“Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.” – Simone de Beavoir, The Second Sex.
In this week’s lecture, the point was made that “as mathematical representations of how systems work, they are dependent on assumptions already written in”.
If the default assumption is man, how does this affect women? As de Beauvoir said, humanity is male. Language is gendered, “man” refers to humans. Alma Graham’s oft-quoted analogy is apt here:
“If a woman is swept off a ship into the water, the cry is ‘Man overboard!’ If she is killed by a hit-and-run driver, the charge is ‘manslaughter!’ If she is injured on the job, the coverage is ‘workman’s compensation!’ But if she arrives at a threshold marked ‘Men Only,’ she knows the admonition is not intended to bar animals or plants or inanimate objects. It is meant for her.” (Graham)
If the systems supposed to serve us begin at a point of masculinity, this harms women everywhere. A clear example of the ways in which quantifiable data harms women is the GDP.
The European Institute for Gender Equality has found that:
- Improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU (GDP) per capita by 6.1 to 9.6%, which amounts to €1.95 to €3.15 trillion by 2050
- Improvements in gender equality would lead to an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050
- Countries with more room to improve gender equality have much to gain. On average, improved gender equality in these countries is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of about 12% by 2050
The last point was especially significant to me, as I’m originally from Poland and current debate around women’s reproductive rights highlight just this. In January, a near total ban on abortion was passed. Further to this, a Government policy named 500 Plus awards families a benefit of 500PLN per month per child, a clear encouragement for women to stay home and be homemakers. This brings me to my main criticism of this EIGE study. It does not consider the impact which accounting for only male-dominated, classically value-creating activities, disregarding domestic and caregiving activities. Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, has conducted research which shows that were this caregiving and domestic work to be included in the GDP, it would constitute between 30% and 50% of the GDP.
This is a blatant show of the ways in which data is skewed against women. This shows the ways in which the systems we base much of our daily life on, from the language we speak and how it is coded, to the world’s foremost economic indicator, are all rooted in the assumption of male as default.
References
Graham, Alma. “The Making Of A Nonsexist Dictionary”. Language And Sex: Difference And Dominance, B Thorne and N Henley, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Mass, 1975, Accessed 26 Mar 2021.
“Economic Benefits Of Gender Equality In The EU”. European Institute For Gender Equality, 2021, https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality.
Alexander, Reed. “Is One Of The World’s Most Widely Used Financial Metrics — GDP — Sexist?”. Marketwatch, 2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-one-of-the-worlds-most-widely-used-financial-metrics-gdp-sexist-2018-01-11.