The many faces of gender inequality

TLDR

Gender inequality manifests in diverse forms—from mortality disparities to entrenched patriarchal biases—and addressing it requires both empowerment and critical reflection on inherited values. The study seeks to move beyond women’s agency to critically assess the values underlying natality‑related gender injustice.

Abstract

Gender inequality has many distinct and dissimilar faces. In overcoming some of its worst manifestations, especially in mortality rates, the cultivation of women's empowerment and agency, through such means as women's education and gainful employment, has proved very effective. But in dealing with the new form of gender inequality, the injustice relating to natality, there is a need to go beyond the question of the agency of women and to look for a more critical assessment of received values. When anti-female bias in behavior {such as sex-specitic abortion) reflects the hold of traditional masculinist values from which mothers themselves may not be immune, what is needed is not just freedom of action but also freedom of thought — the freedom to question and to scrutinize inherited beliefs and traditional priorities. Informed critical agency is important in combating inequality of every kind, and gender inequality is no exception.