Question

Online Activity

Inequality Indicators: Structural level explanations

Your task is to find an online news article that discusses an indicator of inequality of your choice. The article should be less than two years old (published date should be after Oct. 2018). The indicator can be any measure of social outcome i.e. income, home ownership, food security, graduation rates, incidences of cancer etc. Use an article that compares two or more social groups in Canada. Examples of social group comparison are age, gender, race, ethnicity, immigration status, sexual orientation etc.

In the assignment, your aim is to examine the explanation of differences between the groups and evaluate whether the discussion of inequality is related to any structural level factors. For example, “one group works harder than the other” is not considered a structural level factor.

As discussed in the online lessons, structural level explanations can include how the group are organized, how the groups is being treated by specific social institutions, how they integrate or fail to integrate into certain sectors in Canadian society.

Your assignment

Try to find an outcome that actually interests you. Once you find the article, answer the following questions in a combined 600-750 words response. Your final answer should be in one short essay that includes all the topics below. Do not answer the questions individually.

1. According to the article, what is the main reason for the observed inequality between the two groups. If the article discusses multiple reasons, you can highlight the top two/three.
2. Did the author(s) present any evidence for this argument? Did you find the evidence convincing?
3. Do you agree with the assessment of this comparison? Why and why not?
4. Aside from the factor(s) explained in the article, can you think of another structural level factor that explains the observed difference? Lastly, explain why you think your structural level factor is a better explanation than the one cited in the article.

Answer 1

Structural inequality is when the imequality is due to the underlying bias in the organisation and insitutional structure in a country or any where.

The article in focus is "Gender inequalities in health and wellbeing across the first two decades of life: an analysis of 40 low-income and middle-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region"

Authors:  Elissa Kennedy, Gerda Binder, Karen Humphries-Waa, Tom Tidhar, Karly Cini, Liz Comrie-Thomson, Cathy Vaughan, Kate Francis, Nick Scott, Nisaa Wulan, George Patton, Peter Azzopardi

doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30354-5

Published in October, 19, 2020

It is a news article published by TheLancet.com. The study was funded by UNICEF.

The study has taken up the gender inequality research among 40 low and middle income countries. The population data was obtained from the UN, GBD, MICS and others. The study has developed a measurement framework on four domains such as health, education and transition to employment, protection, and a safe environment. 87 indicators were calculated under these domains.

Main results and reasoning:

Adolescent girls face considerable disadvantage in relation to sexual and reproductive health (notably in South Asia and the Pacific), with high rates of child marriage (≥30% of women aged 20–24 years married before 18 years in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Afghanistan)

Despite educational parity in many countries, females aged 15–24 years were less likely than males to be in education, employment, or training in 17 of 19 countries for which data were available.

Compared with girls, adolescent boys experienced excess all-cause mortality and substantially higher mortality due to unintentional injury, interpersonal violence, alcohol and other drugs, and suicide, and higher prevalence of harmful drinking and tobacco smoking.

Some of the main reasons discussed are puberty and patriarchial system. The author qoutes two findings from other researches to concur the puberty as a reason. Kagesten et al (2017), "Puberty is transformative in the health and development trajectories of girls and boys. While physical, hormonal, and neurodevelopmental pubertal processes contribute to biological sex differences in some health outcomes and risks, puberty is also characterised by an intensification of gender socialisation, during which gender identity, roles, and norms sharply diverge and take on increasing prominence." Shakya et al. (2019) "These norms are consolidated during adolescence and profoundly shape the lives of adolescents, with consequences for health that extend into adulthood and for the next generation."

Similarly for Patriarchial system as a reason, the author has quoted Blum et al. (2017) "Underlying patriarchal systems that reinforce gender norms assigning higher status and power to boys over girls, and reward hegemonic (dominant) constructs of masculinity, contribute to boys’ risk taking, use of and exposure to violence, and poor care seeking. These same systems police restrictive feminine norms that limit girls’ opportunities and agency, and increase vulnerability to harmful practices (such as child marriage), intimate partner violence, and poor sexual and reproductive health."

I do accept these gender differences in south Asian countries as the findings in this paper is in concurrence with many other studies focusing on gender differences.

One other reason for gender preferences and discrimination in a patriarchial country like India is thhe dowry system. The humongous amount of dowry exploits the wealth and at times the livlihood of the brides household. This is one main reason, a son is preferred more than a daughter. And for a daughter who would eventually be moving into another home along with dowry, the household does not want to invest in thier education.

This structural level factor is an addition to the above reasoning and cannot be stated as an better explanation.