The role of economic freedoms in gender inequalities

In today’s world, the socio-economic positions of women and men have changed; but impacts of masculine ideologies are still observed, especially in underdeveloped and developing countries. Inequality and gender discrimination are reprehensible for two basic reasons. First, gender is an identity factor. Secondly, gender inequality is probably the most pervasive example of human rights violations. Half of the world’s population is made up of women, and the existence of institutions and laws against their rights means a violation of freedom and identity as sources of power and trust of the society. In addition, women have not had the same “opportunity” and “freedom of choice” as men. MethodologyPrevious researches have mostly dealt with gender discrimination in the labor market; hence the present paper focuses on the issue that gender discrimination at the micro level (the labor market) may have macro origins. For this purpose, economic freedom indices, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, gender development and inequality have been collected for more than 90 countries during the period 1970-2020. Hofstede’s index has six key dimensions including long term orientation (vs. short term orientation), individualism (vs. collectivism), uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity (vs. femininity), and indulgence (vs. restraint). The gender development index is calculated based on the ratio of the human development index of women to men. Therefore, this index reflects the status of women compared to men in the three sub-indices of health, education and per capita income. Another indicator is gender inequality, which shows the status of women in terms of reproductive health (maternal mortality and adolescent fertility), empowerment (parliamentary representation and education attainment) and the labor market (labor force participation). To analyze this large sample of data, two methods of analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Random Forest are used. In this way, it is investigated whether the factor of economic freedom played a role in explaining gender inequality or not? Results and ConclusionAccording to the results of covariance analysis, the role of economic freedom, cultural dimensions and their synergy in explaining the difference between gender development and gender inequality in countries is confirmed. Also, the findings of the random forest show that the sub-indices of economic freedom, especially property rights, international trade and government size, were the most important. However, the results related to cultural dimensions are fragile and differ depending on the indicator and the sample. Therefore, gender discrimination is influenced by non-cultural aspects such as the economic system rather than the result of cultural aspects. As a result, striving for economic freedom, especially from an institutional perspective, can facilitate the achievement of a society with fairer opportunities between men and women.