Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics
STOCKTAKING MEETINGS at Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel Istanbul
Meeting Date: July 24-26 2007
Organized by: GEM-IWG in Collaboration with The Levy Economics Institute and Department of Economics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Report Date: July 31 2007, prepared by: Fatma Abdullahi
The 8th International GEM-IWG on Engendering Macroeconomics and International Economics and the first GEM-IWG stocktaking meeting hosted academics, policy makers and activists, all bound by the commitment to global justice and gender equity. In the GEM-IWG stocktaking meetings, thematic and regional groups and partners shared their work and knowledge to think of how to collectively move forward more effectively. The themes of the meeting included Gender and Taxation, Gender Responsive Budgeting, Time-Use, Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling, Employer of Last Resort and Employment Guarantee Policies and Creating Communities of Knowledge Production for a Just World.
1. Gender Responsive Budgeting and Gender and Taxation
"How would one be able to see easily if a budget was gender responsive? Are there any general principles and proportions that have to be followed?" Solita Monsod
Hind Jalal from the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Morocco reported on the Gender Budgeting Experience in Morocco to try and answer Solita Monsod's question. She discussed how gender budget reform as an entry point is performance oriented and since they "introduced the performance oriented idea, [Morocco] saw a shift towards gendered performance indicators, so that now when ministries present their budgets at the end of the year, they have to present them by gender, while also taking into account the needs of the rural and urban populations." She added that this was facilitated by the existence of a hard won legal framework that secured the engendering of these policies, i.e. the passing of the family code in Morocco. With this in mind Yassine Fall, President of AWOMI, brought the critical question of water provision to the speakers. "Who is providing water? Is it the government or private sector? What are the people's abilities to pay the cost-recovery fees? How does this relate to income revenues of women and men?" she asked. She pointed out the importance and difficulty in linking women's contributions to social welfare with budgeting and also how urgent it was for governments to take up the issues of gender based violence and reproductive health matters when planning gender responsive budgeting. Taking into account the fact that women are already providers of social welfare, Fall asked for the introduction of a principle regarding social reproduction contribution to be one of the principles considered when determining taxation. Cecilia Lopez a Colombian Senator, asked what the proportion of taxes was to GDP. Usually this figure is quite low-about 15%. And if the government does not move this figure to at least 30%, it is not possible to respond to social demand. The question of how to raise this proportion with a gender perspective arises and the key issue for legislators would be doing this without pushing women into unpaid work. Some of the solutions proposed would definitely change the tax policy and revenues but they all have political question marks for policy makers. What are the incentives and benefits for politicians to take these decisions? As one of the speakers said, "It is important to propose something that has chances to be introduced in real life." On another note, Haider Khan Professor of Economics at University of Denver, noted the importance of moving in the direction of looking at the various ways of raising income tax as opposed to raising value added tax (VAT) that the IMF advocates as the panacea. He pointed out that VAT is not only a regressive tax but also very specifically a gender regressive tax. In this vein Diane Elson from the University of Essex, observed that families with male breadwinner and stay-at-home wife pay higher taxes than families with more egalitarian couples-a good feature of tax systems that promote a more gender equitable sex/gender relations-debates around this issue because not everyone agrees. Points for more reflection included the question of how to secure political will for these gender sensitive taxation and budget reforms, the need to analyze proportion of taxes to GDP and determining what the new gender performance indicators mentioned were, in order to observe them in different contexts.
2. Time-Use, Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling
"And now we are at the stage where we want to move forward and in order to move forward we need to go deeper and discuss some issues." Rania Antonopoulos
Time-Use Surveys (TUS) have helped to open concepts of the household (the discrimination within as well as the diversity of the household), issues of unpaid work and its intersection with paid work: as well as revealed child labor etc. TUS reveal the nature of non-monetized activity, so that monetized activity can be integrated into the national account, and so that the time that women spend on unpaid work can be valued. Time itself can be used as a valuator. Valeria Renata Esquivel from the Universidad Nacional de General Sarmienta, Argentina and Levy Economics Institute, Bard College, presented a report on the GEM-IWG website and Virtual Course on Time-Use, Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) and CGE Modeling. She illustrated how the virtual classrooms that will be taken at first by GEM-IWG fellows then by people engaged in designing and collecting time-use data, is a hands on, practical course that brings together different people including academics, statisticians and government officials. This web-based Self-Study component on TUS, SAM and CGE modeling addresses the practical problems that arise in data collection for TUS, facilitating gender aware macroeconomic modeling and disseminating knowledge to carry out TUS. The virtual classroom and an online data depository-a library with resources and links as well as available materials already collected by group member-will facilitate this. Connecting the dots between TUS, SAM and CGE modeling Rania Antonopoulos added that "all of these sessions are focused on the importance of time use and the type of modeling that allows unpaid work to be as exclusively as possible integrated into an approach and a model that can then be used for a variety of different purposes." The existence of data is a very important component in this-hence the TUS. According to Antonopoulos, the first step, if we are to have micro-macro models, for instance if we want to be able to look at impact of households and link this to the macro-economy, a very useful tool is the input-output approach and specifically the social accounting matrix framework. The SAM then organizes information that can then be fed into the CGE model, something that a lot of countries are using especially in Latin America. Antonopoulos cautions "It is important to be very clear and to nuance the assumptions so that we do not end up with some absurd assumptions e.g. where you have full equilibrium at the time you are starting out. Important questions include how do you decide to close the system and how do you allow for sufficient disaggregation so that you have gender representation and perspectives possible within the CGE model." So all this information will gradually get deposited in the virtual classroom. Omar Abdourahman from United Nations Economic Commission for Africa contributed that UNECA has a database on time use and CGE models and they have already started translating materials for surveys to distribute to field workers. Comparing the methodological approaches of the TUS already undertaken in Africa with other parts of the world, Abdourahman illustrated the importance of having a common understanding in what data to collect to come up with a suitable methodology for TUS in Africa. Some methodological issues he came across included: what is the appropriate sample-collecting samples which represent the diversity in the community including sex and gender; the means and forms we use to collect the TUS-in Africa because of the high illiteracy and the different languages, they decided to use the face-to-face interview. This is a very sensitive approach that requires adequate training for the field workers; essential to collect complementary information such as tools for cooking when assessing how much time is spent on a particular activity. A participant with expertise in mainland South-East Asia highlighted the biases that arise in collecting data for TUS. She pointed out how statistical agencies claim that they have already done TUS, and especially the household survey. But when one looks at the results, men and women share all household activities equally time and again. Cambodia and Laos are two examples that claim this even though there is no one who has lived a long enough to contest this. She stated that investigating the methodologies in use has illustrated a systematic bias toward equality. "The methods they're using are recalled journals for a week. Once a week, one tenth of the households are identified and they must report. Clearly the night before the survey, the child who went to school fills in the survey-who does the cooking, washing dishes-tiny little blocks of time, no allowances for parallel activities we have 24 hours in the day, there is no more than 10 % functional literacy in these countries in reality." She observed that activities which are socially desirable are reported in recalled studies as higher than they are observed to be, adding, "so that in the US for example, going to Church or reading to your child is reported to be higher than it is observed to be, and vice versa." Valeria Esquivel responded that questionnaires vary not only in how they are written but also how they are filled so for instance, we should not equate diaries with self-report. She pointed out, "there are experiences in which diaries are recorded but filled in by interviewers. And if there is an effort of trying not to bias it in the sense that we are not looking for this task, that can be problematic in itself. It is a combination of the way the instrument is used and the way the TUS is collected." Rania Antonopoulos added that biases already exist in the activities the TUS studies are monitoring. Ironically we see that poor households report leisure time and watching TV at a much higher percentage while wealthier families report spending a lot more time on childcare. "These are all very biased concepts. Spending quality time with children is something that is not quite relevant as a question for specific contexts," she stated."
3. Employer of Last Resort and Employment Guarantee Policies
"Hidden Vacancies - the economy that is hidden can never create advocacy for job creation." Rania Antonopoulos
To provide a context for her presentation, Rania Antonopoulos summarized the pre-stocktaking GEM meetings that took place from the 20th-22nd. She discussed the intersections and spaces where informal work, formal work and unpaid work enter. Expounding on the meaning of unpaid work, Antonopoulos highlighted that thinking of unpaid work as unpaid care work for the sick, elderly and children is a very limited and biased way of understanding the concept. "Unpaid work includes not only subsistence production but also all of the inputs that constitutes and are necessary for household maintenance work. Besides income inequalities that are measurable in the marketized section of the economy, you have extraordinary inequalities between households and also between men and women and between children," she stated, adding " in terms of what we call the socially necessary unpaid labor time that people have to spend in order to sustain their lives. This kind of inequality cannot be understood, measured unless we have sufficient data."
Shifting her focus to Employment Guarantee Programmes (EGPs), Antonopoulos traced various governments' initiatives to be the employer of last resort for their citizens. If other modes of production and generating livelihoods prove insufficient, enlightened governments have stepped throughout the centuries to do something about it. According to Antonopoulos they have been implemented throughout the '70s and '80s and '90s in a variety of countries but the design, implementation and the democratization that leads to the adoption of such programs varies with the country.
Describing the power behind such an idea, Antonopoulos stressed the importance of design, so that the programmes have positive social outcomes. For instance, providing employment that generates the availability and supply of something new and non-marketized-a new road, a traditional irrigation system-a socialized good. She noted that the original designs of EGPs her group studied did not take into account neither social reproduction activities nor the vast inequalities that we see in allocation of time use. She argued that "The point of reducing unpaid work is not to release labor into the market place-such that women have more time to go into the market place-but if you have a country that has 30% unemployment rate, you do not want to argue for reducing unpaid work, but the reduction of inequality and creation of a different division of labor that is both within the reproductive sphere as well as the productive."
She discussed the research project she is coordinating with the Levy Institute of Bard College on the impact of EGPs. The project aims at drawing attention to particular types of EGP projects that synergistically create new jobs and reduce unpaid work burdens as mentioned above. The intended methodology entails development of a gender-informed Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) model for the economy, so as to enable investigation of macro-micro linkages and EGP interventions.
The analytical framework under consideration for this project requires that unpaid work, measured and accounted for by TUS data, be fully incorporated in this modeling exercise. By providing a more inclusive account of inputs and activities, both paid and unpaid-all of which are congruent components of a functioning economy-it allows for wider and more transparent understanding of economic processes, changes, and impacts. This input-output matrix, a SAM representation of the macro economy, will serve as a template according to which a pilot study for two countries (India and South Africa) will be undertaken. Both these countries governments for a variety of historical reasons have embraced the idea of employment guarantee.
Employer of last resort, a term from Hyman Minsky, is not an emergency program like EGP. It is more permanent and facilitates the moving in and out of employment-it acts as a buffer. It has been successfully implemented in France (rural) and Australia. In addition Haider Khan noted that in order for such programs to succeed, we must draw upon local knowledge and resources. He stated that the survival of such programs was contingent on their linking up with the local knowledge producers made an important point on measuring the successes of such programs. 3. Creating Communities of Knowledge Production for a Just World. "I feel that my capacity is being built!" Fatma Abdullahi
Ashwini Deshpande the Chair of the Annual Conference on Development and Change (ACDC) discussed the dilemmas of being a heterodox economist in a mainstream economics department. She discussed how joining young development economists in groups such as Cambridge's CAPORDE and her own ACDC provide the intellectual value addition and knowledge needed to provide concrete alternatives to World Bank and IMF policies. The students who attend these programs can move from criticizing in the abstract to proactively intervening in policy debates. Giovanni Andrea Cornia from University of Florence presented Unidea UniCredit Foundation and University of Florence's Summer School for Development Studies. His self-described approached for social justice is to confront, infiltrate and get into ignored issues. Cecilia Lopez pointed out that aside from economics, democracy was another entry point for gender. "There is no social transformation without political will," she noted. She called on economists to utilize rights-based concepts such as "deficit of democracy," "citizenship democracy" and "democratic parity," to successfully push for and attain social transformation. Presenting on capacity building for young African women, Yassine Fall discussed the AWOMI initiative that is working to create a movement against poorly designed and destructive macroeconomic policies set to benefit few wealthy nations. She discussed working in a context of trade liberalization and globalization that has exacerbated the impoverishment of the Continent. Drawing from her experience in women's social mobilization, Fall discussed AWOMI's 2nd Social Mobilization Conference in Lusaka where rural women from various regions in Zambia met to illustrate their commitment to mobilizing for their rights. She gave a moving example of the costs women pay by living with piecemeal income when they have a multitude of needs to live in dignity and security. She explained the amount of time, labor and resources women have to provide in order to substitute for poverty and income destitution. To illustrate these cost burden Fall presented the case of one woman-a grandmother-who gave an economic analysis by accounting on how she struggles daily to survive while taking care of ten grandchildren on K5000 Zambian Kwacha, the equivalent of one dollar a day. Daily, this woman not only faces the difficulties of feeding and clothing the children, but also taking care of them when they are sick. Because she is unable to pay the user fees, she cannot take them to the health center. Her house has no water and no electricity all is cut off because she could no longer pay for the services and how she goes to beg for water to prepare food, bath and wash from the neighbors. She described AWOMIs efforts to strengthen the capacities of Africa's young women through the innovative Young Women's Knowledge and Leadership program that was hosted in Dakar, Senegal from June-July of 2006. She called on YOWLI alum Fatma Abdullahi to speak about her experiences.
"I learned more from Yassine Fall in that one month program in Dakar than I did in my four years at NYU!" stated Fatma Abdullahi who studied Economics and History. She discussed how 60 young women and a few supporting men came together in Dakar to learn, share and have fun with the goal of taking back concrete skills including using media for advocacy and accountability, reading budgets, writing reports among many others. She touched on the power of bringing young African's from different countries together to better contextualize their personal lives and situate themselves as part of a global, interconnected world. Moreover, the presence of young women from the Diaspora strengthened the group by enabling the sharing of critical knowledge.
According to Abdullahi the economics course that Fall taught, traced the history of globalization and capital accumulation from the slave trade, through the colonial to the neo-colonial state where SAPs, HIPC/PRPS and MDGS have been implemented. She explained that one of the powerful aspects of the training was that it drew from knowledge within Africa by Africans. For instance, trainees explored the African women's movement and organizing to address the feminization of poverty since Beijing, to explore the links between knowledge with organizing in order to build a movement for change in development. She stated, "we were surprised to discover how mainstream economics leaves out women's contributions to social welfare as well as the inaccuracies and distortions behind measurements such as poverty and GDP," adding, "YOWLI now has the opportunity to learn and collaborate with groups such as ACDC and CAPORDE to build on our macroeconomics content." She concluded with YOWLI's plans for 2008-launching a campaign on social and economic rights. A curriculum that includes more content on gender and macroeconomics is currently being developed.
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