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Gender discrimination in education, health, and labour market: a voice for equality

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Abstract

The objective of the study is to examine the impact of gender discrimination in education, health, and labour market on economic growth in a panel of 20 high-income OECD countries for the period of 1980–2015. In addition, the study proposed an index of pro-equality growth, which is flared with education, health, and labour market initiatives to promote economic growth. The results show that gender parity index for educational attainment significantly promotes economic growth while health and labour market required substantial policy reforms to reduce health and labour market inequalities to sustain long-term economic growth. The results classified three countries as highly equitable growth, one country for equitable growth, two countries are moderate growth, four countries are less equitable growth while remaining 10 countries fall in the category of inequitable growth, where greater inequality promotes economic growth on the cost of education, health, and labour market inequalities.

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Source World Bank (2016)

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Notes

  1. Few more terms used in this study, i.e., equitable growth, moderately equitable growth, and less equitable growth, which shows that, if and only if, gender gap reduces any one of the three subjective discriminating factors i.e., education, health, and labour market, then it would fall in each of the stated conditions.

  2. Except highly equitable and equitable growth condition, the remaining equity conditions i.e., moderately equitable growth and less equitable growth falls in the category of inequitable, however, we may distinguish that, if the proposed index value becomes negative then we pronounced the term ‘inequitable growth’ rather than moderate or less equitable growth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Finance Department, Faculty of Economics and Administration, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Haroon Ur Rashid Khan

  2. Fakulti Sains, Teknologi Dan Pembangunan Insan, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia

    Anwar Khan

  3. Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Attock Campus, Attock, Pakistan

    Anwar Khan

  4. Department of Economics, Abbottabad University of Science & Technology, Tehsil Havelian, District Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

    Khalid Zaman

  5. Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, UTM, 81310, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

    Agha Amad Nabi & Sanil S. Hishan

  6. Hailey College of Banking and Finance, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

    Talat Islam

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  1. Haroon Ur Rashid Khan
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  2. Anwar Khan
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Correspondence to Khalid Zaman.

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Khan, H.U.R., Khan, A., Zaman, K. et al. Gender discrimination in education, health, and labour market: a voice for equality. Qual Quant 51, 2245–2266 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-016-0384-4

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