Sustainable Development and Economic Empowerment of Women

Abstract

The main objective of this chapter is to demonstrate the possible interrelationships between sustainable development, as a human right, and women’s economic empowerment based on the hypothesis that the aforementioned right suffers a deficit of effectiveness when faced with contexts in which the equality in labor relations is not observed. In the first part, the need for a non-rhetorical affirmation of the right to development is exposed. It follows exploring general historical issues surrounding the sexual division of labor and asserting the global need to enable women to exercise their capacities and freedoms, freeing themselves from gender stereotypes. The analysis of good practices for the induction of the right to development is carried out, with gender equity as one of its main components. Therefore, it is argued that the acceptance of women in the formal labor market and the wage parity between men and women are relevant themes to the extent that their practical implementation is hampered by a male chauvinist culture, which consequently makes the aforementioned issue a challenge.

1. Introduction

Empowering women, making them aware of their status as subjects of rights and thus promoting gender equity in all social and economic activities of a State, is a guarantee for the effective strengthening of economies, the promotion of business, the improvement of quality of life, and, consequently, the effectiveness of the human right to sustainable development, according to the United Nations Agenda 2015–2030. Thus, studying the interrelationships between the right to development and women’s economic empowerment is fundamental to the full effectiveness of human rights.

Indeed, reflections on the sexual division of labor, its global characteristics, repercussions, and perspectives, are opportune and necessary in the search for awareness of and realization of gender equality. Cardoso [1], when looking at the European scenario, for example, points out that in sectors where work is predominantly female, wages are lower compared to those paid to men, although work has the same or higher quality. Out of necessity, female workers are subjected to flexible, low-paying jobs—a problem observed in several state experiences.

Not infrequently, men and women are professionally evaluated in different ways due to the so-called “gender stereotype.” As Costa & Santos [2] points out well: “the concept of stereotype is closely linked to the study of the perception of individuals, based on the knowledge of their social category of belonging.” Gender stereotypes are, regrettably and globally, culturally accepted.

Therefore, it is intended to understand the phenomenon of the structural sexual division of labor and its impact on the effectiveness of the human right to sustainable development, highlighting the capacities of women and presenting strategies for inducing economic development with female participation in the labor market.

2. Right to development and gender equality

A part of the international debate for more than thirty years, the right to development was declared by the United Nations in 1986 as a human right. However, in spite of its enunciation, it can be seen that it sometimes does not appear in the practical domain of state planning; sometimes, it is not implemented in the social reality. In fact, States tend to show primarily rhetorical support for the right to development but neglect its basic contents in political practice [3].

One can think of the right to development as a possibility to achieve the improvement of social relations established in a given environment. This right-synthesis strives for political will and for the collective commitment to its effectiveness. After all, “whoever holds political or economic power in their hands has a commitment to humanity that they must not ignore” [4]. The responsibility for its implementation presupposes the sharing of burdens by all social actors: non-governmental organizations, international organizations, the private sector, and, of course, local and national governments. If there is no participation committed to the common well-being, it is difficult to reverse the structural conditions that impose obstacles to development.

The right to development presupposes a passive subjection of States, the international community, and also the private sector (including as an agent promoting jobs) to favor better human development, through solidarity and economic cooperation [4]. Fortunately, note that

development must be conceived as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people can enjoy […] it is emphasized that the right to development is a universal and inalienable right, an integral part of fundamental human rights [… which] recognizes the interdependent relationship between democracy, development and human rights [5].

The interdependent condition of democracy, development itself, and human rights is what allows for the affirmation of gender equality as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development, in September 2015, the United Nations adopted the SDGs as a form of strategic planning to guide state policies and international cooperation activities in the 2015–2030 Agenda, in order to remove the merely programmatic character of the right to development.¹

In the same vein, the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action [6], in its item 18, of part I, establishes that

the human rights of women and girls are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full participation of women, under conditions of equality, in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, as well as the eradication of all forms of discrimination based on sex, constitute priority objectives of the international community.

Thus, gender equality is perceived as an indispensable component for a State to assert the right to development. In the United Nations diction, the aforementioned guarantee includes, among other aspects, equal rights at work and in employment and the safeguarding of social protection and security.²

It is also observed that gender equality is intrinsically linked to the human condition [8], arises with it, and, therefore, is an aspect that is found in every human being since conception. The imputation of equality occurs at every moment that the human being is perceived as such. However, when referring to the situation of women in the world, the notorious inequalities existing between men and women are perceived, especially in the socioeconomic domains.

According to The World’s Women³, gender disparities are rooted in structural inequities in access to economic resources around the world. In many countries, women continue to be economically and exclusively dependent on their spouses. Fewer women than men earn their own income as a result of the unequal division of formal and informal work. About one in three married women in developing countries has no control over family spending on major purchases, and one in ten married women is not consulted about where their earnings are going. Also, under the terms of the project, women of working age, in developed and developing countries, are more likely to be poorer than men when they have dependent children and do not have a partner to contribute to the family income or when their income are non-existent or too low to support the entire family’s expenses. When it comes to elderly women in developed countries, they are more likely than men to be poor, particularly when they live in single-person cells. The difference in poverty rates between women and men shows a downward trend in some countries, although it continues to rise in many others.

Unequivocally, it points to the need for States to implement public policies of social protection and regulation of labor relations, which are sensitive to gender inequalities. However, in times of crisis, the tension between the state’s role in inducing development, enabling the reduction of inequalities and discrimination, and the need for financial contingency and economic growth based on private results generates a conflictive situation.

3. Sexual division of work and gender inequalities as historical constructions

According to Facchi [9], between the 14th and 18th centuries, several European women were burned and tortured under the accusation of being witches when they tried to have autonomy over their bodies. The European bourgeois man submitted, through violence, the woman to the role of a housewife while he affirmed himself as the provider of the family. With this, the sexual and structural division of contemporary labor was determined.

According to the bibliographic review of Cisne [10], the sexing of the female body designates an extension of the concepts of slavery and servitude, through which women are reduced to sex, being appropriated with regard not only to their workforce but also to their body and their life. This phenomenon of historical materiality denotes the concrete material appropriation of women’s bodily individuality, in a process that takes them out of their subject condition and turns them into “things.” Therefore, such appropriation differs from the simple capitalist exploitation of the “free” workforce, as it does not designate a formal contractual or wage relationship measured by hours or products. It is an appropriation that takes place both individually, especially through marriage and the family, and collectively, through sexist institutions such as churches, the State, and companies. Consequently, its expressions are: the appropriation of time, the appropriation of body products, the sexual obligation, and the physical burden of members in need of care, especially males.

Not even with the affirmation of fundamental rights, as observed with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a French political document that was fundamental to the construction of later democratic constitutional models, did it get rid of the patriarchal roots present until today. Olympe de Gouges’ proposition of a Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens (1791) was vehemently opposed and rejected, reaffirming the “naturalization” of the role of women as “objects”, alien to political decision-making and, essentially, restricted to the domestic space. In the aforementioned document, the woman, considered “unnatural” and “too dangerous,” defended, in her article 13, that for the maintenance of the State, “the contributions of women and men must be equal”, since women participate “in all the thankless work, of all the heavy tasks”; and “therefore, have the same participation in the distribution of posts, jobs, positions, dignities and industry” [11].

4. Capabilities and freedoms of women

In due course, it is asserted that the exposed sexual division of labor leads to sexual discrimination in labor relations at a local and global level (as denounced by the United Nations Agenda). Such discrimination occurs from the social (re)affirmation of gender stereotypes. For example: women are seen taking care of children and men working outside their homes, and this is seen as acceptable and correct.⁴

Such stereotypes over time and in different spaces did not allow the woman to show her true capabilities. Capabilities, from the perspective of Nussbaum [12], are constituted as “what people are truly capable of being and doing in an informed way, through an intuitive idea of a worthwhile life be lived”. The role of women’s capacities in inducing the development of individuals’ public liberties is affirmed, enabling the creation of a political-institutional-normative environment that overcomes national, regional, religious, racial, and economic distinctions through the affirmation of female-centered human rights “in reflecting on the basic political principles that can provide the basis for a set of constitutional guarantees in all nations” [12]. In these terms, the effectiveness of women’s capabilities and freedoms is an important factor in consolidating democratic environments.

It is pointed out that beliefs in the immutability of the sexual division of labor will only disappear if social “roles” are re-signified and work activities are shared equitably. Thus, in order to make sustainable development effective in practice, it is necessary to recognize and affirm women’s freedoms for the full exercise of decent work.⁵

In this way, the political safeguard of these capacities highlights the potential they have in expanding their freedoms so that, when they reach a desirable standard of living, based on equal working conditions and opportunities, they deconstruct unfair structural models, promoting socioeconomically more favorable environments and, consequently, inducing the effectiveness of the right to development.

Assuring capabilities to people so that they can exercise their main rights is to grant them freedom to have the kind of life they want [14]. Ideally, from the moment women freely choose a profession, they enter the labor market in the area of their aptitude and are able to receive the consideration corresponding to their functions. And so, women are allowed to live the life they have chosen and not the life that patriarchal society has determined based on gender stereotypes.

The education given to children is a decisive factor, so that, regardless of gender, they can, in the future, choose the profession they want.⁶ It is necessary to teach boys that they are also responsible for household chores and girls that they can study exact subjects if they want, noting that the educational process is not restricted to one gender.

Nussbaum [16], when analyzing capabilities based on entitlement theory, teaches that it is not just a matter of a subject “having a right” but an individual “having a right to” some given object. It is not enough to have the right; it is necessary that this right be exercised, with due urgency. Women need to be aware of their rights, and this is made possible through education. If women live in situations that lower their self-esteem and place them in a situation of submission, they will not exercise their abilities. They will not know they are free if they do not realize their rights are being violated [17].

Therefore, raising women’s awareness of their capabilities and freedoms and understanding the value they have represent an effective strategy for overcoming inequities in the labor market. Technology, in this sense, comes to cooperate with this urgent social transformation in the reality of developed countries, since non-human instruments end up “humanizing” managerial choices, in non-discriminatory interference, regardless of personal opinions or social pressures. Thus open up the possibility of division of labor based on competence and not on gender affinity as a perspective of change.

5. Good practices in sustainable development induction

The United Nations, through its Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and its agency Global Compact, with a view to minimize the harmful repercussions for sustainable development arising from the affirmation of patriarchal labor structures around the world, has proposed Principles of Empowerment of Women as a way of guiding the business productive sector in the sense of distributing power to women in the work environment.

1. Establish gender-sensitive corporate leadership at the highest level;

2. Treat all women and men fairly at work, respecting and supporting human rights and non-discrimination;

3. Ensure the health, safety, and well-being of all women and men who work in the company;

4. Promote education, training, and professional development for women;

5. Support women’s entrepreneurship and promote women’s empowerment policies through supply chains and marketing;

6. Promote gender equality through community-oriented initiatives and social activism;

7. Measure, document, and publish the company’s progress in promoting gender equality.

The international organization’s commitment is in line with some state experiences in which the protection of anti-discrimination is a fundamental concern as a constitutional commitment and instrument of affirmation of the human right to sustainable development. The United Kingdom, for example, in April 2017, began to require all companies with a number of 250 employees or more to publish, by April 2018, the salary difference in the payment of employees. Regulation no. 172/2017, which proposes transparency on business data related to inequalities in payments between men and women, in compliance with the Equality Act of 2010, represents an important advance for the economic empowerment of women, constituting an unequivocal normative mechanism of development induction.⁷The British State Secretary for International Relations, even when commenting on the new regulation, stated that “helping women reach their full potential is not only the right thing to do, but also makes economic sense” [18].

It is important that political authorities are sensitive to the practical implementation of gender equality, overcoming the concept of hegemonic masculinity.⁸ The guarantee of fundamental rights (especially education) allows women to open up their professional space, in line with democratic premises. Understanding the effective promotion of equality in the labor field as the induction of equals services and rights, it’s must impose a state intervention in the economy focused on efforts to empower women as agents of development.

Freitas [20] is emphatic: “sustainability implies the practice of equity.” In this sense, it should be said that, in the present and in future generations, there is the challenge of eradicating gender discrimination, in order to achieve the constitutional objective of building a plural, equitable, and sustainably developed State.⁹ However, there is a long way to go in the search for equality between men and women.

Gender equity, which has been greatly impeded by misogynistic social conceptions, has hindered economic development in different local realities. It is argued, therefore, that based on the idea of cooperation for sustainability, public enforcement optimizes this reality.

Donaggio & Midori [21], along these lines, assess that the “gain resulting from greater gender equity would be even greater in developing countries” such as Brazil. It is estimated that greater gender equity could result in an estimated 10% increase in Latin America’s Gross Domestic Product. Indeed, such a positive impact would depend on “eliminating not only the current wage gap between men and women for the same job with the same training, but also other obstacles to development potential,” which “includes various forms of unpaid work,” economic underrepresentation (such as discrimination in the granting of credit), political underrepresentation, and the various forms of violence” to which women are subject.

6. Conclusions

The proposed and developed reflection leads to the following conclusive considerations:

1. When analyzing the sexual division of labor in its origins in general historical lines, it is clear that unpaid female domestic work maintains the functioning of a productive “gear” that supports male activities and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, which impact the social construction of the female body and lead to multiple violence against it. However, awareness of women’s capabilities and freedoms helps in the understanding of gender equity as a human right that must be observed in the labor market at global levels. It is perceived that it is not a matter of devaluing men but of equalizing the female condition, giving them decent opportunities for work.

2. Gender equality, as a component of sustainable development, in terms of the United Nations agenda, goes beyond the problem of the sexual division of labor, globally influencing vectors of impact on the right to development in different state realities, such as: the optimization of the issue of women’s salary, the existence of female management and leadership models, the implementation of opportunities for professional advancement, the eradication of all kinds of sexual and gender discrimination, and, in particular, the right to education (for decent work and for raising awareness about rights).

3. The unequal position between women and men in power relations (notably, in family, labor, and political spaces) is not a problem-issue that ends in itself. It is also a theme that provides a privileged point of view for the analysis of democracy. Thus, understanding the democratic experience as that of inducing environments of effective prevalence of fundamental rights, it is advocated for the affirmation of sustainable development as a structuring principle of a fair State, which, therefore, has in the economic empowerment of women a component of your development.