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Development, freedom and domestic violence

Dr. Dileni Gunawardena

The concept of development as freedom is a key concept in the writings of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who has had a considerable influence on the way we think about development today. Sen argues that the goal of development should not be about how much we produce (Gross National Product) or even how much we consume (basic needs) but how free we are to participate fully in the society in which we live (capabilities and freedoms).

Yet, there are many freedoms and capabilities-and their reverse or absence-”unfreedoms” and capability deprivations—that do not receive sufficient attention in the discourse on development. One such “unfreedom” that is the current focus of much-needed attention is “Gender-based Violence.” The Global Campaign on the 16 days of activism against Gender Based Violence (GBV) began on November 25, the International Day Against Violence against Women and ends on December 10, International Human Rights day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights.

Bina Agarwal and Pradeep Pande in an article titled “Freedom from domestic violence” (Journal of Human Development 2007) point out that domestic violence is an extremely pernicious type of “unfreedom”: by reducing women’s self-confidence and self-respect, it prevents them from exercising other freedoms such as education and employment, which in turn reduce their ability to escape violence. Moreover, children who grow up in homes with domestic violence are more likely to accept (or practise) domestic violence in their own households when they are adults.

This column argues that policies and actions to improve economic opportunities for women should be among the strategies to address gender based violence. This argument is based on both economic theory and empirical evidence from studies conducted in the East as well as the West.

An expert from the Ministry of Health Services in Sri Lanka was recently quoted in a leading newspaper as saying that gender-based-violence cuts across all strata: rich or poor, young or old, newly married or married for a long period of time. His words echo a 1984 U.S. Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence that states “We must admit that family violence is found at every level of our social structure.”

While both these statements are true, it is undeniable that domestic violence is higher among certain categories. There is evidence for this assertion from studies all over the world. For example, a Bureau of Justice Report based on national Crime Victimization Surveys in the United States show that being young, black, poor, and divorced or separated all increase the likelihood of a woman being the victim of intimate partner abuse (Rennison and Welchans 2000). According to this study, women in the lowest income households had 7 times the abuse rates of those in the highest income households.

Economic theory has an explanation for this. The economics of family decision making is a branch of economics that is at least fifty years old. Initial models thought of the family as a single unit, with a single harmonious objective. Theories based on bargaining models in the early 1980s assume that family members have conflicting preferences and have an explicit bargaining structure to resolve conflicts, much like union workers and employers. Economic models of domestic violence were first developed in the 1990s using the bargaining model approach. The main idea in bargaining models is that the outcome or decision depends on each party’s preference and their ability to exercise that preference (power) within the household. The best opportunity for each individual outside the relationship establishes a minimum acceptable position within the relationship. The model’s prediction is that the stronger the alternatives outside the marriage, the less likely the threat of violence.

Improvements in women’s individual economic status enable them to leave abusive relationships to support themselves. Overall gender inequality in the community also helps—if a woman lives in an area where employment opportunities for women are available and female wages are high, there is a greater credible threat that she could leave the marriage, and therefore the partner would reduce violence rather than risk losing her. Outside options could also take the form of services such as shelters for battered women, welfare services and legal services to help women with protection orders, child support and custody (Amy Farmer and Jill Tiefenthaler, Explaining the Decline in Domestic Violence, Review of Social Economy 1997).

Empirical results from studies in the United States support some of these predictions. For example, women with higher educational attainment, employment status, and earnings suffer less violence. Women with access to fewer resources are less likely to leave abusive partners. Overall gender inequality is linked to higher rates of abuse across countries. But all forms of economic independence are not equal in how they lessen domestic violence.

Two factors are evident in studies in the West as well as in the East. Firstly, relative differences between partners matter. For example, if women earn more than their spouses, an increase in earnings may lead to greater domestic violence. Secondly, having immovable property (in Kerala, India) or a place to go, such as family, or shelters (in Santa Barbara, California, ) significantly reduces the threat of violence and the incidence of physical violence as well. Agarwal and Panda suggest that apart from educating women on their legal inheritance rights, states may need to consider housing subsidies for women subject to domestic violence.

(The writer is a senior lecturer in Economics, Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Peradeniya.)

Who will rule the world?

Aditha Dissanayake

World Economic Forum’s sixth annual Global Gender Gap Report 2011

The World Economic Forum’s study ranks 135 nations according to progress made in women’s education, health, economic clout and political empowerment. Last year’s top 10 - Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Philippines, Lesotho and Switzerland - continue to hold their spots, but there was movement below them, notably Cuba climbing back to No. 20.

While 85 percent of the 135 countries in the survey, representing more than 93 percent of the world’s population, made some progress in women’s health and education levels, relatively few showed marked advances for women in economic and political parity since the first survey came out in 2006.

It is hard to imagine the reaction of most feminists if they read Piyadasa Sirisena’s novella “Parivarthanaya”, written way back in 1934. In Chapter six, the judge compares a woman to a gem. “Don’t we have to safeguard a gem with utmost care? A gem can’t look after itself. A gem has to be looked after by someone who loves that gem” says the judge and asks “can there be a worst disaster than when a woman tries to do the work that should be done by a man and when a man tries to do the work that should be done by a woman?”.

What would the judge say if he had lived today? Would he have been amazed at how the world had evolved avoiding imminent disaster with more and more women doing the work traditionally assigned to men while men have taken on the role of the “housewife?”. In other words, to use the metaphor the judge uses, are things as disastrous as he predicts with the ‘gems’ not only looking after themselves but their keepers as well?

Not so. According to statistics given in the Newsweek magazine women today, “are the biggest emerging market in the history of the planet” so much so that in another five years most job categories even those which were traditionally held by men will be filled by women - and the world surely will be the better for it.

Or will it? Even though the image of the tough minded, high powered business executive climbing the corporate ladder is becoming increasingly common not only in the west but in several Asian countries too women still face problems and limitations and the “average” woman hardly fits this idealized stereotype.

This is a problem which seems to have existed from the very beginning of the feminist movement. A Reader’s Digest of the late 1960s reveals how a panel of doctors and psychiatrists made a study to find out why so many young women complain of fatigue. Is it psychological? Bad eating habits? Lack of exercise? Boredom? The panel ultimately determined that the number one reason women complain of fatigue is because they are tired. Being a woman is hard work.

Especially if you happen to be living in a developed country. According to the World Economic Forum’s sixth annual Global Gender Gap Report 2011, released this October, when it comes to overcoming gender limitations, poor countries like Lesotho, hold a higher rank (ninth over all) than the UK or the USA. The UK ranked 33rd - behind such countries as the Philippines and Mozambique - for economic participation and opportunity, revealing that even though more women than men go to university in the UK and the US and tend to outlive them, men still dominate economic and political leadership. These figures go hand in hand with research that shows women in the U.S may be working more, and in greater numbers, but they are still just 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs, and make 77 cents on the dollar. “While many developed economies have succeeded in closing the gender gap in education, few have succeeded in maximizing the returns from this investment,” the report states.

There are signs of improvement, though, in other parts of the world, indicating that you are lucky if you are a woman living in a country like Cuba, Tanzania, Turkey, Philippines and Sri Lanka. (Philippines, among the poorest countries in Asia, scored high in all survey categories of this year’s report, outdoing some of the world’s hottest economies). Sociologists feel that women in these developing countries have unexpected advantages when compared with their western counterparts. Extended families, for example, mean they often have to grapple less with issues of child care, and feel less fraught over work/life balance than their Western peers. Due to this unsung freedom of the developing world some sociologists believe when it comes to gender limitations these countries have “a clean slate”. According to Saadia Zahidi, head of the World Economic Forum’s women leaders and gender parity programme, “Closing the gap is not a luxury good just for high end companies and countries ... smaller gender gaps are directly correlated with increased economic competitiveness.”

Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum says it best, “a world where women make up less than 20 per cent of the global decision-makers is a world that is missing a huge opportunity for growth and ignoring an untapped reservoir of potential.”

In other words it is time for change. A tsunami of change, at the end of which women will rule the world, making it, undoubtedly and unsurprisingly, a better place.

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Your name after marriage:

A great post-wedding game

Frances Ryan

Stay put, go double-barrelled or pick a Brangelina-style mesh? The options for a non-traditional surname strategy are endless.

There’s a lot in a name. As a form of identification names provide a fine service, more personable than a numbering system 1 to 7 billion and one that prevents social interaction from degenerating into “you, the one with the hair” and a range of vague descriptions. They aren’t without their problems, though: none more of a quagmire than what happens to a woman’s name if she gets married.

Though sense would respond with “Nothing, why should it?”, when it comes to marriage and female autonomy, sense has no place. The reasons that were used to justify a woman losing her name up until the mid-20th century are in the modern context, irrelevant. Few couples wake up in a cold sweat over proving an heir and who will inherit the land and the town house. Despite what fathers still giving away their daughters suggests, if you rank people’s reasons for saying “I do”, passing a woman between estates most likely won’t even make the top three.

In our minds at least, marriage has moved on. The same however can’t be said for what we do with our names.

Despite an estimated 50 per cent of UK brides bucking the trend, be it in law or culture, the assumption that a woman will take her husband’s name persists. You’ll do well to find a newlywed who isn’t greeted with “Mrs” despite having no intention to be anything but a “Ms”; the decision to keep her name still perceived as different enough to be of note.

Faced with the patriarchal status quo and the warm glow of history, it seems we can’t help but get a little teary. Slotted somewhere next to the thinking that a wedding is a woman’s chance to (finally) be a princess, it’s apparently a sign of love to sacrifice the name that’s been yours since birth. As pop tells young girls a man’s name is the ultimate gift, some would be concerned for the state of modern romance. I’d suggest starting with squashed flowers from the local garage and working up from there.

Ultimately, of course, the pull is tradition. The antiquated past in this case being a positive to embrace. Tradition, however, can be abandoned. If indoor toilets and women no longer being tethered to the sink have taught us anything, there might be even be benefits to it.

Far more fun than thank you cards, there can be no greater post-wedding game than sitting down, rejecting convention, and figuring out what you’re going to be called. The obvious option is to keep your name as it was before. It has the advantage of respecting both genders as equal, and most importantly allows girls you haven’t spoken to since school to still be recognisable on social networking sites.

For many there’s an appeal in the change, though, of the sense of family unit that comes in not only sharing a home but a name. It’s a strategy of particular use if children come along, allowing you to avoid the fight between names that usually results in the one enduring childbirth having theirs consigned to the dustbin of life. Double-barrelling is a classic for this purpose - though in ducking feminism and entering straight into class warfare, it isn’t without problems of its own.

Some men have started to take their wife’s name and the world as yet hasn’t ended. That they have to do it via deed poll rather than the simple tick of a box offered to women just ensures the law can confirm they’re indeed weird.

Luckily the newest marital name trend has ensured the long search for a solution is over. Couples are now “meshing”: blending the key syllables of both of their surnames to form a brand new sparkling one. For the romantics, it’s the ultimate union - and allows the fortunate to discard the shackles of mediocrity and swap Granger and Den for “Danger”.

Guardian.co.uk