Jean-Philippe Platteau

Siwan Anderson

Lori Beaman

As a result of widespread mistreatment and overt discrimination, women in the developing world often lack autonomy. Towards Gender Equity in Development brings together leading scholars working on gender issues to explore key sources of female empowerment and discuss the current challenges and opportunities for the future. Exploring three key domains, this book adopts a clear multi-disciplinary approach to present different perspectives from gender-focused economics and social research. It covers marriage and women's relative bargaining position within the household; the options available to women outside of marriage and in the context of their community; and overarching discriminatory laws and cultural norms. It engages with questions of how marriage, divorce, and remarriage practices have evolved and with what effects for women; how female empowerment can benefit from improving options and economic and collective action opportunities; and how the government can act as a lawmaker to contribute to modifying norms and practices that disadvantage women.

Towards Gender Equity in Development

François Bourguignon

Jean-Marie Baland

Thierry Verdier

The definitive reference on the most current economics of development and institutions The essential role that institutions play in understanding economic development has long been recognized across the social sciences, including in economics. Academic and policy interest in this subject has never been higher. The Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions is the first to bring together in one single volume the most cutting-edge work in this area by the best-known international economists. The volume’s editors, themselves leading scholars in the discipline, provide a comprehensive introduction, and the stellar contributors offer up-to-date analysis into institutional change and its interactions with the dynamics of economic development. This book focuses on three critical issues: the definitions of institutions in order to argue for a causal link to development, the complex interplay between formal and informal institutions, and the evolution and coevolution of institutions and their interactions with the political economy of development. Topics examined include the relationship between institutions and growth, educational systems, the role of the media, and the intersection between traditional systems of patronage and political institutions. Each chapter—covering the frontier research in its area and pointing to new areas of research—is the product of extensive workshopping on the part of the contributors. The definitive reference work on this topic, The Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions will be essential for academics, researchers, and professionals working in the field.

The Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions

In order for economic specialization to develop, it is important that well-defined property rights are established and that suspicion and fear of fraud do not pervade transactions. Such conditions cannot be created ex abrubto, but must somehow evolve. What needs to develop is not only suitable practices and rules themselves, but also the public agencies and moral environment without which generalized trust is difficult to establish. The cultural endowment of societies as they have developed over their particular histories is bound to play a major role in this regard, and the matter of cultual endowment is one of the central themes of this book. On the other hand, division of labour does not only require well-enforced property rights and trust in economic dealings. It is also critically conditioned by the thickness of economic space, itself dependent on population density. This provides the second major theme of the volume: market development, including the development of private property rights is not possible, or will remain very incomplete, if populations are thinly spread over large areas of land. The book makes special reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

Institutions, Social Norms and Economic Development

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Income-sharing and Labour Absorption in Small-scale Fisheries

Population Pressure and Management of Natural Resources

As a result of widespread mistreatment and overt discrimination in all dimensions of their lives, women lack significant autonomy. The central preoccupation of this book is to explore key sources of female empowerment and discuss the current challenges and opportunities for the future. Schematically, three main domains are distinguished. The first is marriage and women's relative bargaining position within the household. Since in developing countries marriage is essentially universal and generally arranged by the parents, women have little say in the choice of their partner and largely depend on their husband for their livelihoods and well-being. How marriage, divorce, and remarriage practices have evolved and with what effects for women, is therefore of crucial concern. The second domain is the set of options available to women outside of marriage and in the context of their community. Given the importance of household dynamics in determining female well-being, a crucial step towards women’s empowerment consists of improving such options, economic and collective action opportunities in particular. The third domain belongs to the realm of over-arching discriminatory laws and cultural norms. Can the government acting as lawmaker contribute to modifying norms and practices that disadvantage women? Or, to be effective, do legal moves need to be complemented by other initiatives such as the expansion of economic opportunities for women? Do discriminatory social norms necessarily dissolve with improved legal status for women? These questions, and other related issues, are tackled from different perspectives, by top scholars with well-established experience in gender-focused economic and social research.

Stress is then laid on the global context within which user groups operate, including the nature and the forms of state intervention and the effects of increasing market integration. To date, this context has generally been uncongenial to community-based resource management; therefore, the authors recommend that, whenever a co-management approach is feasible, the concrete institutional form adopted is tailored to the specific features of local cultures.

Jean-Philippe Platteau

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