Economic Growth and Institutions: Gender Equality, Beyond Markets in Brazil, China, and Russia

This paper aims at comparing female trajectories in three BRICS -- Brazil, China and Russia -- since 2000, when a new path of economic growth opened up new opportunities for both sexes in these new mass-consuming market societies. These countries have some features in common, including their being large economies with a strong manufacturing sector, low fertility rates (under 2.0), an urbanization rate over 50%, and convergent female participation rates in the labor market (between 56% and 65%), but one major dissimilarity in terms of educational attainment: only Russia displays high shares of tertiary education (more than 50%) among the adult population[1], as compared to China (less than 5%) and Brazil (around 10%) (OECD Factbook 2013; World Bank GHD 2013: Capital for the Future).  

Moreover, these three countries differ profoundly in the way they have developed different patterns in terms of institutions and norms with regard to social protection schemes, labor regulations, and gender policies.

This paper will systematize major traits of female trajectories and gender gaps in Brazil, China and Russia in the 2000s, gathering statistics from the ILO, OECD, World Bank and other relevant databases. In parallel, it will map how the welfare state has evolved as of late in these countries and how existing norms and institutions either push for or constrain  gender equality. After systematizing data and the major characteristics of national social protection schemes with regard to the promotion of gender equality and wellbeing, a logistic regression model will be undertaken in order to determine the factors that most contribute to explain gender asymmetries in each country.

[1] Age bracket 25-54 years old.