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# The Costs of Neglecting Women

17. In principle, women contribute to the economy no differently than men. Like men, women do the work of development -- as producers, entrepreneurs, managers, paid and unpaid laborers. In practice, though, women often face gender-related traditions or practical difficulties that constrain their work choices and productive capacit;. Women may operate efficiently with whatever technology and resources they have. But they may not be able to obtain as good technology or as many inputs as men, either because th.y lack the credit to "get started" or because they face stronger barriers to entering factor markets. This may reduce their productivity and affect their incentive to produce.

18. The most obvious cost is in output forgone, from wasted human potential and associated inefficiencies in factor and product markets that can impede flexible adjustment and expansion. Littlz research has been done to estimate the extent of this cost. Evidence from Kenya suggests that women's agricultural productivity averag-s only 85 percent that of men's, but that women with the same access as men to education, land, and agricultural services actually achieve slightly higher productivity measured in yield per acre (World Bank 1989a).

19. Another cost comes in equity and family welfare, as women and their dependent children tend to suffer disproportionate poverty and deprivation. A further cost is in longer run "sustainability." As the principal guardians of children's health and nutrition, women manage the early human capital accumulation that affects the future labor force. Women typi ally manage household water and fuelwood and so affect the natural environment. And improvements in women's earnings, education, and access to health and family planning services particularly affect family size and hence population growth. These costs may be obscured, and potential benefits forgone, if country and sector analysis and policy advice focus only on aggregates such as the economy, the sector, or even firms or households, without differentiating by gender.

20. Female headed households. Female heads of households are not rare, but their incidence varies by country. In Jamaica some 37 percent of the population lives in female headed households; in Zambia, some 47 percent of households are headed by women; and in Guyana about 44 percent (Jamaica LSMS 1988; Berger and others 1988). The problem of disadvantaged women may be particularly acute when those women head the household. In some countries, female-headed households tend to have fewer adult workers per household (translating to a higher economic dependency ratio), and few if any adults with comparatively greater earning capacity. In some countries, such as India and Kenya, the poorer the household, the more likely it is to be headed by a woman, and the trend is toward more poor female-headed households. This is not true only of low-income countries -- it is also true in the United States (Levy 1988). On the other hand, there are places where better educated women tend to head households. The exact characteristics of female heads of household vary, however. In some countries, oldor and destitute widows may predominate; in some, young and less educated mothers; in some, young and more educated mothers -- and this last group is usually poorer. Much more research needs to be done to predict which women will head households, with what consequences.