Women and Sustainability in Development

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain how sustainability principles shape how places develop, and explore how economic development has influenced opportunities for women and contributed—unevenly—to greater gender parity around the world.

What is Success?

Imagine this:

A country’s economy is growing fast.
New businesses are opening.
More money is being made than ever before.

Sounds like success, right?

But look a little closer…

Women are still paid less than men and have fewer job opportunities.
Natural resources are being used faster than they can be replaced.
Some communities are improving, while others are left behind.

So here’s the question -- Is this country really “developed”?

As geographers, we will try to answer the following questions in this lesson:

Can a country grow economically if half its population doesn’t have equal opportunities?
What happens if economic growth damages the environment?
Should development focus only on making money—or something more?

Equality Please!

As countries industrialize, women’s roles shift from subsistence agriculture and unpaid domestic work to participation in the formal labor market. However, development does not automatically guarantee equality.

Key Vocabulary:

Gender Inequality Index (GII):
- A composite measure of reproductive health (maternal mortality, adolescent birth rates), empowerment (parliamentary seats, secondary education), and labor market participation.
The Informal Economy:
- Unregulated, untaxed work (e.g., street vending, subsistence farming) where women are disproportionately represented, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Microloans:
- Small-scale loans, often provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the Grameen Bank, to help women start or expand small businesses.

The path to empowering women and lowering GII scores can look different in countries, but one thing is true for all of them – empowering women through increased education and opportunities in the formal economy will only increase levels of development in countries across the globe.

Gender Parity

Gender Parity also means including women in decision-making.

The map below illustrates the percentage of seats held by women in a country’s legislature.

Women Parliment map

What are some things that surprise you from this map?

How Can We Be Certain?

Another certainty in our world today is that as economies continue to develop, sustainability must be central to the process.

Sustainable development is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

It rests on three pillars: Economic, Social, and Environmental.

To be truly sustainable, development must balance three competing interests:

1. Environmental Protection:
  - Managing resources to prevent resource depletion (using resources faster than they can grow back).
2. Economic Growth:
  - Creating jobs and wealth that are stable and don't rely on destroying the environment.
3. Social Equity:
  - Ensuring that development benefits everyone, regardless of gender or income. As the sources note, using the full "talent pool" of a country by ensuring gender parity is vital for long-term prosperity and competitiveness.

As geographers, we use the Ecological Footprint to measure how much land and water area a human population requires to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb its wastes.

- Core vs. Periphery: Core countries (like the U.S. or Germany) generally have much larger footprints because of their high levels of mass consumption.
  - For example, if everyone on Earth lived like an average American, we would need approximately 5 Earths to sustain us.
  - This highlights why sustainability is a major concern as more countries move into Rostow’s Stage 5 of development (Remember the criticisms of Rostow from the last lesson?).

Key Challenges to Sustainability

- Resource Depletion:
  - Many countries rely on commodity dependence, where they export one main raw material (like oil or timber).
  - This is often unsustainable because those resources can run out or their prices can crash, causing economic collapse.
- The "Double Burden":
  - True social sustainability is hard to reach when certain groups face structural barriers.
  - For instance, even as a country develops economically, women often face a double burden—working for wages while still being responsible for the majority of unpaid domestic labor, such as cooking and cleaning.

A Sustainable Alternative

Many countries are turning to ecotourism as a sustainable development alternative to other economic activities.

Ecotourism is travel to natural environments that aims to conserve the area and improve the well-being of local people.

- Why it works:
  - Instead of building a factory that might pollute a river (traditional industry), a community preserves the river and the surrounding forest to attract tourists.
  - The Benefit:
    - It provides an economic incentive to protect nature. For example, in Costa Rica, ecotourism provides thousands of jobs and protects biodiversity while avoiding the environmental "scarring" of heavy mining or logging.
    - Another benefit is that almost 905% of revenue remains in the country, further supporting conservation efforts, infrastructure improvements, and increasing the quality of life for citizens.

Summary of Sustainable Development Strategies

Sustainable Development
Concept	Definition	Real World Example
Sustainability	Balancing profit, people, and the planet for future generations.	Using solar power instead of coal to run a factory.
Microloans	Small loans to help people start businesses. Often loaned to women in developing countries.	A woman in Bangladesh uses a microloan to buy a cow, selling the milk to support her family sustainably.
Carrying Capacity	The maximum population an environment can support.	A national park limits the number of daily visitors to protect the trails.
Gender Parity	Equality between genders.	Closing the gender wage gap so all workers are paid fairly for their labor.

Let's Talk Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were introduced in Module 1, but here is a quick review.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 global goals created in 2015 to improve life for people and protect the planet by 2030.

They focus on issues like:

- Ending poverty
- Improving education
- Protecting the environment
- Promoting equality

So, how do geographers apply these goals to people in the real world? Below are several examples to illustrate how these goals have impacted the lives of people.

Goal 5 (Gender Equality)

Goal 5 focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. A specific target within this goal is increasing women’s participation in economic and political life.

- - - The Problem: In many developing countries, women have limited access to education, credit, and formal employment opportunities, which restricts their ability to earn income and participate in decision-making.
    - The SDG Solution: Bangladesh expanded access to microloans through programs like the Grameen Bank, providing women with small amounts of capital to start businesses. This increased women’s financial independence (Economic pillar), improved household well-being (Social pillar), and empowered women to take on leadership roles in their communities.

Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation)

Goal 6 focuses on ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. A specific target is improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation systems.

- - - The Problem: In many Sub-Saharan African communities, residents—especially women and children—must travel long distances to collect unsafe water, leading to health risks and lost time for education or work.
    - The SDG Solution: Rwanda invested in community water infrastructure, including wells and piped water systems, bringing clean water closer to homes. This reduced waterborne diseases (Social pillar), improved productivity by saving time (Economic pillar), and promoted sustainable water use (Environmental pillar).

Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure)

Goal 9 focuses on building resilient infrastructure, promoting sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation. A key target is expanding access to technology and infrastructure.

- - - The Problem: In many rural regions of developing countries, limited access to reliable infrastructure—such as electricity and internet—restricts economic growth and access to education and markets.
    - The SDG Solution: India expanded rural broadband internet access through national infrastructure programs, connecting remote villages to digital networks. This increased access to education and information (Social pillar), supported small businesses and entrepreneurship (Economic pillar), and encouraged more efficient use of resources through digital technologies (Environmental pillar).

The same goal can look different in countries at different levels of development, as illustrated below with Goal 11 in both Mexico and Germany.

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Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities)

Goal 11 focuses on making human settlements safe and resilient. A specific target within this goal is the expansion of public transportation.

Mexico

- - The Problem: In many Latin American cities, the poorest residents live on the urban periphery, far from downtown jobs, and often lack access to transit.
  - The SDG Solution: Mexico City implemented a bus-based rapid transit system (BRT) using low-emission or electric buses. By creating dedicated lanes and efficient boarding, the city improved air quality (Environmental pillar) while providing impoverished citizens with access to employment (Economic and Social pillars).

Germany

- - The Problem: In Germany, despite advanced infrastructure, many cities face traffic congestion, air pollution, and high carbon emissions due to heavy reliance on personal vehicles, especially in urban areas.
  - The SDG Solution: Cities like Berlin have expanded public transportation networks and bike-friendly infrastructure, including dedicated bike lanes and reduced-cost transit passes. These initiatives reduce emissions and improve air quality (Environmental pillar), increase accessibility for all income groups (Social pillar), and support efficient movement of workers and goods (Economic pillar).

Goal 13 (Climate Action)

Goal 13, the SDGs apply the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities". This means that while everyone must act, wealthier core countries are expected to shoulder more responsibility because they industrialized earlier and typically have much larger ecological footprints.

- - - The Footprint Gap: The ecological footprint of a person in the United States is roughly 20 acres, compared to the world average of 6.4 acres.
    - The Action: Core countries like Germany and the United States use their wealth to invest in renewable energy (Solar, Wind) and "green" technology to reduce carbon emissions per capita. By doing so, they fulfill their SDG requirements to protect the global environment for future generations.

You should now be able to explain how sustainability ideas influence where and how industries develop. You also saw how economic development can open up more opportunities for women, leading to greater gender parity in education, jobs, and income, even though that progress isn’t equal everywhere. Together, these ideas show how economic choices can impact both the environment and people’s lives around the world.

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