International Labour Organization
SEAPAT
South-East Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary Advisory Team

Why do gender analysis? 
Introduction
The human rights rationale
The social justice rationale
The socio-economic development rationale
Research findings 

Introduction

In the ILO’s work, gender analysis is a tool for identifying the different roles and needs of men and women in the world of work. Through gender analysis, planners can develop and implement concrete measures to promote equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women workers.

In the past, planners have often failed to take into account the different roles and needs of men and women in the world of work. This neglect has resulted in inappropriate design of policies and programmes that do not meet the needs of both men and women in the intended client population. Worse, it has sometimes had unanticipated negative effects on the position of women workers.

Thus, the ILO has now decided as a matter of institutional policy to attempt to mainstream gender concerns into its activities, through gender analysis and planning.

From the point of view of the ILO, there are three broad rationales for seeking to achieve the goal of gender mainstreaming, or in other words, for promoting the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women. These are briefly outlined below:

The human rights rationale

In the first place, the ILO approaches the goal of equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women as a matter of human rights and as an essential condition for achieving effective democracy. It considers the fight against discrimination on the basis of sex a fundamental issue in protecting human rights.

In this regard, the ILO emphasises women’s legal rights and the elimination of all kinds of de facto and de jure discrimination on the basis of sex in employment and occupation.

The social justice rationale

Second, ensuring gender equality in the world of work is a matter of social justice and poverty alleviation.

From this point of view, the ILO stresses:

• women’s access to employment and training
• women’s conditions of work
• social protection

The socio-economic development rationale

Third, the ILO considers promoting gender equality as a matter of social and economic development. To achieve this, it supports the participation of women in decision-making and in shaping development and labour policies and practices that adequately respond to equality objectives.

The ILO also works towards women’s empowerment and their active involvement in public life. These goals are essential for bringing women’s creative and innovative perspectives to bear in shaping the design and implementation of development policies and strategies. They are also essential for helping women obtain an equal share of the benefits of development.

Research findings

Broadly speaking, recent analytical work in gender and development attempts to document the benefits of paying increased attention to gender in development programming. It also tries to demonstrate the costs of neglecting attention to gender. The list below selects a few of the key findings.

• Gender inequalities hamper socioeconomic growth. This is the main message of the World Bank's official report to the Fouth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, Toward Gender Equality: The Role of Public Policy. The report describes the causal pathways through which gender inequalities in society can threaten the success of development policies and programs. It gives examples to illustrate this point.
• Public policy can play a role in reducing gender inequalities. The same World Bank report goes on to describe why public policy can reduce gender inequlaities. Such inequalities represent a form of "market failure", which can be rectified by policy interventions. Since reducing gender inequalities results in positive externalities, public policy has an important role to play in removing these inequalities.
• Much of the analytical work quantifies the private and social returns to girls' education as compared to that of boys. It finds that while the private returns to education are high for both boys and girls, the social returns to girls' education exceed those for boys' education, especially at the secondary level. Some of these social returns are summarized in a series of slides that from part of this module. These can be found under Social gains to girls education and More benefits of investing in girls education respectively.
• Analysis has also examined the relationship between higher levels of human capital and inputs for women farmers and agricultural productivity. Findings suggest that raising the level of human capital and inputs of women farmers to that of men farmers can result in significant increases in yields by women farmers. These findings are also summarized in a slide in this module.
• Another example of analytical work demonstrating the costs of neglecting attention to gender issues in development comes from work on violence against women. Estimates show that the global health burden of some forms of violence against women ranks with public health concerns such as tuberculosis, cardilovascular disease, HIV and cancer. This module contains a slide on these estimates under Estimated global health burden of selected conditions for women.

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For further information, please contact the South-East Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary
Advisory Team (SEAPAT) at Tel: +63.2.815.2354 or Fax: +63.2.812.6143
E-mail: seapat@ilo.org