Sen’s missing women and other mysteries

Amartya Sen is well recognised for adding a strongly moral dimension to the discipline of economics. What is less stated is the consistency with which he brought gender into his economic analysis, causing some to even salute him as a “feminist economist”.

Both these attributes - the moral dimension and the gender concern — informed the J.R.D. Tata Memorial Oration, hosted by the Population Foundation of India, that he delivered recently in Delhi, wherein he undertook a magisterial survey of women’s place in contemporary India. Entitled ‘Women and Other People’, it revealed that the Nobel laureate in his 78th year is as engaged as ever with making sense of the world - particularly of the country of his birth and its social and economic evolution.

The position of women in India has long been a source of disquiet for Sen as he regards gender equity and equality as fundamental for social development. He began by saying he found it hard to accept that the biological reproductive role should deprive women of the freedom to do other things with their lives.

This led him to interrogate the family, and peel away the layers deploying economic models and analogies. Men and women, he observed, have both “congruent and conflicting interests” within the family. As there are extensive areas of congruence, families typically arrive at a compromise by seeking the cooperation of both men and women.

Such family arrangements are usually grounded in what Sen termed as “cooperative conflict”, and some of them are particularly unfavourable to women, leading to tremendous gender inequality. The child-bearing woman becomes more dependent on the harmony of the family and less demanding of her fair share of the family’s joint benefit. She ends up getting the worst end of the bargain. Here, Sen drew on the analogy of globalisation, which is often presented as benefitting all countries equally but which, in fact, sees some gaining very little and others very much.

What perhaps makes women’s situation even more complex is the fact that this conflict is well hidden. Dwelling on conflicts, rather than on family unity, is seen as aberrant.

Having reviewed the bad “deal” women get, Sen analysed how their contribution to family prosperity in terms of “home work” is consistently undervalued. He underlined the importance of women’s ability to earn independent incomes outside the home. This, of course, is linked crucially to literacy and education. Ownership of property can also step up the influence and power exercised within the family. In fact, all of these add to women’s agency, independence and decision-making power within the household and beyond.

“From the crude barbarity of physical violence against women, to the complex instrumentalities of her neglect, the deprivation of women is not only linked to the lower status of women but also to the fact that women often lack the power to influence the behaviour of other members of society and the operation of social institutions,” he said. But to work outside home, women would need both institutional support in terms of childcare and social acceptance.

Beyond just women’s wellbeing, gender equality impacts national development. Sen cited the fact that reduction of birth rates has often followed enhancement of women’s status and power, which are most constrained by frequent childbearing. “Any social change that brings voice, not just to women in general but young women in particular, has a tremendous impact on fertility decisions,” he said.

He finds Bangladesh a good example of the close link between enhanced women’s agency and positive national outcomes. He dwelt at length on how that country had proved wrong the prophets of doom who had once seen it as a “basket case”.

Although Bangladesh is still one of the poorest countries, it has progressed rapidly, particularly over the last 20 years, overtaking India in the most crucial social indicators — including gender-specific mortality rate — despite having half its GDP and a mere 10 per cent public expenditure.

So what did Bangladesh do right? A significant clue, he said, lay in a sustained policy change in gender relations - measured in terms of the participation of girls in school and adult women in the workforce. “It looks as if we can conclude that Bangladesh would have been a very different country, and far less successful, if it was not for the positive role played by women,” he remarked.

But gender agency can often be restrained by a lack of access to information and knowledge, and the courage to think differently. Only independent thought gives women’s agency the power to end inequities that feed into social practices and the arrangements of an assumed “natural” order. Here Sen touched upon the vexed issue of sex-selective abortions in Asia. Despite high levels of female literacy and economic independence, China and South Korea have been unable to stem selective abortions of female foetuses, although the latter has made some progress.

India, too, despite a reduction in female mortality, is witnessing the growing use of new technologies to abort female foetuses.

Sen, who was the first academic internationally to examine the concept of “missing women”, is currently grappling with the data thrown up by India’s 2011 census on child sex ratios. Taking the German ratio of 94.8 girls to 1,000 boys as the cut-off mark, he finds it intriguing that the 2011 census repeated a pattern first registered in the 2001 census - States in the north and west had a child sex ratio substantially lower than the German cut-off, while the east and south were closer to it. “I was struck by the fact that this difference within the country is very different from just the classical distinction between the north and the south.”

This is yet another riddle about “women and other people” that intrigues him. But he is not discouraged by questions. “We will never get the right answers, if we don’t ask the right questions,” he said in conclusion.

© Women’s Feature Service

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