Restricted choices as indentified in a lifecycle approach

Published: 21st Mar, 2020

Human development is about expanding substantive freedoms and choices, and too often women face heavily restricted or even “tragic” choices.
Social norms can affect girls even before they are born since some countries deeply prefer bearing sons over daughters.
Discrimination continues through the way households share resources. Girls and women sometimes eat last and least in the household.
The gender politics of food—nurtured by assumptions, norms and practices about women needing fewer calories—can push women into perpetual malnutrition and protein deficiency.
Among children attending school, determinants of occupational choices appear very early. Girls are less likely to study STEM, while boys are a minority of those studying health and education.

For example, in OECD countries, on average among STEM graduates, only 32.6 percent are women.

Early marriage condemns girls to live a life with heavily restricted choices—every year 12 million girls are victims of forced marriage.

Highest rates are registered in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 36 percent of women marrying before their 18th birthday, and South Asia, with 29 percent.

The disparities of childhood and adolescence are amplified when women reach adulthood. For unpaid care work, women bear a bigger burden, on average spending about 2.5 times more than men do.

This affects women’s labor force participation, which is consistently lower than for men, both globally and by human development grouping.
In 2018, global labour force participation rate was around 75 percent for men and 48 percent for women.

Professional women mostly have two options for their personal partners—a super-supportive partner or no partner at all.

Husbands are considered a key factor in two-thirds of women’s decisions to quit the workforce, often because women had to fill the parenting vacuum.
Additionally, skilled women, who are more likely to participate in the labor market, face social norms that make them less attractive potential partners in the marriage market.

Older women’s challenges accumulate through the life course. They are less likely than men to have access to pensions, even though they can expect to live three years longer.