Throughout the past few decades, the gender inequality discourse have became a dominant feature of international, national and local policy debate on the subject of economic development. This policy concern has emerged as an area of scholarly research which seeks to show that improving gender equity leads to economic growth.
Gender Inequality in Australia:
According to the data published by Australian Bureau of Statistics in May 2015, the full time average earnings of women is $284.20 or 17.9% less than the full time average earnings for men, this figure is calculated on the full time employees’ average weekly ordinary time earnings. The gender pay gap has hovered between 15% and 19% over the past two decades. The gender pay …show more content…
According to Stephan Klasen (1999), gender inequality in education contributes to a loss in human capital for a society and this undermining economic growth. Reducing girls’ educational attainment is an artificial reduction in the number of talents and high qualified girls. In addition, if there are declining marginal returns to education, reducing girl’s educational attainment while improving boy’s educational attainment lead to a higher girl’s marginal return to education, and thus improve economic performance (Knowles, Lorgelly and Owen 2002). Besides that, Klasen and Lamanna (2009) also investigate the relationship between the education’s level of women and fertility, child mortality rates and population growth. Women with more education are more likely to have fewer children due to the increased employment opportunities and the better knowledge of contraception. For instance, according to Summer (1994), on average, women without education have two more children than women who educated more than 7 years in Africa. Reducing in fertility rates and curbs population growth and after several decades, the dependency ratio will reduce and improves community’s resilience. All of these are positively affecting the economic …show more content…
Appearance of gender gaps in labour market is distorting the economic as this decrease the labour force participation rate of women and this contributes to lower productivity and country’s GDP. According to Mc Kinsey (2011), increase in labour force participation in U.S since year 1970 account for a quarter of current GDP and in the last decade, reduce the gender gap in workplace was a prime factor of European economy growth. Also, Calvacanti and Tavares’s model (2007) has showed the nexus between gender gaps in workplace and fertility rates. Gender equality in employment generates a lower fertility rates and this increase economic growth due to the demographic effect. The empowerment and earnings of women are also important to their bargaining power in household. Literature by Duflo (2012) mentioned that increase in women’s empowerment and earnings have also increase their bargaining power in household. This increases the saving and investment of a country as the investment preference and saving behaviour of women is differ from men and this also helps in the development of human capital as women are more likely to invest more on their children’s health and education, thereby boosting economic