people and planet

3
called for. Women’s empowerment and overall economic
development are strongly interrelated (Duflo, 2012). Legal
reforms complemented by economic and social policies
are needed to undo past inequality and create conditions
in which women’s rights are respected and much more
equitable conditions supported.
Finally, to address gender inequality, critics advocate a
more nuanced, holistic understanding of the concept of
gender in which, for example, ‘gender’ is not equivalent to
‘girls and women’ but it is understood that unequal gender
relations and gendered preconceptions also harm men and
boys, and that the involvement of men and boys is integral
to improving gender-related power relations (Edström
et al., 2015). At the same time, efforts to remedy gender
imbalances need to recognize how societies create and
enforce notions of gender, and how power relations and
conceptions of feminine and masculine roles translate to
institutional practices and norms (Connell, 2009).
Indigenous populations are often among the most
disadvantaged groups. A global analysis of key education,
health and poverty indicators of populations who
met literature-based ethnic or linguistic definitions of
indigeneity found that for nomadic or semi-nomadic
pastoralists in Africa, education indicators were much
worse than the national average, and the education
gap was much higher than gaps in health and other
indicators. In Latin America, stunting, water deprivation
and primary enrolment rates were worse among
indigenous populations. In some countries in Asia, the
well-being of some indigenous groups was found to lag
behind national averages, while others performed just as
well on multiple indicators (Macdonald, 2012). Yet despite
vulnerability based on socio-economic status and health
outcomes, many indigenous communities maintain
lifestyles and engage in practices that contribute to the
sustainability aspirations of the new SDG agenda (see
Chapter 1: Planet).
VULNERABLE POPULATIONS REMAIN ON
THE MARGINS OF SOCIETY AND LACK EQUAL
ACCESS TO SOCIO-ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
Inequality is the result of both income disparity (see
Chapter 2: Prosperity) and the marginalization of groups
that experience intersecting disadvantages relating
to factors such as poverty, ethnicity, gender, disability
and location.
For instance, people with disabilities are significantly
more likely to be poor and less likely to be employed.
An analysis of 15 lower
income countries in
Asia, Latin America
People with disabilities
and Africa using
are significantly
2002–2003 data found
more likely to be poor that in a majority of the
countries, disability was
and less likely to be
significantly associated
employed
with lack of primary
school completion
and employment, and
higher health expenditure (Mitra et al., 2013). Also with
regards to health, for example, a qualitative analysis of
the experience of pregnancy among disabled women
in Nepal suggested a need to improve health worker
training; health workers felt unprepared to meet the
needs of disabled married women who were pregnant or
considering pregnancy (Morrison et al., 2014).
Caste and religious minority status continue to determine
disadvantage on various indicators of health, inequality,
poverty, education, employment, wages, gender
empowerment and access to public goods. For example,
in India higher caste Hindu households hold distinct
advantages in these areas over scheduled caste, scheduled
tribe and Muslim households (Borooah et al., 2015).
Many other large subgroups remain at the fringe of
society and legality, such as child labourers and orphans,
and the growing numbers of refugees and forcibly
displaced populations affected by conflict and climate
change (see Chapters 4: Peace and 5: Place). Moreover, the
extent of marginalization may be underestimated: some
recent studies suggest that 250 million to 350 million
people may be missing from global estimates because
they are undercounted or omitted from household
surveys (Carr-Hill, 2013; Villegas and Samman, 2015).
The extent of persistent discrimination by race,
religion and ethnicity is confirmed by a growing body
of field experiments. In some studies, real or fictitious
individuals are matched on all relevant characteristics
except those presumed to lead to discrimination, such
as race, ethnicity and gender. How they fare in job or
housing applications or purchases of goods is then
compared. A seminal field experiment in the United
States found that white candidates were called back far
more than black candidates with otherwise identical
CVs, and that the better the CVs, the more the race gap
widened (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004). Evidence
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CHAPTER 3 | PEOPLE: INCLUSIVE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT