A note on gender parity in development

I struggle with gender equality issues. On the one hand, I want all people to have equal rights, equal protection, and equal opportunity - male or female. But something about how the discussion goes on gender rights makes me question if we're going about it the right way.

For example, many of the statistics that are used talk about parity in employment sectors and in public/political leadership. But why should there be an equal number of men and women in different industries and even in leadership? How come the graphs never show the number of stay-at-home dads, and focus on encouraging more men to stay at home while the women work? If we're talking about equality, shouldn't we be pushing for an equality in caretaking roles for both genders?

My guess is that this doesn't happen for two reasons: 1) It's so radical that the world isn't ready to hear it. Maybe we don't talk about it because it's just too different from what people are willing to accept. And 2) I think most people in the world don't accept that men would be as good full-time caretakers as women, because of a "mother's natural instinct". I'm not saying that exists or doesn't - but I think it's what a lot of people believe.

So, in my opinion, pushing for gender parity for adults in economic or political/leadership positions has a very negative side-effect: women are expected to be full-time caretakers AND hold a full-time job (and be perfect in every other way - as a woman, trust me, I feel that pressure. Every. Single. Day.)

In short, I think this gender parity movement is the LONG road to fairness and equity. And I think it results in fewer and fewer expectations placed on men, and women having everything heaped onto them. 

A better route, in my opinion, would be a remodeling of the economic system so that at-home jobs (caretaking, housekeeping, etc.) were counted as economically beneficial, and were paid to a certain extent. Here's what I mean:

I know lots of women - lots - that are very, very good caretakers and housekeepers for their families, and that are raising incredible, conscientious and hard-working children, and they live in poverty because they don't have a second adult in their families to earn income. And I know lots of people make zillions of dollars trading financial assets back and forth, that amount to no value added whatsoever to society. Who is contributing more to society? Who is more noble? And should we really be encouraging these women who work as mothers contributing to society to "get a job" doing something that *doesn't* contribute to society, so we can say we have gender parity?!? It doesn't make any sense.

And that's here in a developed nation. My concern is that our "developed" notions are very screwed up, and we are pushing them on developing nations. We're encouraging and fighting for a broken system to be perpetuated, and become the foundation for other nations.

Women should get an education. Women should be safe. Women should have employment opportunities - I agree with all of that. But fighting to get parity between women in men in different industries is a superficial cover-up of the real problem, which is that we measure value by economic indicators, and place no economic value on women's traditional role. (Unless you count babysitting/daycare, which DO contribute to the economy, but are not as beneficial for children as being cared for by their parent ... arg!)

Putting development into perspective

I saw this picture on Facebook today and *LOVED* it.  Because of my cultural background, I didn't feel comfortable reposting it on Facebook (I come from a super-conservative Christian background, and didn't feel up to the lectures and heart palpitations from my aunts and uncles and siblings)...but I can TOTALLY post it on my blog!  Booya!

Although I'm a total supporter of LGBT rights, I more appreciate that this pic puts development as the priority issue.  So that's all.  Much love.

Beautiful words of encouragement...

“…let me say that I hope we keep our voice clear and strong on the central task of raising the health of the poor.  I can be ‘realistic’ and ‘cynical’ with the best of them—giving all the reasons why things are too hard to change. We must dream a bit, not beyond the feasible but to the limits of the feasible, so that we inspire. I think that we are an important voice speaking on behalf of the world’s most voiceless people today—the sick and dying among the poorest of the poor. The stakes are high. Let’s therefore speak boldly so that we can feel confident that we have fulfilled our task as well as possible.”




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Who said it?
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(C'mon, I posted it in my blog - do you really have to wonder?)


Taken from the intro page to:
Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2002. Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in health for economic development. World Health Organization.

Diminishing returns and integrated development

I'm the youngest of 8 kids.  Needless to say, every night after dinner while growing up, there were A LOT of dishes to wash (not to mention the loathed task of blending 4 gallons-worth of powered milk every night - we were poor in my first decade).

I remember one night, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, it was my turn to do the dishes with one of my siblings.  On this particular night, I had been given the task to load the dishwasher.  In a zealous attempt to get the dishes "extra clean," I decided to use both dishwasher soap and regular liquid dish-soap in the machine.  For anyone who's ever done this before, you know the outcome: about 10 minutes later the entire kitchen floor was covered in suds.  I was humiliated and ashamed, and denied using the dish-soap.  My patient mom, while sopping the floor with towels, explained to me that I just needed to follow standard dishwasher practices in the future, because the rules were in place for a reason.

Which brings me to the first point of this blog post:

I think most of us learn, at some point in our lives, that there's such a thing as helping the wrong way - and that more isn't always more.  In my dish-washing incident, "more soap" did not translate into "ever cleaner dishes."  It resulted in a mess - despite my noble intentions.

No, more does not always mean more.  What a funny paradox!

Economically speaking, this is due to the Law of Diminishing returns - which states that with each additional unit added, less benefit is achieved than with the last unit.  The classic undergrad example is that of pizza.  When you're really hungry, you'll pay your soul for a piece of pizza, but with each additional slice you get less and less satisfaction per slice.  By the time you're 5 pieces in, eating more pizza actually makes you feel worse.

Graphically, it looks like this -->

The vertex is the point at which the slope changes from being positive to being negative.  Or in other words, the point at which more actually means less.

Going now to the application of this to development practices...

When it comes to aid, more doesn't always mean more.  But also, there's a point to which more does mean more - we can't end aid altogether, but the trick is taking it to the point of the vertex, to maximizing it and keeping it there.  Too little aid or too much are both inefficient, just like how too much dish-washing soap or too little (or the wrong kind of soap) were discouraged in my home as a child.

Of course the wrong type of soap, not matter in what quantities, was going to create a mess; just like how the wrong kind of aid, no matter what quantity, creates a mess in the developing world.

So what's the right type and the right quantity of aid?

Let's go back to another practical natural concept.  Let's say people need 8 hours of sleep each night, and 2,000 calories of food in a day.  That means in a given week, we should sleep about 56 hours and eat about 14,000 calories.  It doesn't work, though, if I try to sleep for 56 hours in the first 3 days of the week, and pound 14,000 calories in one meal.  Caloric intake and sleep go on a 24-hour cycle of increasing and decreasing returns.  I intake 2,000 calories in a day, and until the next day, any more that I eat hurts me, instead of helping me.  Likewise, I sleep 8 hours a night, and much less or much more makes me worse off.  (There's obviously leeway with this, but it still applies even when using a range of values instead of a specific number, i.e. 6-9 hours of sleep and 1,500-2,200 calories per day.)

Furthermore, in a given day, I need sleep and calories.  I can't choose one over the other, or exchange one for the other - I can't eat an extra 500 calories and sleep two fewer hours and call it square.  They are independent inputs with the same goal - to keep me healthy.

I think this is the case for integrated development.

An economy, a culture, a community and a human body are all dynamic, complex things that involve myriad systems.  All of them require inputs, and a variety of inputs, to a certain extent for survival, but to a different extent for health.  And for health to be achieved, the inputs must reach a specific level, work in harmony with the other inputs, avoid the more-is-more fallacy, and flow with the ups and downs of the life cycle.  When the right level of sleep is achieved, sleep is suspended for 16 hours.  When I've eaten enough for a meal, my food intake is suspended for 4 hours.  But I'm breathing the entire time, without pause or suspension under any circumstances.  Likewise, some aid programs, by design, should have periods of inflow, periods of outflow, and periods of pause; but other aid programs may require constant bi-directional flow or even unilateral flow.  But they all need to work together with a coordinated choreography, adaptable as required by the circumstances, but always continued and perpetuated.

Does this mean that development, like the human body, will forever require inputs?  Yes, of course - but the question becomes the source of the inputs.  If the local economy/people can provide the inputs, aid is no longer helpful, and should discontinue.  If I can sleep better by exercising, I may be able to stop popping sleeping pills, right?

Chew on that.

 (I don't take sleeping pills...that's an example :)

Best last paragraphs to a book ... ever!

Just finished reading "Contentious Politics" by Tilly and Tarrow for my Social Movements and Social Change class.

The last 2 paragraphs rocked my world (my emphasis)...

"...One of Arthur Conan Doyle's major mysteries was called 'The Dog that Didn't Bark.'  In 2003, Americans were falsely assured that their sons and daughters were sent off to Iraq to find and destroy Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.  When word crept out these weapons were nonexistent and that the intelligence that justified the invasion were faked, why did so few people protest? When residents of New Orleans whom Hurricane Katrina had washed out of their homes went without government assistance for days and weeks, why did they not demand better from their rulers? 

"As our theories and narratives have taught, modern politics contains recurring contentious streams, but it also includes oceans of apathy.  We now know a lot about why citizens of authoritarian regimes are normally compliant, rising in resistance only when dramatic windows of opportunity open up.  But why do citizens of democratic regimes so often sit on their hands when they have the right to resist?  And when democracy depends on their active participation?"  (pages 198-199.)

'Nuff said!

The Price of Civilization

Jeff Sachs has a new book coming out in October called "The Price of Civilization." And I think it's an interesting title/concept ... in YOUR opinion, what's the worth/value of living in a civilized world? And what price tag is too high for it?

As a quick refresher, here's wikipedia's outline of  what constitutes civilization:

The level of advancement of a civilization is often measured by its progress in:

1. Agriculture
2. Long-distance trade
3. Occupational specialization, and
4. Urbanism.

Aside from these core elements, civilization is often marked by any combination of a number of secondary elements, including:

• a developed transportation system
• writing
• standards of measurement (currency, etc.)
• contract and tort-based legal systems
• characteristic art styles (which may pertain to specific cultures)
• monumental architecture
• mathematics
• science
• sophisticated metallurgy
• politics, and
• astronomy

Personally, when I hear all of the propaganda about taxes being too high, or blanket statements about the futility of aid, or the obnoxiously incessant adulation of a free-market system, I can't help but ask myself, "Isn't it nice to live in a society, though, where we have universal access to roads, and water and electricity, and math and science are public goods, and I'm not really at risk of being boiled alive by my neighbors?  Isn't it nice to live a civilized life?"

And then I ask myself, "Wouldn't it actually be awesome if everyone had that?"

What's the appropriate price-tag for these kids
to have access to a bathroom? 

President Obama killed a bill today that would have saved the U.S. public at least $32 billion a year... which is, incidentally, how much we fell short of our international aid commitments in 2006.  So in the face of a serious drought, affecting the very children in the picture above, we've protected air polluters and instead pushed to cut aid because of our "budget crisis."

Wait ... I thought I lived in a civilized society?

World population is about to hit #7billion ... so what?

I sat in a lecture today with my humanity's best friend Jeff Sachs.  First of all, the dude's legit.  He IS humanity's best friend, and one of the greatest advocates for the sustained progress and fulfillment of humanity's potential.

<steps off soapbox>

He reminded us of the numbers, as far as how the human population has grown throughout the course of history.

• From about 1 A.D. to 1830, the human population remained constant at about 800 million, give or take.
• We hit our 1st billion around 1830.
• We hit our 2nd billion around 1930.
• And now, 81 years later, the human population is about to hit 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion, 6 billion ... 7 billion?!?!?!

Does that give a little context?

How did it happen?  Technology mostly.  Green revolutions: i.e. genetically modifying food and using amazing fertilizers.

(By the way, did you know that chemical fertilizers were actually originally developed as chemical weapons, I think during WWI or WWII, and *after* they'd been developed as tools of human destruction, it was found that they were the very technology needed to enhance and increase human life and the human population.  

Sometimes good gets to kick evil in the face too!  ... learn more by reading THIS BOOK)

We got more food, our families survived better, and our population has since nearly quadrupled.  In like 150 years.  

Hooray for us, right?  Well ... kinda ... except now the environment isn't working quite like it used to, and we're kinda hitting capacity for the number of people we can feed.  We sorta became the parasite of the earth, and we're killing our host.  You know, the whole "starvation crisis in the Horn of Africa due to climate change" issue, is pretty real and pretty screwed up, and has a lot to do with our sloppy behavior.  

<eek>  Now what?  <eek>

Lots of things!  There are lots of things we can do to fix this up!  And you should still worry - you should definitely worry, especially if you're doing nothing.  But the fight ain't over.  

What can you do?  Two things come to mind, off of the top of my head.

First, read this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-cohen/hopeless-obama_b_950260.html

If it worries you, post it on Facebook, Tweet about it, and tell all of your friends that you're pissed.  Twitter is a totally open forum for discussion and dissent, and when trends get going on Twitter, the news reports it.  When the news reports it, even more people get informed, and stupid-ass politicians start sweating.

Next, follow this website and their blogs and learn more about the circumstances created by unmitigated population growth: 7billionactions  

Follow them on Facebook too: CLICK HERE  They only have 1,500 fb followers right now - give them support, show the love, ... dare I say ENGAGE?  When you support organizations like this on FB and Twitter, it gives them some leverage, and they can accomplish more.

Actually, you can also follow them on Twitter (@7billionactions), which is nice because they'll give you ideas of how to support them, and when you tweet, you can throw in a #7billion after you say something about how  you feel about population growth.  We get enough #7billion's going, and it's called a "movement."

Get educated, get educated, get educated.  And then tweet like there's no tomorrow.  I'll start doing that more too.