Role of Gender Equality in Development - A Literature Review

To get a sense of the role that gender equality plays in the process of development and growth, diverse literature is reviewed from microeconomics and macroeconomics and developing and developed country perspective. Some global stylized facts are reported and both empirical and theoretical results are surveyed. Women' s roles are found to be in a process of a global change. These changes may stem from changes in technology as the industrialization has made the extensive homebased production obsolete and reduced the demand for children as an input for this production. Instead of the gendered specialization in autarkic households, the modern specialization in the market place may have led to lower fertility and the changing roles of women in the economies. Adjustment to these changes poses challenges globally as the old hierarchical gender valuations still appear in many different disguises. Overall the literature gives hints as to what the issues in gender inequality are that seem to be associated with the overall level of economic development: values and religion, cultural restrictions and roles, legal and inheritance laws and practices, the marital pattern of resource allocation, monogamy vs. polygyny, labor market access, education, fertility, gender specific market failures in finance, power in the political decision making.