This would cost money, and since the 2008 world economic crisis, many states across the global south have economized on their social spending.
