If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions, then these tip sheets are for you.
Are you designing or implementing a CARE project with an economic growth component?
Are you doing women’s economic empowerment?
Is your country office forming VSLAs and looking into market engagement?
Does your LRSP commit you to gender equality?
This package includes a series of checklists and tip sheets designed to helpprogram designers, managers, implementers and results measurers to focus on the gender issues that are essential to making an impact in the area of economic growth.The package contains five checklists that cover all aspects of the program design, implementation and measurement cycle.
By providing a clear list of gender inequalities with helpful solutions,tips to mitigate harm, a staff reflection guide, and key indicator measurements, this package is a practical guide to ensure the best quality programming for CARE’s beneficiaries.
Eachtip sheet covers the following topics:
- Top Three Big Gender Inequalities in Economic Growth
- Gender Inequalities in Value Chains and Markets
- Gender Inequalities in the Business Cycle
- Gender Blindness and Discrimination in Business Development and Financial Services
- Social Rules that Shape Whether Women’s and Men’s Businesses Will Equally Succeed
When working with colleagues, reference these description points to fully understand and address the issues.
CARE Canada Gender Issues in Economic Growth Memory Check Package Introduction
Memory Check #1: Recognise the Gender Issues
All CARE program designs are based on a solid gender analysis. The purpose of this memory check is to outline the key gender issues in economic growth to include in a gender analysis. While the actual issues will depend on the size and scope of the project, and on the cultural context, the most effective economic growth programming addresses at least one of the Top Three Big gender issues in economic growth.
The Top Three Big Gender Inequalities in Economic GrowthTOP ISSUE / Women’s businesses are three times more likely than men’s to fail, and they typically profit one-third less than men’s for the same type and scale of business. Women’s formal and informal sector SMSEs make less money than men’s.
THE DETAILS /
- Women’s businesses are more likely to be home based, limiting their scope and profit.
- Women are more likely than men to reinvest the profit of the business back into household expenses rather than into the business. This gives men more money for capital and recurring costs, more money for business improvements and expansion and more money to buffer times of shock and stress.
- Men are more likely to scale up and adopt technological efficiencies sooner and faster than women, leading to increased competitiveness.
- The overwhelming majority of women’s businesses respond to supply rather than demand.
TOP ISSUE / Female entrepreneurs are more likely to be involved in businesses that are slow, oversaturated or not remunerative.
THE DETAILS /
- Given gender divides in skill and knowledge, women are more likely than men to be involved in businesses that take little skill and where it there is only limited room for innovation. As these businesses have less value added, they do not gross as much.
- Business type is overwhelmingly divided along the lines of the traditional division of labour. Women engage in value chains related to food and food processing, clothing manufacture, stitching and handicrafts, home care, day care and beauty. Men engage in value chains related to equipment manufacture, natural resource processing and industrial extraction, sports equipment manufacture. There is more money in markets associated with the latter.
TOP ISSUE / Social definitions of “Ideal Man” and “Ideal Woman” prescribe women’s and men’s business activities, hence potential for profit.
THE DETAILS /
- There is lower positive social sanction for women as entrepreneurs. Men are defined and accepted as entrepreneurs, and failures are condoned. Women are not accepted as entrepreneurs, and negative gender stereotypes are used to justify failure.
- Men’s first priority is breadwinning, and entrepreneurship is usually deemed an acceptable method. When men are seen to be putting other priorities first, this is marked.
- Women’s first priority is the home, and they are expected to retain this priority even if they are in business.
Gender Inequalities in Value Chains and Markets
VALUE CHAIN ISSUE / Gender inequalities within value chain stages result in unequal remuneration and control over key business assets and processes.
THE DETAILS /
- Men are paid more than women for the same task. Men are more likely to be hired for roles that are more senior and skilled, and therefore more lucrative and secure. This contributes to wage and profit gaps and to gaps in who controls how tasks within the stage are carried out.
VALUE CHAIN ISSUE / Gender inequalities from one stage of the chain to another result in men disproportionately controlling larger and more lucrative businesses.
THE DETAILS /
- Women are heavily represented in upstream processing and underrepresented in downstream marketing, value added, and intermediary roles. The reverse is the case for men, although men may be involved in upstream processes such as harvesting. This affects women’s ability to benefit from lucrative jobs and market segments to the same degree as men.
- Stages that require unskilled labour or that are done in the private sphere are more likely to be occupied by women. Stages that require skilled labour, expertise or technology, or are done in the public sphere are more likely to be occupied by men. The latter are more remunerative, again, contributing to the cycle of men owning larger and more profitable businesses.
- Typically more active in the public sphere, men are more able to make the contacts and networks necessary to “do business.” They have social skills needed to negotiate contracts, see through scams, find the best deal or trust their business instinct. It is much harder for women to break into more valuable stages and processes in a chain because they need to not only build these skills but then use them to break into a market where men will see them as competition.
Gender Inequalities in the Business Cycle
BUSINESS CYCLE ISSUE / Unequal access to business assets limits equal business growth.
THE DETAILS /
- Given social rules dealing with property ownership or mobility, women are less likely than men to be able to access agricultural inputs, appropriate technology, education, or marketing advice. This leads to greater supply and cash flow issues in women’s businesses than in men’s businesses.
BUSINESS CYCLE ISSUE / Men’s more fluid cash flow means that their businesses are more likely to succeed.
THE DETAILS /
- Men have greater control over more sustainable sources of cash than women, and they are able to reinvest greater amounts of their profit back into their businesses. For these reasons, men are more likely to weather the peaks and valleys of the business cycle, and are better able to invest when opportunities for growth come along. Women’s businesses are more likely to fail because they are unable to pull through financing crunches.
- Men are better able to access sustainable sources of emergency capital than women because they are more likely to control household or individual finances and because they have greater access to credit. When women need cash, they must often liquidate their emergency supplies that would otherwise be cushioning the household through natural or unnatural disasters. Men can return to the forms of cash under their control again and again, whereas it takes a long time for women to rebuild their emergency stocks.
BUSINESS CYCLE ISSUE / Where control over the business and its profits is clear, the business is more likely to succeed. Women are less likely to control their own businesses.
THE DETAILS /
- Women have less control over their own businesses than men have over theirs. Women may be socially obliged to consult their husbands concerning strategic business decisions and to take that advice regardless of its suitability. Men or other family members may require that women are completely transparent about their business actions, which increases transaction costs and times, while the same level of transparency is not required from men. Where business ownership is not clear and secure, the business is more likely to suffer from profit diversion, takeovers and mismanagement.
- Both men and women will say that they are involved in business “for the family,” but this statement hides a gender double standard. Men have much more say over their own or the family’s business concerns. They are more likely to control profit reinvestment and to ensure that it goes towards business ventures even if it is the main strategy through which a household earns its livelihood. Women are much less likely to own or control business hardware, decisions, or profit. They may be obliged (by society in general or by particular household members) to reinvest profits from their businesses in ways that are at odds with their own goals or with the business plan. This leads to liquidity issues and slows business growth.
Gender Blindness and Discrimination in Business Development and Financial Services, and Government Policy
BDSP ISSUE / Business services are premised on an implicit assumption that the receiver is a man, barring women from the support they need to be active in the most remunerative markets and value chain stages.
THE DETAILS /
- Value chain analyses and marketing studies are carried out gender blind. They assume that everyone has equal control over capital and their own labour. They often forget to cost in women’s unpaid processing labour, artificially forcing projected costs of the business down.
- Service centers are located in urban and peri-urban areas, and infrastructure may not always be friendly for both sexes.
- Mixed-sex business associations, chambers of commerce, or producers’ groups operate gender blind or discriminate against female members. The business ventures that they represent predominantly focus on value chains or value chain stages in which men are more likely to be involved. They focus on regulatory issues and financial service provision issues of a scale and nature related to men’s businesses. Leadership, even if the membership is predominantly women, still tends to be dominated by men This means that women do not have adequate support to run their businesses or adequate access to the most remunerative processes in value chains.
FSP ISSUE / Financial services are premised on explicit and implicit assumptions that the receivers are men.
THE DETAILS /
- Men are much more likely to own the types of property that is considered to be acceptable collateral. Either national legislation or custom reproduces biases against women owning property. This constrains women’s ability to provide acceptable collateral for loans.
- The rules and procedures of a financial institution are open to interpretation by its officers. With little training in gender-sensitive banking, these officers introduce bias and discrimination into the banking system that limits women’s ability to access products and services. For example, officers may require women to obtain signatures from a male spouse before submitting a loan application but not require men to obtain a woman’s signature.
- Banks and lending institutions of all types and sizes are more likely to provide larger loans to men than women. This is sometimes because men are more likely to have appropriate collateral but it is also because of assumptions that officers and portfolio managers make about what it is appropriate for women to be doing.
- Repayment schedules rarely take the business cycle into account. This is true for businesses that are more “masculine” or “feminine” or run by women or men, but it is more of an issue for women because of the cash flow issues described above.
- Women are more likely to work in the informal economy and less likely to read and have experience with contracts, making it difficult for them to formulate the written business plan required of banks before financing.
POLICY ISSUE / Economic growth policies are formulated and implemented with an implicit assumption that only men do business.
THE DETAILS /
- Policies are written either gender blind or with an unconscious assumption that it is only men who do business. In this way, policies ignore inequalities in education; access to and control over land, property and labour; and social and time barriers. They do not seek to close loopholes or address discriminatory clauses in regulations or procedures. In this way, they foster business growth for one sex more than for another.
- Government schemes are often implemented gender blind. Extension is provided to men more than to women, and relies on technology that women cannot access. It is provided without questioning how the division of labour impacts on value chain (in)efficiencies. Schemes are often only accessible to those with proven track records, bank accounts, identity papers or transport. This limits the extent to which women are able to access schemes.
Social Rules that Shape Whether Women’s and Men’s Businesses Will Equally Succeed
SOCIAL ISSUES / Women are less likely to be educated as entrepreneurs, so the competition playing field starts off uneven.
THE DETAILS /
- Women are less likely than men to possess basic business knowledge and skills, partially due to generally lower education levels and partially due to unequal exposure to contract negotiation or business planning. This means that women are less able to plan for business shocks, access markets or negotiate collateral.
- Vocational and technical training programs are gendered along the traditional division of labour and in terms of degree of professionalism. This funnels women into low value markets and men into high value markets. It also creates unfair advantage in the same market.
- Men are more likely than women to be able to access technical skills and other upgrade courses related to business expansion, and to access related funding opportunities. This allows their businesses to grow and expand more strongly than women’s.
SOCIAL ISSUES / Society prescribes women’s movements much more than men’s.
THE DETAILS /
- Women’s mobility is limited either by general social sanction, by time, by their ability to secure and negotiate transport or by the safety of public spaces. It is expected that men will be active in public spaces and will do business in them. This limits women’s ability to access supplies and markets and to make the connections necessary to succeed in business.
SOCIAL ISSUES / Women are more likely to be doing other things as well as business, while men can put their entire attention on business. This continues the uneven advantage.
THE DETAILS /
- Women usually have less time than men in which to do business. This is because of the double/triple/quadruple day and reproductive chore burdens. Women globally continue to do an average of 75% of household work on top of any productive or wage earning work they engage in.
SOCIAL ISSUES / Men have greater command over labour than women, and are therefore better able to take advantage of related cost efficiencies.
THE DETAILS /
- While men may not have formal experience in staff management, they are more likely than women to have informal or other experience commanding labour, and they are more likely than women to be respected as bosses.
- In house-based or family businesses, the clique is men command women’s and children’s labour but control profits and reserve key business decisions for themselves.
- Women are much less likely to control outside labour or to command their own labour and time. This increases the costs and decreases the productivity of their businesses.
CARE Canada GE in EG Memory Check #1: Recognise the Gender IssuesPage 1
Memory Check #2: Chose Critical Activities
What gender equality activities are essential for your economic growth project or proposal? This checklist outlines good programming practices and activities for a wide range of economic growth practices. Use the coding below to chose the activities that are right for your project.
= a “must have” activity for any project.
L= activities more suited for long term projects (4 – 5 years)
= activity implemented at the design stage of the project cycle.
The Top Three Big Gender Inequalities in Economic GrowthISSUES / CRITICAL ACTIVITIES
- Women’s businesses are three times more likely than men’s to fail, and they typically profit one-third less than men’s for the same type and scale of business. Women’s formal and informal sector SMSEs make less money than men’s.
Hire a gender equality specialist to train staff and to advise on project implementation, risk mitigation and results measurement.
Undertake a thorough market analysis and business planning activities with beneficiary womenbefore beginning savings and loan activities or beginning business training.