Gender Equality as Smart Economics: Problems of Drawing Equivalence Between Market Production and Household Bargaining Power Under Gender Dividend Assumptions

Abstract

Gender dividend is a steady benefit earned by investing in female development and integrating women into the workplace. Based on the Inter-American Development Bank’s 2010 report, Gender Dividend: Capitalizing on Women’s Work, narrowing the gender gap increases per capita income, expands the market, and improves overall social wellbeing. This paper explores female labour participation in the East Asian economic hub of Shanghai. The elite women in Shanghai are equipped to deal with complicated job tasks in the office, while they are still trapped in the social expectations of femininity at home. The neoliberal governmentality promotes a redistribution of resources in the market system, shown by an increased number of women at the senior management level and women’s remarkable strides in the marketplace. Yet, the division of reproductive labour remains unaffected as the traditional East Asian perception of “good wife, wise mother” disincentivizes working women to gain household- level autonomy. Therefore, economic empowerment is an insufficient one-step solution to the social stigmatization of womanhood, as working mothers are forced to play conflicting dual roles in society.