THE GENDER ECONOMICS: THE DEBATE OVER GENDER INEQUALITY AND “HUMAN” POVERTY DURING THE 1990s

Year 2003, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 16 - 23, 01.05.2003

M. Ufuk Turan

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the debate in the 1990s between two main approaches on gender economics, the Capabilities-entitlements and the New Poverty Agenda approaches. The objective of this paper is to discuss the main topics of the debate: the gender inequality and poverty. This paper intends to determine the main differences on those topics between those approaches. In addition to that, this paper discusses the refined definitions of those approaches on various topics of gender economics. The contribution of this paper to the existing literature is to present to the readers what the new developments in gender economics in the 1990s are and is to determine on which topics those main approaches have differences on gender economics In this paper, we present two different perspectives
of the Gender economics. Since the globalization dynamics have stimulated poverty of women during
the 1990s, many Gender economists ultimately give
further emphases to the gender-aware parts of their
economic theories. Therefore, the 1990s is the time
period when serious debates on Gender issues with
its theoretical framework are put forth to the
literature. One side of the debate trusts market and
its actors to alleviate poverty as a whole, and takes,
first, GDP per capita, and then mortality statistics,
life expectancy and literacy statistics as poverty
indicators. However, the other side focuses more on
the variables of the latter indicators above, namely
Human Development Index1
, and other variables
such as technology achievement index2
and cultural
liberty3
in order to measure the poverty of women
and to improve the theoretical framework of the
Gender economics.
It is easy for researchers to find some data like
GDP per capita for many countries; however, it is
almost impossible to find all data, like mortality
statistics, life expectancy, literacy statistics,
technology achievement index and cultural liberty,
for each of the underdeveloped countries. Although
the Human Development Report Office of the
United Nations strives to establish data pool and to include as many member countries as possible from
the relevant international data agencies, for a
significant number of countries data have been still
missing for one or more of those components.
Since such data are not yet regularly available for
a sufficient number of countries, although
improving the coverage and quality of such data
has been a priority for many international
statistical communities for more than one decade,
we are not able to make either econometric models
or graphical explanations for any underdeveloped
countries.4
In other words, such data have been
revisited and attempted to improve many times
since the early 1990s and still does. Since both the
revision and improvement of the data has still
continued, we believe that such a few available
data has not been reliable, yet. Therefore, we have
not prepared an analytical and quantitative study.
Instead we prefer to collect, discuss and present the
debate with its detailed theoretical framework
during the 1990s to the readers of this study. All the
definitions we use in our theoretical framework, if it
is not indicated otherwise, are borrowed from the
Human Development Reports of the United Nations
Development Programme. We only present two
theories of the Gender economics because the other
economic theories, like heterodox economics or
conventional economics, ultimately combine their
theories with one of the theories above in order to
explain the poverty of women in all over the world.

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