Tracking gender equity under economic reforms: Continuity and change in south Asia

Research from around the world seems to suggest that one set of indicators of women?s secondary position in society that seems to be more universal, in the sense of cutting across all contexts, is violence against women, or more appropriately perhaps, credible threats of such violence, along with its actual perpetration. In general, research on violence has been more in the nature of being qualitative, oftentimes even anecdotal. Much of it has been carried out by activists, or by feminist researchers from disciplines such as sociology or social anthropology. For the most part, this set of gender research has generally not had much interaction with GDI-induced quantitative gender research, which is a pity since both groups of researchers are interested in the same set of issues, i.e., the phenomenon of gender bias in society. The book hopes to supplement the already rich literature on gender by attempting to put in place a consistent framework for gender analysis, by demonstrating the importance of identifying the context of such analysis, and by highlighting the necessity of differentiating ?gender? per se from its various ?indicators?. It also seeks to put in place a new agenda of gender research by expanding the existing set of gender indicators to include those such as gender-related stress, anxiety and violence. The viability of such an approach is demonstrated through a coordinated set of household surveys designed for inter-country comparisons. The meso and macro level studies serve to complement the household surveys in an attempt to close the loop. Although it has not been possible to do this here, it is our hope that together, the various components of this body of research will provide the ingredients for integrated household and macro level gender analyses in the future. Contents Introduction, Swapna Mukhopadhyay Non-Conventional Indicators of Gender Disparities Under Structural Reforms, Shobna Sonpar and Ravi Kapur Household Response to Gender Issues: A Survey on Households of Female EPZ Workers in Bangladesh, Salma Chaudhuri Zohir Status of Women Under Economic Reforms: The Indian Case, Swapna Mukhopadhyay Economic Reform and the Status of Women in Nepal, APROSC Gender and Adjustment Policies: Evidence from Pakistan, Rehana Siddiqui, Shahnaz Hamid, Rizwana Siddiqui and Naeem Akhtar Continuity and Change: Women Workers in Garment and Textile Industries in Sri Lanka, Swarna Jayaweera Family Structure, Women?s Education and Work: Re-examining the High Status of Women in Kerala, Miridul Eapen and Praveena Kodoth Trade, Gender and Employment Issues, Manju Senapaty Gender in a macroeconomic Framework: A CGE Model Analysis, Anushree Sinha and Sangeeta N Towards Integration? Gender and Economic Policy, Ratna M. Sudarshan