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Women Hard Hit by Transition
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Annette Dixon
Sector Director, Human Development, Europe and Central Asia
and
Karen Mason
Gender Coordinator
Published in the International Herald Tribune
March 1, 2000 | It is one of the sadder consequences of the difficult political, social and economic transitions of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States that women are bearing much of the brunt of adverse circumstances they neither created nor have been able much to influence.
Discrimination against women may not be conscious, or official, policy in the transition economies. But all the standard indices - poverty rates, healthcare, enrollment in education and the labor force, participation in the political process - reveal the extent to which women are more exposed than they were.
The cause of the problem is easy enough to identify. Whatever else the old socialist command economies managed to do well or badly, an explicit contract did exist: that the state would provide women with childcare, healthcare and other social supports to enable them to carry the double load of running a household and being productive members of the fulltime labor force.
These systems are now under severe strain, often to the point of collapse. A broad array of state social benefits have come under the budgetary axe, forcing many women out of formal employment or into the informal job market, where social supports are negligible. At the same time, privatization has diminished the role of the state as a primary employer of women in heavy industry and the public services, with the nascent private sectors unwilling, or unable, to fill the vacuum.
All told, household poverty has increased five fold across Eastern Europe and Central Asia and its social by-products are discernible everywhere: sharp increases, especially among men, in alcoholism, suicide and mortality, higher incidence of migration, a decline in marriage and a rise in divorce.
All have combined to produce a rapidly growing number of households headed by women - and these households are now deprived of many of the state-provided services that used to constitute a safety net. Meanwhile, throughout the region, there is little evidence that men, never much disposed to share in the household chores, have changed their ways.
On paper, obvious remedies present themselves. Economic growth, though often tough to achieve, should reduce poverty, but will itself not be enough to cure critical social ills. It will need to be supplemented by a determined effort to ensure that the positive legacies of the pre-transition era - the commitment to gender equality and the provision of social services - are not further eroded. It is particularly important to maintain girls' enrollment at all levels of education.
Many countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have constitutional provisions promising non-discrimination on their statute books. But they need to be backed up by a more comprehensive legal and social framework ensuring that both men and women have equal access to labor and capital markets, and to education, health and social services.
The World Bank itself can, and should, play an enhanced role in this collective process. Its country offices should work closely with women’s NGOs knowledgeable about the problems of women and girls. A representative of the national women’s machinery, for example the minister for women’s affairs, should take part in World Bank-government economic policy dialogues. And fundamental issues of labor-market discrimination and reduced social safety nets should be raised as issues of economic efficiency and equity in discussions with national governments.
Anecdotal evidence of the plight of women can be powerful. But, in the era of the Internet, it is surely no substitute for better, and more widely disseminated, gender-disaggregated data to help policy formulation throughout the region. There is still time to ensure that the transition in countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States takes greater account of women’s needs, recognizing their dual roles in the labor market and the household.
Clearly the task will not be easy. It is one thing to recognize the existence of the twin trap - that poverty exacerbates gender disparities and gender inequalities hinder development - but quite another to do something about it. Longstanding ingrained attitudes cannot be legislated away at the stroke of a pen.
As Pieter Stek, head of the World Bank’s committee on development effectiveness, has put it: “if the effort flags, we are not going to get there. Minds, money and mentality, at times a martial one, are needed within the Bank and outside.”
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