Interventions needed to narrow gender gap
Chancellor College Economics professor Ben Kaluwa says narrowing the gender gap will require policy intervention.
Kaluwa said this yesterday in reaction to the study findings by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on the widening gender gap in the country over the past decade.
Kaluwa faulted poor economic orientation which he said dwells much on the agriculture sector in the rural areas.
He said: “While we understand how serious gender issues are to the economy, we also need to realise that striking a balance will require that we introduce incentives in the workplace for areas that are rarely patronised by women while we intensify sensitization on the importance of narrowing the gender gap.”
According to the 2018 Global Gender Gap Report, in the 12-year period to 2018, the country has slipped 31 places to 112 out of 149 economies.
WEF indicates that in the period under review, the country’s economic participation and opportunities genderwise men declined to position 109 from 36.
This, according to WEF, is mainly due to obstacles women still encounter in the workplace, including income gaps.
“When we consider only managers for the subset of countries for which recent data are available, just about 34 percent of global managers are women. When we include data on managers, senior officials and legislators in the set of 144 for which we have data, 68 percent of the world gap remains to be closed. This contrasts with significantly lower gender gaps in labour market participation and technical roles, where 67 percent and 74 percent of the respective gap has been bridged.
“In addition to professional level disparities, the index shows that income gaps are particularly persistent. On average, 63 percent of the wage gap and 50 percent of estimated earned income gap have been closed globally so far,” reads the report in part.
Earlier, Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare Principal Secretary Esmie Kainja said women play a vital role in the economy, but are left behind when it comes to issues of finance.
Mejn executive director June Mtila Kambalametore is on record as having said female economists should take a leading role in fighting against economic injustice women are facing in the country.
“We need to fight for the rights of women in economic justice. Women are the building blocks of every economy and we should be proud as female economists that we are part of the people who can uphold our fellow women who are marginalised,” she said.
Dominant economic models with their focus on profit-led growth perpetrate inequalities, impoverishment, rights violations and women are impacted disproportionately across the globe, according to various studies.
The Global Gender Gap report benchmarks 149 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four thematic dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, health and survival, education attainment and political empowerment.
