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A closer look at Liberian history reveals that the most enduring disparities exist between women and men: in employment opportunities, income, and wealth. In Liberian history there has been durable inequality embedded in culture and social structures, resistant to modernity. In general, Liberian women have faced difficulties to gain economic mobility. Yes! Since President William VS Tubman, women have been legally enfranchised. Yes! Since President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, women have gained unparalleled parity with men in government and industry at greater pace. Access to education is increasing. But women still earn less than their male counterparts. Incidents of girls’ and women’s exploitation have not been wiped away. The narrative examines inequality through the lens of two important females in my life: my mother and daughter, perhaps even that of my beloved wife.
One of the major pathways to understanding the growing inequalities in Liberia is via studying the plight of women. Today, we can speak of the historic event which catapulted a woman to the presidency and marvel at the resulting changes in the plight of women. The systematic exclusion of women from key public posts is now broken. Yet, one still wonders if the durable categorical limits on women/girls have gone away. Some will say that categorical boundaries on the basis of gender still exist with men holding onto economic advantages in clenched fists. Another way, women have ‘assimilated into the reproduced existing economic and occupational hierarchies’ and not been able to change it. Despite the rise to the uppermost political echelons, it has not challenged nor changed structural inequalities. Men still hold the levers of power.
Indeed, what challenges do this enduring legacy of gender inequality pose for public policy going forward? The answer to this question can be found in many related spheres of society: domestic, social, political, and economic. This paper will not assess these spheres in depth. Nonetheless, one cannot talk about women’s inequality in the labor market sufficiently without the other associated spheres of existence mentioned above. It is therefore important to talk about the labor market experiences of Liberian women because it is this sphere that influences their lack of income and wealth, and leads to mass powerlessness, marginalization, abuse, and cyclical generational poverty.
But some would argue that education is the gateway to employment and income. Therefore, the norms that put attaining homemaking skills and competencies ahead of academic attainment are the greatest source of women’s inequality. And in a society where public service is minimal, even nonexistent in many cases, women’s plight, especially that of uneducated women has been extreme poverty and suffering. Deeper analysis of the proportion of Liberian women that work, the kinds of jobs that they are employed in, the compensation that they are paid, and the degree to which they ascend to the top of their careers, would provider readers with fine grainer insights. However, we lack precise context-specific data. We must therefore conduct analysis uninformed by data. As I recalled, clerical roles, teaching, and nursing were occupations reserved for or dominated by women. They were still stratified in terms of stature when men occupied those roles: men up and women down. The share of Liberian women in technical or other professional positions was grossly minimal. Apart from that, they worked as maidservants, market women and/or in agriculture. All these roles did not absorb women of their other informal sector responsibilities: minding the home, caring for their children, tending to sick or frail elders, etc.
This is why traditional economic analysis has been burdened with its narrow definition of work. It has often excluded a broad swap of Liberian women who work in the informal sector and served as breadwinners for their families. An economic sector that still has not graduated to providing adequate data on pay economic activities in the labor market will be hard-pressed to produce data on the informal economic sector. Furthermore, women, whether working in the pay sector of the economy are also workers in the domestic economy, and this occupation has direct influence on their pay labor force participation. Moreover, Liberian census’ occupational statistics has not matured to collect and collate such data for use of social science analysis.
Analysts who want to understand inequality in Liberia must comment on issues that emanate from the wage labor market while at the same time discussing dynamics exclusive to the non-wage markets (engagement in manual craft and/or unskilled labor). They will need to examine why and how women are clustered into low wage jobs or the informal market. Is it a by-product of market or cultural forces? Ask another way, why do women constitute a large segment of those in poverty? A son of a market woman, I know firsthand from life experience that our family’s source of income, food, shelter, and clothing were not exclusively derived from my father’s wage labor. Looking back, my mother’s economic contributions were quite sizeable, although they were not given the due regard by the larger society. Mother’s participation in the economy was considered to be ambiguous or undefined in the traditional sense. But it was from her income that I derived my allowance and tapped into many times for paying my expenses while a student in high school and college.
For the many boys and girls whose mothers were market women, perhaps we did not know fully how they were breaking the barriers of market inequalities. They were forced by necessity into lowly labor market activity, excluded from the best rewards and remuneration or even prestige, but the accounting of our life successes can only be attributed to the many glass ceilings that they broke. These were no white collar jobs. But without their contributions, many of our families were steps away from destitution. The intersection of my life experience and the study of economics and the other social sciences have resonated vividly when I look back at the void in my life brought on by the absence of my mother who died eight years ago. Only a relatively small fraction of her age cohort of women worked in the formal sector. She and her friends labored – rain or shine to provide for us. My wife’s generation is passing the touch of a life quite unique than their mothers.
My soon to be six year old daughter and her cohort, born in Liberia and abroad sit at the cusp of a totally different life experience. They have seen the ascendancy of a woman as the President of the Republic, and have opportunities to be any and all things that they want to be. They have the luxury of combining marriage with market work. They will combine motherhood of young children with paid employment. Education will play a key role in surging them toward equality with their male counterparts. If historical patterns hold true, they will attend and graduate college in greater numbers than their male counterparts. The supply of educated Liberian women, who will demand employment, will definitely become a powerful force in impelling widespread equality and social justice. This will hopefully raise quality of life for their families, and even delay child birth in place of prosperous careers. Women’s earnings will become one of the gateways to family prosperity.
In terms of women’s occupational history, some remarkable inroads have happened. However, there is still evidence of persistent and pervasive inequality. Policy makers must craft legislation and developed programs to address the lingering effects of “exploitation and opportunity hoarding” that have undermined gender equity. Hopefully my daughter’s generation has been exposed to life experiences and given resiliency by my wife’s generation that will help them to resist embedded cultural pressures, which caused prior generations to assimilate into and mimic structural inequalities that continue to reproduce women’s inequality. It is more so clear that even with the improvements in the lives of women already achieved, the structures of inequality remain impervious to change. Gender equity is far from being normalized. Hence, what types of public policies will eliminate gender disparities? Will the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) be a sufficient socioeconomic intervention? Will it attend to gender inequality, the poverty, and economic insecurity that accompany it? What key points of intervention exist for the government to promote women’s upward mobility? What are the implications for women’s health and wellness? These remain crucial questions for Liberian policy makers.
Editor’s Note:Emmanuel Dolo is the Administrative Director for the Center for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota’s Medical School. He can be reached at dolo0001@umn.edu.
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