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Economic Gender gap in the Global South: How Public Institutions Matter

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Abstract

One of the most challenging gender gaps in the Global South remains in the economic sphere. This paper examines how public institutions affect the gender gap in economic participation and opportunities in 74 developing and emerging countries during the period 2006–2016. We find that the public institutional environment is closely related to the economic gender gap. Specifically, the protection of property rights and guaranteeing security seem to be two key factors associated to lower economic gender inequality. Nevertheless, public institutions do not matter equally throughout economically backward countries. Whereas in emerging countries, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, a broad variety of institutional aspects, including undue influence on judicial and government decisions, are closely related to the economic gender gap, in low-income developing countries, such as Sub-Saharan countries, the problems of ethics and corruption stand out as a particularly remarkable element against economic gender equality. Some significant policy implications are derived from our findings regarding the potential of public institution reforms to reduce the economic gender gap.

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Notes

  1. Compared to other dimensions, the political one currently presents the widest gender gap, although it also shows the greatest progress and is expected to be closed within 99 years. The health gender gap is also larger than it was in 2006 and the time to close it remains undefined. Regarding the education–specific gender gap, Hausmann et al. (2017) point out that it could be reduced to parity within the next 13 years.

  2. In accordance with targets 5 and 7 of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender equality), approved in the Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015.

  3. This includes supporting measures to reduce women’s unpaid work, initiatives to ensure women’s equal access to decent employment opportunities, resources and finance, and helping to develop and implement gender-sensitive budget processes (UNDP, 2018).

  4. Note that there is no consensus about a unique list of emerging economies. In our case, we use the income level within the UNDP list to classify countries in order to consider an objective classification criterion for our sample of countries.

  5. The GDP per capita variable is used in thousands.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous referees for their useful comments and the Civic Innovation Research Group for their support during the research stay of Samuel Medina-Claros at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. They also gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Regional Government of Andalusia (P18-RT-4115).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Economics - Statistics and Econometrics, University of Malaga, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Elena Bárcena-Martín

  2. PhD Program in Economics and Business, University of Malaga, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Samuel Medina-Claros

  3. Department of Applied Economics - Economic Policy, University of Malaga, 29071, Malaga, Spain

    Salvador Pérez-Moreno

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  1. Elena Bárcena-Martín
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Appendix

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Tables

Table A1 Institutional variables and their components.
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Table A2 Descriptive statistics.
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Table A3 Definitions and sources of the variables (1/2)
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Table A4 The Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) panel-data unit-root tests
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Table A5 The Im-Pesaran-Shin (IPS) panel-data unit-root tests
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10.

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Bárcena-Martín, E., Medina-Claros, S. & Pérez-Moreno, S. Economic Gender gap in the Global South: How Public Institutions Matter. Soc Indic Res 158, 459–483 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02715-6

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