Unpacking the MDGs’ Indicator 3.2

Abstract

This article considers why and how the Millennium Development Goals Indicator 3.2: women’s share in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector, fails to provide a fuller picture on the links between women’s employment, empowerment and well-being. The article explores (a) the underpinning normative assumptions of “gender equality” and “development” as notions used in the construct of the Indicator, and (b) globalized neoliberal economic structures as its operating environment. Grounded in liberalism, and with modernization theory and the capabilities approach as its offspring, the Indicator inherits the liberalist notion of “gender difference” in which the public/private and the modern/tradition are depicted as binary opposites. Under the competitive global economic frameworks that assume and integrate gender difference, the Indicator is likely to prescribe gender policies that mold women into male-centered citizenship, neglecting the social reproduction needs and care work that women assume. Drawing on the evidence of care chains in Ecuador, this article argues that the promotion of women’s employment as a means to achieve gender equality as pursued by many development organizations must be treated with caution, given the flaws inherent in its underlying normative assumptions of gender equality and the current economic systems.