The Incorporation of Gender in Economic Development

In this dissertation, I explore the connections among gender equity, the macroeconomy, and macroeconomic analysis. Although many economists study issues of gender equality in microeconomic analyses, the ways that gender interacts with the macroeconomy have only recently become a subject of interest.

In the first chapter, I explore five different schools of economic thought and the various ways that women have been included in economic analysis. The second chapter extends this discussion, focusing on a particular subfield of economics that, traditionally, has not incorporated a gender component--macroeconomic and stabilization policymaking. I discuss how international economic policies have neglected one aspect of global macroeconomic outcomes: its disproportionate and adverse effects on women. I look at the ways in which the structure of many macro-models contributes to this problem.

The third chapter examines some of the conclusions from the second chapter in more detail, focusing on unpaid labor and macro-development modeling. Though macroeconomic policy shapes the experiences, welfare, and productivity of both paid and unpaid workers, most macroeconomic models today--even those incorporating gender--do not include unpaid labor in their analyses. I contrast the structure and implications of models including the unpaid sphere of social reproduction or household work, to those of one of the newer IMF/WB models (the so-called RMSM-X+LP model). This model is progressive because it integrates poverty and labor modules into its monetary and fiscal framework; however, it still neglects the role of unpaid labor. I conclude that such models are not easily integrated with gender, and a more comprehensive revaluation of unpaid work and macro-consistency accounting models is required.

The final chapter provides a cursory look at the ways in which gender is integrated into the mission and structure of research divisions at the World Bank. I hypothesize that one reason World Bank researchers have difficulty integrating gender with macroeconomic and development policy is that the organizational structure at the World Bank has a separate division of research for gender. While, on the surface, this makes the importance of gender seem apparent, it also isolates gender research from other divisions such as macroeconomics and growth.