SCP


Cross-cut Chapter 3 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Food Fish Chapter 1


Ecological economics, which emerged in the 1980s, challenges the economic orthodoxy of measuring progress using only the production-based market metric of GDP (van Dieren 1995; Constanza 1989). GDP-based economic accounting counts all economic activity as good (regardless of the origins of such activity or the consequences). Among other ironies, this means that environmental disasters can be considered economically beneficial due to spending on reconstruction in the aftermath; wars usually turn up as a positive for GDP due to escalating spending on armaments, fuel, transport and personnel (Hardisty 2010). On the other hand, pollution, resource degradation and waste are not counted against GDP (The Economist 2016; Stiglitz et al. 2010).


Chapter 4: Water Forest Energy Chapter 2


GDP-based economic orthodoxy reflects deeply gendered norms and assumptions about what counts as economic activity. Just as the normative economic model of GDP measurement does not appropriately reflect environmental costs and benefits, neither does it count most of the actual work done in an economy, including “wellbeing” and “care” work. In the 1980s the economist Marilyn Waring (1988) laid the groundwork for feminist economics by making the case that the contributions of most of the world’s women were left out of the conventional global economic model. Reproductive work, unpaid caring labour, unpaid household labour, child care, volunteer work, artisanal work that is not market-based, subsistence labour, and bartering and informal activities – a large share of which are done by women – are invisible in conventional global and national accounts (Ghosh 2015; Boris and Parreñas eds. 2010; Folbre 2006; Folbre 2003). It is estimated that three out of every four


None of those activities is counted in GDP-based economic measurements. Some estimates suggest that if this invisible work were counted, it would be apparent that nearly two-thirds of the world’s wealth is created by women (Duhagon 2010). Efforts to give a monetary value to unpaid and “care” work are increasing. In countries attempting to measure the value of unpaid care work, estimates range up to 60% of GDP (UNDP 2015c). In India and South Africa, unpaid care is estimated at 39% and 15% of GDP, respectively. It is estimated at 26-34% of official GDP in Guatemala and 32% in El Salvador. Estimates of household production in 27 countries, using a replacement cost approach, shows that the value of household production as a share of GDP varies considerably across countries, from above 35% in Australia, Japan and New Zealand to below 20% in the Republic of Korea and Mexico (UNDP 2015c).


Urbanization and consumption


The proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is expected to increase to 66% by 2050 (UN/DESA 2014). Population growth and continuing urbanization are projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world’s urban population by 2050, with nearly 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. If this growth follows BAU models, the ecological footprint of cities will increase (WWF 2014). Cities are the source of up to an estimated 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions (UN-Habitat 2011). While urban density can make use of public transport and other services more efficient, lowering direct energy use and emissions, urban sprawl


Box 2.4.4: Urbanism and the gender profile of economic inequality 110


While urbanization is seen as an economic driver overall, the general increase in incomes associated with it is unevenly distributed. Overall, growing income inequality is strongly associated with emerging economy urbanization, especially in the most rapidly urbanizing settings (Ukhova 2015; Oxfam 2012). This income inequality is also strongly associated with gender inequality. The emerging urban discretionary-income, high- consumption class is not equally populated by women and men, although much of the gender-specific effect is masked by the standard practice of collecting information on consumption and spending by “household” units. Men dominate the ranks of the rich, high-consuming urban class, especially at the top of the wealth pyramid. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) study examining the linkages of gender and income inequality revealed that, at the top of the income ladder, higher gender inequality is strongly associated with higher income shares in the top 10% income group (Gonzales et al. 2015). In preparation for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in 2016, Oxfam prepared an analysis which showed that the top 62 richest people in the world own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world population (some 3.6 billion people) (Oxfam 2016). Of these 62 wealthiest individuals, 56 (90%) are men, 6 (10%) are women (Forbes 2016).


hours of unpaid work is done by women (UNDP 2015a; UNDP 2015b).


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