Long-term trends in the World economy: The gender dimension

This paper considers the implications of long-term trends in the international economy for the relative employment and income of men and women in developed and developing countries. We find that, given a persistent gender division of labor, mass unemployment in the North is due to different forces operating on men and women. The rate of growth of men's jobs has fallen because of deindustrialization, but men have not withdrawn from the labor force at a comparable rate. Women have been entering the labor force in feminized jobs at a faster rate than they have been created. In the South, women have largely taken traditionally feminized jobs in the labor-intensive, export-oriented growing manufacturing sectors; in Latin America, entry has been largely in the service sector. Men have been losing jobs in agriculture and domestic manufacturing. The paper proposes that the optimal solution to the mass unemployment problem in the North, as well as in the South, and the apparent competition for jobs between the North and the South and between men and women lies in achieving a trend increase in the growth rate of OECD and world aggregate demand and output. But such a trend rise in the long-term rate of growth of demand would only be possible if there were new cooperative institutional arrangements within and between countries. In such arrangements women need to have an important, independent role.