Oil: a challenge for gender equality

Subject Areas : Computational economics

Sahar Araghizadeh ¹ , Ali Reza Daghighi Asli ^{2 *} , مرجان دامن کشیده ³ , Ali Esamailzadeh mogry ⁴

1 - Central Tehran Azad University
2 - Islamic Azad university
3 - دانشکده اقتصاد و حسابداری ، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی واحد تهران مرکزی ، ایران
4 - .Associate Professor at Islamic Azad University of Eslamshahr, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2024-07-11 Accepted : 2024-10-26 Published : 2025-10-01

Keywords: Gender, inequality, oil,

Abstract :

Extended Abstract

Purpose

The term “equity” refers to fairness and justice, equality refers to equal opportunities, equal access, equal treatment, equal sharing and sharing of resources, and keeping everyone on the same level regardless of the means they already have or have access to. Social equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. Social equality means that the same resources or opportunities are given to every person or group of people. Women are useful at work in many ways, but they have much less access to resources and productive opportunities than men. It would be useful to find ways to close gender gaps for women and communities as well.  On the other hand, the realization of gender equality can instrumentally have various economic and social achievements for women, their children and the larger society. Meanwhile, high reserves of oil and gas in different countries have made them known as oil countries. It has also paid attention to these areas due to lack and underdevelopment. Oil extraction, which is not a labor force, but a capital-intensive industry, creates little employment. Accordingly, the level of unemployment in these regions is higher than the global average. Also, considering that oil-rich countries often try to extract more oil in order to increase their income, they push most of their labor in this direction, and this requires male labor. Also, unfortunately, Women on average are paid much less than men globally in some departments, organizations and factories, and even the salaries of female workers are lower than average Minister of Labour and Employment salary in some factories. Therefore, one of the reasons why employers attract more women is that they hire them with lower wages than men. Therefore, it can be said that in addition to the fact that gender inequality is seen in some societies regarding the less employment of women in economic activities; Inequality in wages is another cause of gender inequality. Nevertheless, despite their remarkable efforts, it seems that women have been neglected regarding the type and manner of activity in the country's economic system. Similarly, women do not play a role or play a small role in household budget management. As such, women are denied access to jobs, finances, and education, and are more vulnerable to hunger and disease. While considering the apparent gap in the literature, the propositions of this study are based on the gender discourse about sustainable livelihoods in oil communities. This study seeks to find the level of oil investment that has involved oil-rich countries in the promotion of alternative livelihoods, and also to define the amount of women's income from such investment in the communities. Also, this study deals with how this affects women's wage inequality.

Method

 The present study, in order to achieve the research goals, has estimated a regression model using the panel data approach for a selection of oil-rich countries in the period from 2017 to 2022. Through  the ratio of women's minimum wage to men's minimum wage. The dependent variable in the regression model of this study indicates gender inequality, which is obtained through the ratio of women's minimum wage to men's minimum wage. OIL is oil revenue, and X includes control variables such as Islam, greenhouse gas production, quality of government, political stability, corruption index, and quality of laws.

Findings

 According to the findings from the model estimation, oil revenues have a positive and significant effect on gender inequality. This means that as oil revenues increase, the level of gender inequality increases. Also, according to the table below, greenhouse gases and the level of corruption have a positive and significant effect on gender inequality. Whereas,  Islam has a negative and significant effect on gender inequality. This means that the level of gender inequality in Islamic countries is lower than in non-Islamic countries. Political stability and the quality of laws are two other important factors that have a negative and significant impact on gender inequality. This means that as political stability and the quality of laws improve in the countries, gender inequality will decrease.

Conclusion

 This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the impact of oil on gender equality and inequality. According to the findings, oil revenues have a positive and significant effect on gender inequality. This means that as oil revenues increase, the level of gender inequality increases. This shows that oil is actually causally related to gender inequality; this inequality in the labor market caused by oil production can potentially lead to other consequences such as domestic violence and adverse health consequences for women. While  Islam has a negative and significant effect on gender inequality. Thus, the gendered dimensions of the resource sector are some of the ill-conceived aspects of the literature on the economic effects of residual resource wealth.  An important issue for future research is to expand the scope of the resources studied. In addition, another field with high potential yield for further analysis is the identification of contextual and institutional factors that underlie differences in gender inequalities between resource-rich societies. It is felt that a better understanding of distributional issues in resource-rich societies is needed to inform the design of specific policies in such societies.

 

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