 Well, thank you very much for coming. I know it's been a long day and a long three days So I'm glad there's still some attention and I'm also grateful to wider for Scheduling this session Since it's kind of a 30-year Session one can do a little stocktaking and I was thinking okay What would I say as the stock taking and I think the main achievement of the last 30 years? I think I can say clearly that gender is definitely Mainstreamed as part of the inclusive development story I think that's widely recognized how it's implemented is another point as Jean-Philippe has just suggested and whether it's implemented as another point, but I think it's at least a Mainstreamed within discussions and I guess from an economic point of view I think there have been major changes in theory and the models we use and I would say that the sort of behavioral economics revolution that many people have been talking about I would say it gave the final blow to the basic assumptions of micro and macro models about sort of individualist selfish ever maximizing Homo-economus But the context for that criticism to me dates at least back 30 years because I remember that this concept was originally attacked by feminist economic scholars of the late 1970s and 1980s but their criticism was sort of viewed as Maybe inopportune Fringe Because the underlying economic models Didn't really allow for it So I think now But having said that I would say even 30 years ago It was recognized that in many situations Economic situations and development situations men and women behave differently as groups as individuals in households and families and So I would say that it is in common and Expected now to ask how a policy or an economic change of change process might affect the opportunities and constraints of different groups rich poor rural urban Cass ethnic groups and genders and it's not just women that are the focus of gender Economics these days if for example in herding societies people are very concerned about about young boys not being able to go to school and So there are situations in which males are disadvantaged Nonetheless, I would say in low-income countries where many of us are now Focusing most of our concern the vulnerable Those most vulnerable among the lower income groups within low-income countries tend to be women and So my focus today is on women now I'm going to talk about a particular aspect of economic development, which is the economic transformation process and I'm going to talk about a gender and the economic transformation process and Economic transformation, I've defined it up there Economic transformation is a process that creates a particularly desirable form of economic growth and development Because it's a it's viewed to be as a more sustainable Growth and so that's where a lot of the focus of growth policy of macro policy and of my the micro foundations underlying it is now focused and It's a process right It involves a lot of different policies and events that create this process So in a way, it's kind of artificial to ask okay, who's going to benefit will it reduce poverty? Will it increase incomes will women benefit but at the same time since it's now such a critical process It seemed important to ask whether the distribution of winners and losers that one finds with any social economic political process Will have a gender bias now there is a long literature on gender inequality and growth and Growth and gender inequality so the literature that goes both ways There's a literature on gender and trade and there's a more broad Literature on gender and globalization, but I didn't find a particular literature on this topic So when ODI asked me to do a paper on it I was quite intrigued to ask the question what about economic transformation and gender So the question that I am posing is How might the transformation affect the opportunities of poor and middle-class women in low-income countries now? I'm posing the question of the opportunities. I am not posing the question of gender equity I am not asking Across a number of variables will the gap widen or not? I'm focusing more on opportunities And the reason is because at least that was seemed somewhat tractable That would be the main reason So now what I'm going to present to you is a kind of a framework that I developed and some Evidence I pulled out from the literature on what we might expect So the framework I start by thinking about the main female roles in In developing countries and of course most people and most economists Think about Females in market work otherwise known as labor force participation But of course women have a very important role a dominant role In the in terms of time for sure in the care economy, right household work Then you can think about females as children and adolescents and whether they'll benefit whether the process of transformation Will benefit will bring them more opportunities both Today during the process and in the future and then as individuals consumers and citizens and the citizens aspect also goes back to the Human rights aspect as well raising the question that John Philippe just posed will an economic transformation process bring more rights and for women and reduce the norms that Reduce opportunities and pose constraints Okay, so Let's see I have no idea if you can read this but that and I apologize that it's so small But I couldn't figure out a way to break up this chart But in this chart what I've done is I've kind of laid out my framework and how I applied it So the first thing is I talked about various outcomes that we might expect From economic transformation in this table in this in the realm of market work And then I talked about the possible effects on females and then I talked I made a judgment on the probability of The direction of impact on females opportunities Okay, so the first outcome people mostly think about from economic transformation is expansion of employment and I separate out tradeables and non-tradables. I do that because economic trading and the trade sector and Increased Access to the global economy is often viewed as a critical element within transformation. So that's one reason I separated out Okay, so The first thing is that it is well known that there are There are gendered sectors and gendered occupations So in every country of the world you will find occupations where you have more men and Occupations where you have more women. They are not the same all over the world But there are there has been a literature on gender and trade that shows for example that the garment sector Tends to be female dominated and the electronic sector and the explanation for it is that women have smaller hands But somehow those smaller hands don't seem to be useful for the repair sector for example or other sectors Which require manual dexterity so? it is Kind of an interesting thing, but I sort of take this gendered occupational segregation as expected Because as I said, you know, you can look at the most gender if you have your gender indexes you can look at your most Highest gender index society and you still see a high amount of gender segregation and occupations Okay, so the first whoops, I didn't want to do that. Okay the first thing I talk about is that You know for example one aspect of economic transformation that people tend to focus on is an increase in the light manufacturing sector And that will probably increase Employment that may favor women so it may increase the demand for labor from women a female specific increase in labor demand and I suggested the evidence seems to suggest that that would probably be positive in earnings our work ours work Possibly in job security compared with the sector that they're currently working in which may be agriculture Maybe self-employment which has much less job security But you know it depends on which part of the light manufacturing sector So the evidence is that for example food processing Does not employ a lot of women so it will depend on whether it's garments like Bangladesh or food processing or or what? and in general an increase in Output of tradable services does not increase demand for female labor. So because of the skill gap and So that means that if females if it if as it's happening in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa Where the economic transformation is moving in the direction of services? In order for women to benefit through this employment effect They need to have those skills and they need to have access to opportunities to build those skills and Also, for example, there's evidence from Mexico that NAFTA the NAFTA treaty which increased the demand for Higher skilled labor. So men benefited more However in the sectors Because men had the skills women didn't have the skills to compete at the same time what the trade In the sectors where women were working with alongside men In the lower skilled sectors actually the gender wage gap decreased. So there is some evidence that even where women don't have the skills There can be some benefits now. What about employment in the non-tradable sectors? So again, the non-tradable sectors are a mixed bag the construction sector Which would be expected to expand and has expanded a lot in Africa? Tends to have low female participation in South Asia tends to have female participation But primarily in the very lowest skilled lowest paid jobs, you know carrying rocks around and breaking them and whatever Now public supplied services another non-tradable sector tends to employ more females So I don't have time to go through all of this But the one of the main issues one of the main variables that depends on whether females Benefit is what sectors expand? Are those sectors that are going to expand female demand for female labor? And and there are they sectors where women would earn higher earnings than they are in the sector where they're now working Or will they move into sectors that men have been in for example? When the mining sector Expands expanded in some countries the evidence suggests that the men moved into the mining jobs and the women moved into some of the Non-farm enterprises that the men had been running and they were also got higher earnings Now there is a possibility that And then what about agriculture the agriculture sector, which is a sector where? Large section of the labor force men and women are employed. What if economic transportation economic transfer Transformation involves a process of raising productivity in that sector. Well, again This will depend my expectation Based on the evidence is that men tend to get those commercial agricultural opportunities first But again There as we will see there is a scope for for policy So I guess what I'm saying is in areas where there already are existing gender gaps and women are losers Which has been shown to be in smallholder agriculture for example It's not clear whether those gaps will will reduce or stay the same or increase And in but in sectors where the demand for female labor may be expected to improve We can't expect some positive Effects on on women's economic opportunities. Okay, what about the care economy and children a time use and housework? So as probably all of you know Women in low-income countries spend a lot of time on housework They spend so in some of these time use studies Somebody showed that I think it was Pakistan that in Pakistan In Sweden comparing Sweden wouldn't Pakistan Men and women spend almost well the household spends about the same total amount of time caring for children So there don't seem to be any labor saving processes that can be invoked and caring for children But in terms of the other aspects of the care economy cooking cleaning fetching water getting water or these other aspects Women in Pakistan spend three times as much time as in Sweden Why because women Swedish women have stoves and washing machines and you know, whatever, right? so one possibility is that if Household income rises with the economic trans transformation. There may that household income may be spent on you know Products and services that reduce the burden of the care the work of the care economy on women It may not be it depends on inter-household bargaining and preferences and and what what women control and again if women are making the money Are able to earn the money Then the household may value their labor more and the preferences may change for some of this labor Intensive products. So this is an area where we might see women gaining There could be lower fertility and evidence has shown for example in the evidence comes mostly I have to say from Bangladesh the garment industry in Bangladesh has been so heavily studied but in But not just that but also the what's it called call center Industry in India both of those Expansion of both of those sectors has been shown to reduce early marriage and fertility Among young women and this has a positive health effect and and a Lower it lowers fertility less children to care for this also has a positive health effect for women and lowers the burden of child care but of course The question is will there be a reduction in the care economy work or not You know one reason women tend to be in agriculture is they can co-produce They can work at home and they can create some economic value as well and they can have more flexible time That's one reason why women tend to be in informal sector in general and if more market work Puts more rigidities on their time Then this could increase the time poverty and This could have negative effects and it depends on on the on the response of the household Does the responsive is there is the household able to purchase more services or not? is Does the do the younger children pick up the slack does the mother pick up the or the grandmother who picks up the slack? With the increased hours of work of in the of market work of women Okay, so then Another way of looking at this question is children and adolescent outcomes and here in general We expect it to be positive primarily because of the income effect So economic transformation Should lead to higher earnings and this should lead to better Human more money to spend on human capital for the children But there is some and it and it should also the the fact that women's Labor is now has a higher market price has been shown in a number of studies to lead to Increased spending on children increased enrollment in education Etc. Etc. So There's definitely been a lot of evidence about that But there's also some evidence again about reduced health outcomes from children coming from the inflexibility of the health system relative to women working and the inflexibility of their hours of work and in particular there was a study in Columbia that showed that when The garment sector expanded Actually women were less likely to take their kids for vaccination Why because the health sector made them wait all day and they couldn't afford to take a day off of work So if the services are not Responding to the time poverty of women There could also be negative outcomes for children so finally we have women as individuals consumers citizens and adults and You know, I think there's a lot of discussion about whether increased earnings Brings increased female empowerment increased self-impa and power and agency within the household in the community And I would say the evidence is the evidence from South Asia is strong and the answer is yes The evidence from other regions is not so strong So, I mean it may be if you start from a kind of a lower threshold you can you can gain it completely But I think it will depend on some of these norms and issues There's evidence that increased cash earnings and employment increases civic participation It may improve mobility bottom line. We don't really know But I think the important point is that In addition to all the policies that we all know should be part of the standard policy recommendation There are additional areas that are even more important when we consider the question What are we getting economic transformation and how do we make that inclusive and I Focused on agriculture. I will focus on worker health and factories Which actually some evidence suggests is a management issue and so And I focused on female entrepreneurship and access to finance, but I would also And there I would also Say that So and some the transformative growth does have huge potential upsides one area We haven't had a chance to talk about as migration. However Economic transformation tends to go with urbanization urbanization in general tends to be the gateway for economic transformation Okay, that means more people in urban areas moving to urban areas rural urban migration in some countries Families migrate in some countries individuals migrate. This will be different This will have different gender effects And in general if the family migrates it's better for women than just if the male migrates and there's some Scholarship that suggests that females increase value in the labor market creates the conditions for human rights Legislation and the theory is that men now care about their daughters They don't care about their wives, but apparently they care about their daughters and their daughter's opportunities This is scholarship primarily from the US But anyway, that's the theory But the most important but the one I want to continue to highlight is the failure to do things the government ought to be doing Right running a decent health care system providing access to water providing sanitation except providing safe transportation and mobility options will Make things worse. I think there's also some important issues for adolescent females So they're ready to take advantage of the opportunities We don't have time to talk about that because I think I'm running out of time We can talk about that later. I think there's a lot of area where we need more research I would say that most of the research I dug up was primarily on South Asia There's not much on Africa or East Asia I think we should learn try to learn what we can learn from Sub-Saharan African economies on this range of issues where they've some that have started to transform I think we should see what we can learn from Indonesia and Malaysia, which have had particular kinds of transformation Malaysia's had a transformation of a natural resource economy, which is more similar to to Africa than say Bangladesh What can we learn from Brazil or Mexico? The research of bloom about management really matters Will this lead to better treatment of women in factories, you know The Scholarship says that the women the the women working in the garment in the bank in Garment industry in Bangladesh are really happy that they have the job that they've had more power and agency That they've been able to and that in the villages where the women come from the went more There's been a spillover effect and went more women go to school and their female children go to school and in China once the once the females had a chance to go into the Light manufacturing index fathers started sending their girls to school more and paying school fees, etc but the question is those jobs are still kind of bad jobs and they can damage the health of women and We need to see whether management can change it and then I think we need to think about how to reduce gender-based violence which tends to be a consequence of Increased female mobility and so we have to think about that. Okay, enough. Thank you