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Women's Status and World-System Position: An Exploratory Analysis

Article  in  Journal of World-Systems Research · June 2011

DOI: 10.5195/jwsr.2011.424

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 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION:
AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS

Richard York
Department of Sociology
University of Oregon
rfyork@uoregon.edu

Christina Ergas
Department of Sociology
University of Oregon
cergas@uoregon.edu

ABSTRACT

Our aim here is to strengthen the links between the world-systems perspective and research on
gender inequality. Grounding our analysis in theories assessing the connections between gender
relationships and world-system processes, we empirically explore (1) the extent to which
women’s status in nations overlaps with the world-system position of those nations and (2) the
influence of women’s status within nations on a variety of national characteristics. We find that
women’s status has a moderately strong association with world-system position, which suggests
that macro-comparative research may confound the respective effects on a variety of social
characteristics of women’s status and world-system position if indicators of both factors are not
included in analyses. We also find that, controlling for world-system position, GDP per capita,
and urbanization, in nations where women have higher status (variously measured), total fertility
rates, infant mortality rates, military expenditures, and inflows of foreign direct investment are
lower, and public health care expenditures and per capita meat consumption are higher. These
results suggest that women’s status likely has social effects that can be seen on the macro-level,
and that world-systems analysts should pay more attention to theories of gender in their research.

INTRODUCTION

A decade ago, Wilma Dunaway (2001: 2) observed that “women are only a faint ghost in the
world-system perspective.” She noted that very few articles in the two leading journals in the
field, Review and the Journal of World-Systems Research, addressed gendered exploitation,
women, or households. A quick perusal of the tables of content of issues of these journals
published since Dunaway presented her assessment demonstrates that not much has changed over
the first decade of this century (although, for a noteworthy exception, see the special issue of
Review [Feldman 2007a] dedicated to an appreciation of the work of Joan Smith). Gender and
women remain largely outside of the theoretical and research foci of the world-systems
perspective.

Copyright ©2011, American Sociological Association, Volume XVII, Number 1, Pages 147-164
ISSN 1076-156X
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 148

In some ways, this is not entirely surprising. The world-systems perspective is

characterized by a macro-level focus, whereas gender and gendered processes are typically
theorized at a micro-level. After all, nations do not have genders. However, gender influences
macro-level processes in important ways, including the machinations of the world-system, and
world-system processes influence the lives of women and men and gender relationships.
Therefore, our theoretical understanding of world-systems can be enhanced by taking gender
seriously. Micro-level gendered processes are clearly important to explore within the world-
system, however, to advance our current argument, we focus on the macro-level.
Our aim here is to help strengthen the link between the world-systems perspective and
research on gender inequalities and to demonstrate how both literatures can inform each other1.
To do this, we give a brief overview of some of the theories of gender inequalities that address
how world-system processes and other macro-level phenomena are gendered in various ways and
how gendered work is affected by world-system processes. We then present several exploratory
empirical analyses to show that (1) women’s status is connected to the structure of the world-
system and, therefore, macro-level analyses that ignore women’s status may confound gendered
effects with world-system position effects, and (2) women’s status within nations adds
explanative power above and beyond those of world-system position and indicators of
“modernization” and “development” in quantitative models of a variety of factors that are of
interest to world-systems theorists. Finally, we offer some suggestions for future avenues of
research examining gendered processes in world-systems.

THE GENDERED WORLD-SYSTEM

Analyses in the world-systems tradition typically focus on macro-structural factors such as trade
networks, foreign direct investment, national debt, and GDP (Hall 2000; Misra 2000). These
analyses have shed considerable light on the processes that produce and reproduce global
inequalities. However, although the macro-structural factors that are typically included in these
analyses are important indicators of dependency and the relative global influence of nations, they
can obscure the gendered character of organizations, hidden work in commodity chains, and
unequal relations within nations (Buchmann 1996; Dunaway 2001). The actors implicit in the
activities that underlie these macro-structural factors are typically men and male-dominated
organizations, while the activities of women are neglected (Waring 1999; Acker 2006).
Overlooking gender, therefore, can limit the scope and explanatory power of the world-systems
approach, since doing so can cause analysts to miss a large part of the social world – i.e., the
world as experienced by women, who make up more than half of the world’s population.
Incorporating gender into the world-systems perspective presents a challenge, since the
perspective focuses on large-scale processes and the configuration of relationships among
nations. By focusing on relations among nations, and critiquing more powerful, core nations,
world-systems analyses frequently fail to acknowledge the contributions of women to the world

1
Our goal is not to debate the utility of micro-gender versus macro-world-systems analyses, nor do we seek
to promote one level of analysis over the other. However, for a detailed discussion of these issues see
Fernandez-Kelly (1994) and Misra (2000).
149 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

economy 2 (Buchmann 1996; Mies 1998). Here, we outline the contributions of gender scholars
by reviewing some theoretical positions that help us understand the underlying gendered
construction of the world-economy and the ways in which women are often made invisible in
macro-structural analyses. We do this so as to expand the scope of the world-systems tradition
and demonstrate the potential for macro-comparative empirical research to address questions
about women’s status and gender relationships.
Gender scholars have raised important concerns regarding the use of macro-levels of
analysis. Coming from a critique of so-called “value neutral,” male dominated epistemologies
that objectify the subjects under study, gender research has a longstanding theoretical
commitment to methodologies that take the individual as the unit of analysis (Merchant 1990;
Naples 2003). Gender researchers have preferred methods that maintain women’s status as
subjects and explore problems that appear in their everyday worlds, such as household work
distribution between women and men (Smith 1987; Harding 1991; Naples 2003). Gender
scholars assert that research questions should be situated in the lived experiences of individuals in
order to highlight oppressive relations and the contributions of invisible groups (Smith 1987;
Misra 2000). Because of this, gender scholarship tends to focus on micro-processes, including
gender relations and interactions.
Although the world-systems perspective takes the world-system as the unit of analysis
and researchers tend to focus on macro-processes, gender and world-systems scholars do not
necessarily have competing agendas (Fernandez-Kelly 1994; Hall 2000; Misra 2000). Both
attempt to shed light on the relationship between general patterns and particular events with a
critical eye towards power relations. The world-systems perspective lends itself to dialectical
analysis of the relationship between local conditions or particular events and the global and
historical contexts within which these events occur. Bunker’s (1984) work on how the Brazilian
Amazon became an extractive economy is an example of research that focuses on a local
condition within the global economy. Hall (2000) addresses the “dual research agenda” of world-
systems analysis – how the processes of the system affect the social structures of its constituent
parts, and how changes in the internal social structure affect the system. From this he notes “the
dialectic between local and global implicit in the dual research agenda is the heart of world-
systems analysis” (p. 6). However, in practice world-systems analyses tend to look at the effect
of global forces on local events, while gender analyses tend to look at how women and men
contribute to and attempt to change structural processes.
Despite these general tendencies, some gender theorists do have a broader structural view
of how the history of capitalist development is a gendered and racialized phenomenon. They
argue that as practices around wages and labor markets bureaucratize, gender and racial
inequalities are institutionalized (Nash 1988; Waring 1999; Acker 2006; Pellow 2007; Salleh
2009). Acker (2006: 9) asserts “a relatively small group of white men drove the development of
capitalist production, reworking forms of male domination as intrinsic to emerging class relations,
and organizing the new factories, and, later, the new offices based on the assumptions about the
masculine individual as the normal human being.” One example of how the workplace is

2
We also recognize that the contributions of indigenous people are frequently neglected, and serious
consideration of race/ethnicity and culture is often absent from most macro-level research. We do not
address these issues here since to do so adequately would require extensive treatment, and our focus is on
gender.
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 150

organized around the “normalized” masculine worker embedded in a gendered distribution of

labor is the expectation that an employee can work long or odd hours without obligations in the
home. This structure is based on the assumption that women provide domestic labor, enabling
male workers to be available to meet the demands of employers. As these intrinsically gendered
and racialized organizational processes are spread throughout the world-system, male hegemony
is reinforced in preexisting patriarchal cultures around the globe. One such example is the Iranian
Muslim household where women were employed by carpet manufacturers producing goods for
trade with the West after the Second World War. In the home, men controlled their wives’
money and spent it in ways that perpetuated male control, including investing in boys’ but not
girls’ education (Nash 1988). Moreover, male hegemony is imposed on peoples with limited or
no previous gender hierarchy, as in the case of the Cherokee frontier, where, before colonial
influence, the Cherokee recognized matrilineal rights and celebrated women’s subsistence labor
(Dunaway 2000).
Gender scholars have demonstrated that women’s work in the world economy is
undervalued and, frequently, invisible (Mies 1998; Horton and Lee 1999; Waring 1999; Dunaway
2001; Acker 2006; Dunaway and Macabuac 2007; Federici 2009; Salleh 2009; Waring 2009).
Women who do paid work, in accordance with standard economic definitions, tend to earn the
lowest wages and do the least valued, although not unimportant, jobs. This is especially true for
women of color (Acker 2006). Remuneration for women’s devalued work can be understood as a
type of unequal exchange, where women provide labor that is essential to society, but for which
they receive little compensation. In addition, household and care-giving work, usually done by
women, is typically non-waged, and thus is not calculated in productive economic terms,
rendering it invisible in national accounts (Waring 1999). Moreover, household labor serves as
the base of and subsidizes production in the capitalist world-system. Unpaid labor allows
production costs to remain low, which, in turn, keeps commodities cheap and corporate profits
high (Mies 1998; Acker 2006; Dunaway and Macabuac 2007).
Many world-systems theorists and other macro-comparative researchers have perpetuated
the invisibility of women’s work by over-focusing on indicators that Buchmann (1996), Waring
(1999), and others have critiqued for their neglect of household and subsistence labor, such as
GDP. Additionally, when world-systems theorists have written about household labor, they tend
to do so without referring to the individuals doing the labor, who are typically women (Dunaway
2001). Neglecting to discuss women’s labor is a huge oversight when considering that women
worldwide are estimated to perform two-thirds of the world’s work (UNICEF 2004). In fact, the
global trend toward the “feminization of labor,” 3 both unwaged and waged in both informal and
formal economic sectors, is a well documented phenomenon (Mies 1998; Moghadam 1999;
Waring 1999; Parreñas 2001; Benería 2003).
To incorporate gender into the world-systems perspective, Dunaway (2001) suggests that
world-systems theorists look at three constructs for gender analysis, specifically, the household,
semiproletarianization, and commodity chains. Dunaway (2001: 6-7) further theorizes that three

3
Due to competition, the “feminization of labor” is theorized to occur because multinational corporations
increasingly need cheaper and more docile labor, and, given that women have historically been
disenfranchised, women are seen as the most easily manipulated workers. However, there are many
examples of women workers organizing around the world to combat deteriorating work conditions
(Moghadam 1999).
151 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

structural forces affect the household: trends in the world economy, state machinery, and
ethnicity/culture/subculture. While these forces affect households, households are also sites
where people reproduce and resist these structures.
Semiproletarianization of the household occurs when corporations externalize costs of
production by paying waged workers less than the amount needed to reproduce their household.
This systemic and institutionalized form of sexism forces households to absorb these costs
through women’s reproductive and subsistence labor (Dunaway 2001; Dunaway and Macabuac
2007). Individuals in households adapt to corporate externalization of production costs by
pooling resources in order to live, including wages, reproduction, subsistence food production,
and informal work, such as craft production. In Dunaway and Macabuac’s (2007) research on
Philippine export aquaculture, they observed resource pooling in a small, previously subsistence
fishing community. In particular, they note that when this community’s economy transitioned
from subsistence fishing to commercial export aquaculture, malnutrition and hunger increased in
the community. As a result of the loss of food and social services, women adapted by working
three to four more hours a day without pay to help their husbands do their jobs, and produced and
sold crafts, livestock, and dried oysters or fish in informal markets.
Dunaway (2001) contends that nodes of commodity chains are the most promising sites
for analyzing gendered work. Bunker (1984) makes a similar argument for focusing on nodes
when he explores the extraction economy in the Brazilian Amazon. He observes that “however
global exchange systems have become, commodities can emerge only from locally based
extractive and productive systems,” (or, in this case, reproductive) (Bunker 1984: 1019). Further,
Bunker goes on to suggest that “models of global and regional systems must therefore be
complementary and cannot be treated as opposing paradigms” (p. 1019). Dunaway and Bunker
are not alone in their assessment of the limitations of focusing on global processes to the neglect
of processes occurring within nations. Others have argued that the world-systems perspective
would benefit from analyzing smaller scale processes in the context of the world-system (Misra
2000; Engel-Di Mauro 2008).
Another way to incorporate gender into the world-systems perspective, and what we aim
to do here, is to utilize quantitative macro-comparative analysis. We do not seek to promote
macro-level analyses above micro-level, but, rather, we do seek to convey how applying different
methodologies can allow us to learn different things about the social world. McCall (2005)
argues that gender research would benefit from including more structural analyses in research on
inequality. Additionally, development researchers have made important contributions while
using quantitative, cross-national analyses by considering different aspects of women’s status
within nations and their relationship with various development indicators. In particular,
Buchmann (1996) examines the relationship between women’s education and structural
adjustment policy and finds that macroeconomic policies, such as structural adjustment in the
Third World, can have negative effects on women’s educational and occupational achievement.
Hadden and London (1996) conclude that educating girls is the best investment that less-
developed countries can make. Further, Shen and Williamson (1997, 2001) show that higher
women’s status, measured by education relative to men and reproductive autonomy, within a
nation is correlated with lower incidence of maternal and infant mortality, while indicators of
economic growth, like multinational corporate investment, have detrimental effects on mortality.
In light of the above considerations, it appears clear that the status of women within
nations is both affected by and can affect various world-system processes. The exact ways in
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 152

which gender matters will of course be context specific, but it appears that there are some general
patterns that we can expect to emerge. Below, we examine how women’s status fits in the
modern world-system and begin to explore what macro-structural factors it may affect.

POTENTIAL CONFOUNDING OF WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM

POSITION

There is a rich and growing body of quantitative empirical work showing the connections
between position in the world-system and a wide variety of social and environmental conditions
(e.g., Jorgenson 2003; McKinney, Kick, and Fulkerson 2010). There is also a small body of
literature that establishes a connection between women’s status and environmental politics using
cross-national quantitative analyses (Norgaard and York 2005; Nugent and Shandra 2009;
Shandra, Shandra, and London 2008). Cross-national studies demonstrate how women’s status
within nations is closely linked to important development indicators, including infant mortality,
fertility rates, and maternal mortality (Shen and Williamson 1997, 2001; Buchmann 1996;
Hadden and London 1996). However, these literatures have not extensively addressed the degree
to which world-system position and women’s status are confounded. As a first step in
demonstrating that it is important to incorporate gender into the world-systems perspective, here
we assess the extent to which women’s status and world-system position are empirically
associated.
We compare world-system position with five indicators of women’s status using cross-
national data to establish the degree to which these overlap. For measures of women’s status, we
use the indices developed by Nugent and Shandra (2009), which are derived from principal
component analytic methods, covering four areas of women’s status: education 4,
economic/labor 5, politics 6, and health 7. These variables were standardized for the sample of
nations used to develop them (which varied from 80 to 133 based on data availability), each with
a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. We used these to develop a fifth measure, overall
women’s status, by averaging these four indicators in nations where all four are measured,
averaging three where only three are measured, and averaged two where only two are measured.8
This approach makes it so that the overall measure of women’s status has better coverage than
any one of the original indicators alone (N=139). The values and ranks on these five variables for
a selection of nations are presented in Table 1.

4
Based on the female to male ratio of average years in school, gender parity index for gross enrollment
ratio (all levels except pre-primary), and the ratio of female to male adult (aged 15+) literacy rate.
5
Based on the ratio of estimated female to male earned income, female professional and technical workers
(% of total), and female labor force (% of total labor force).
6
Based on seats in parliament held by women (% of total), number of years women have had the right to
vote as of 2004, and women in ministerial government (% of total).
7
Based on maternal mortality rate (per 100,000 live births), females living with HIV/AIDS (% of total
living with HIV/AIDS), and female infant mortality (deaths per 1,000 live births).
8
Although the justification for combining these four variables into a single index is principally on
substantive grounds, it is also justifiable on statistical grounds. The scale reliability coefficient
(Cronbach’s alpha) for these four variables is .793 and the average Pearson’s r value for inter-item
correlations is .523.
 153 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Table 1. Women’s Status in a Selection of Nations.

Nation (world- Education Econ./Labor Politics Health Overall

system position (rank, N=94) (rank, N=80) (rank, (rank, (rank,
block) N=129) N=133) N=139)
U.S.A. (1) .753 (16) .785 (21) .343 (42) 1.209 (17) .772 (27)
Germany (1) .179 (35) 2.033 (7) 1.472 (10) 1.228 (7)
Brazil (2) .165 (36) -.803 (108) -.126 (74) -.255 (82)
Spain (2) .433 (37) -.441 (56) 1.067 (16) 1.695 (7) .688 (29)
Sweden (2) 1.365 (2) 1.361 (8) 2.859 (1) 1.833 (3) 1.854 (1)
China (3) -.164 (67) -.046 (67) .378 (47) .056 (61)
India (3) -1.380 (84) -.148 (69) -.314 (80) -.614 (103)
Japan (3) .068 (62) -.371 (51) -.569 (90) 1.037 (25) .041 (63)
Russia (4) .811 (11) 1.562 (4) .777 (34) 1.050 (12)
Romania (4) .295 (43) .687 (25) .386 (40) .456 (40)
Vietnam (5) -.579 (73) .112 (68) -.234 (80)
Saudi Arabia (5) -.456 (72) -2.369 (80) -1.413 (135)
Ukraine (6) .292 (44) 1.264 (9) .598 (39) .718 (28)
Kazakhstan (6) .325 (40) -1.067 (116) -.431 (85) -.391 (92)
Bangladesh (7) -.789 (63) -.783 (106) -.048 (72) -.540 (99)
Iran (7) -.680 (75) -1.575 (74) -1.133 (119) .375 (48) -.753 (108)
Nigeria (8) -.617 (95) -1.254 (116) -.936 (116)
Mexico (8) .392 (39) -1.080 (69) .025 (58) .504 (44) -.040 (71)
Ethiopia (9) -.203 (71) -1.276 (119) -.739 (107)
Sudan (9) -.965 (113) -1.014 (100) -.990 (121)
Laos (10) -1.493 (86) .084 (56) -.637 (90) -.682 (106)
Papua N.G. (10) -2.185 (128) -.802 (94) -1.493 (136)
Mongolia (10) 1.621 (1) .949 (15) .143 (54) .904 (15)

Note: The values for education, econ./labor, politics, and health are from Nugent and Shandra (2009) and
are standardized scores, with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. The overall measure is the mean
of these scores (see text). The rank, with 1 indicating the nation with the highest women’s status, is
presented in parentheses. The block represents the world-system position block of each nation from Kick et
al. (in press) – see Table 2.

We assessed the association between these five indicators of women’s status and Kick,
McKinney, McDonald, and Jorgenson’s (in press) measure of world-system position. Their
measure is for the period 1995-1999 and is essentially an updated version of the well-known
measure developed by Snyder and Kick (1979). The measure was developed using multiple-
network analysis of transnational economic, political, cultural, and military linkages among 160
nations. They assessed ties between nations across four relational dimensions—trading partners,
co-membership in international non-governmental organizations, inter-nation embassy
sponsorship, and arms transfers between nations. The multiple network analysis produced ten
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 154

blocks of nations that are structurally situated in similar positions in the world-system. The ten
blocks are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2. Summary of Kick et al.’s (in press) World-System Position (WSP) Measure and
Women’s Status.

WSP block (N) Nations with largest Overall women’s status block
populations mean (rank)
1. Center Core (6) United States, Germany, .819 (1)
France, United Kingdom
2. Western European (16) Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Poland, .701 (2)
Greece, Portugal
3. Asian (12) China, India, Indonesia, -.029 (5)
Pakistan, Japan
4. Eastern European (11) Russia, Romania, Czech .555 (4)
Republic, Hungary
5. Southeast Asian/Middle Vietnam, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, -.629 (9)
East (6) Cameroon
6. Former Soviet (14) Ukraine, Uzbekistan, .597 (3)
Kazakhstan, Belarus
7. Middle East (9) Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, -.541 (8)
Morocco, Sri Lanka
8. South American (27) Nigeria, Mexico, Colombia, -.098 (6)
Argentina, Kenya, Algeria
9. African (31) Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, -.813 (10)
Ghana, Madagascar
10. South Pacific/Middle East Laos, Papua New Guinea, -.393 (7)
(5) Eritrea, Mongolia, Fiji

Note: The number of nations in each block is presented in parentheses in the first column. Here we are
considering only the nations for which there are data for the overall women’s status variable, not all of the
160 nations included in Kick et al.’s (in press) analysis.

We regressed the five women’s status indicators on the world-system position indicator,
dummy-coded into the ten blocks. In Table 3, we present R2 values from these analyses. Note
that we do not present the full set of regression coefficients since we are focusing on the strength
of association, which is the relevant issue with regards to assessing the extent to which these
factors are confounded. However, a sense of the differences across blocks can be gained from the
different mean values of the overall status of women by block presented in Table 2. It is clear
that there is a fairly strong association between world-system position and women’s status, as
indicated by the reasonably high R2 values. For example, world-system position explains more
than half of the variance in overall women’s status. We also regressed the five women’s status
variables on GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) for the year 2000 (World Bank 2007), and
report the R2 values from these models in Table 3. These associations are reasonably strong,
155 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

although it is noteworthy that women’s status is even more closely connected to world-system
position than it is to GDP per capita, particularly for economic/labor status and educational status.

Table 3. Strength of Association (R2) Between Indicators of Women’s Status and Kick et
al.’s (in press) World-System Position (WSP) Measure (ten blocks) and GDP per capita.

WSP R2 GDP p. c. R2

Overall status .525 .404

Educational status .444 .168

Economic/labor status .432 .060

Political status .383 .293

Health status .709 .600

Note: All associations are significant at the .05 level. Results are derived from OLS regression. In the
case of the WSP measure, the ten blocks were dummy-coded. Sample size varies across models.

Due to the reasonably strong associations between women’s status and both world-
system position and GDP per capita, statistical models using world-system position variables or
GDP per capita as independent variables may suffer from confounding if they do not include
indicators of women’s status. Stated differently, some effects that may in truth stem from
women’s status may be erroneously attributed to economic factors or world-system position.
These strong associations suggest that there are good reasons to consider including indicators of
women’s status in a substantial variety of quantitative macro-comparative analyses, since many
dependent variables of interest to world-systems researchers may well be affected by gender
relationships. Of course, women’s status is affected by world-system position, and, therefore, to
some degree the effects of women’s status on other factors may indirectly reflect world-system
effects.
However, clearly the status of women within a nation is not reducible to world-system
position, and stems from multiple forces including local cultural traditions. In fact, even though
the association between women’s status and world-system position is fairly strong, clearly there is
a substantial amount of variation in women’s status across nations that is not explained by world-
system position or modernization. As can be gleaned from Table 1, there is substantial variation
in women’s status within world-system blocks. For example, within block 2, Sweden has the
highest level of overall women’s status out of the 139 nations for which there are sufficient data,
whereas Brazil is ranked 82nd. Similarly, within block 10, Mongolia is the 10th ranked on the
overall status measure while Papua New Guinea is 136th. This indicates that world-system
position and indicators of modernization cannot be used as proxies for measures of women’s
status. Therefore, it is clearly important to separate the effects of gender relationships from those
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 156

of the factors that are typically directly included in world-system position indicators, such as the
structure of trade networks and economic development.

THE EXPLANATIVE POWER OF WOMEN’S STATUS IN MACRO-COMPARATIVE

ANALYSES

In addition to establishing that women’s status and world-system position empirically overlap, for
our basic underlying argument – that gender relationships have important macro-level effects that
should not be ignored by world-systems researchers – to have force, it is necessary to demonstrate
that women’s status shows signs of having effects on a variety of features of societies above and
beyond those of world-system position or modernization. To assess this issue, we examine six
different features of nations that have been of interest to quantitative macro-comparative
researchers: the total fertility rate, the infant mortality rate per 1000 births, government health
expenditures as percentage of GDP, military expenditures as a percentage of GDP, net inflows of
foreign direct investment as a percentage of GDP, and meat consumption per capita (kg/year).
With the exception of the meat variable, all of these variables are from the World Bank (2007) for
the year 2004. The meat variable is from the World Resources Institute (2010) and is for the year
2002. 9
These variables represent a diversity of social conditions. Total fertility rate and the
infant mortality rate are indicators of reproductive health, spending on health care and the
military get at social and political priorities, foreign direct investment deals with economic links
to the global economy, and meat consumption is related to agricultural production processes and
cultural characteristics (Buchman 1996; Benería 2003; Waring 1999; York and Gossard 2004).
Thus, these variables were selected for analysis because they show some of the breadth of social
features that gender relationships (along with world-system processes) may affect.
Using OLS regression, we assess the effects of women’s status, controlling for important
indicators of world-system position (WSP) and modernization, on the above mentioned variables.
We use Kick et al.’s (in press) WSP measure, dummy-coded (using the “center core” block as the
reference category). Using dummy codes is a more conservative approach than using the WSP
measure as a continuous variable, since it does not require parametric assumptions about the
measure (e.g., that it is measured at the interval level). Furthermore, although the order of the
blocks represents a rough hierarchy, Kick et al. (in press) do not present their measure as a
continuous variable. We also include GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) and urbanization
(percentage of the population living in urban areas), both measured in the year 2000 (World Bank
2007), as indicators of development. For each model, we select the indicator of women’s status

9
This is the most recent year for which data are available. We are aware that since one of the variables
used to produce the women’s status indices is from 2003, there is a conceptual problem with using this
index to predict the values of a variable from an earlier point in time (note: the fact that the number of years
women have had the right to vote was measured as of 2004 is not an issue, since the relevant issue is when
women gained the right to vote; therefore, the number of years since women gained the right to vote as of
2004 is perfectly correlated with the number of years since they gained the right to vote as of 2002).
However, since (1) both meat consumption and women’s status are almost surely highly stable over short
periods of time and (2) we are conducting here an exploratory analysis, rather than trying to develop a
definitive model, we do not consider this to be a substantial problem.
157 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

that seems most theoretically appropriate for the dependent variable. For total fertility rate and
infant mortality rate, we use women’s educational status, since this is frequently identified as an
important factor. 10 For health and military expenditures, we use women’s political status, since
both these measures are of government funding and, therefore, stem from political decisions. We
use women’s overall status for the analyses of foreign direct investment and meat consumption,
since these are likely affected by a broader range of social factors.
It is important to note that we do not present any of these models as definitive. Clearly,
each one of the dependent variables we analyze is influenced by a variety of factors and more
developed models would be required to fully examine them. We present our analyses as initial
and exploratory with the aim of demonstrating the potential for women’s status to add explanative
power to a variety of models above and beyond what is given by measures of development and
world-system position.
The results of our analyses are presented in Table 4.11 For all of the dependent variables,
the women’s status has an effect that is significant at least at the .05 level using a two-tailed test,
with the exception of the model of health expenditures, where the women’s status variable only
has a significant effect at the .05 level using a one-tailed test (or at the .10 level using a two-tailed
test). 12 This is quite remarkable in light of the fact that the models control for major macro-
structural features that are often largely seen as determining characteristics of nations.

10
We do not use the women’s health status variable to explain infant mortality because of its partially
tautological nature. First, the health status variable includes female infant mortality, which is part of total
infant mortality. Second, maternal mortality is part of the women’s health status indicator, and maternal
mortality is a common cause of infant mortality.
11
Note that we have tested the robustness of these models. We re-estimated the models with White-
corrected standard errors, which addresses potential heteroskedasticity. For all of these models the
women’s status variable had a significant effect at the .05 level with a two-tailed test, except for the infant
mortality model, where the women’s status variable only had a significant effect with a one-tailed test, and
the FDI model, where women’s status did not have a significant effect. We also estimated the models
using the more traditional three-tier conceptualization of WSP, where, as per Kick et al.’s (in press)
suggestion, blocks 1-3 were considered the core, blocks 4-8 the semiperiphery, and blocks 9-10 the
periphery. In all of these models the women’s status variable had an effect that was significant at the .05
level with a two-tailed test, except for in the FDI model. We also estimated the models using the 10-block
WSP variable as a continuous variable, although dummy-coding each block, as we do in the models we
present, is the more conservative approach that requires fewer assumptions about the nature of WSP and
how it is measured. Kick et al. (in press) note that the order of blocks is approximately the order of
network centrality in the global system. In these models, the women’s status variable is significant at the
.05 level with two-tailed tests for every dependent variable except FDI. We also checked for
multicollinearity by calculating the variance inflation factor (VIF). The highest mean VIF for any model
was only 3.84 and the highest VIF for any single coefficient was 8.24; values well within accepted
standards. Taken together, these assessments suggest that the results we report here are reasonably robust.
12
Note that in an alternative model of health expenditures using the educational status variable instead of
the political status variable, women’s status has a significant effect at the .05 level using a two-tailed test.
However, we present the model using women’s political status so as to be consistent with the logic we use
to justify including political status in the military expenditures model, i.e., government expenditures are
based on political decisions.
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 158

Table 4. Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Infant Mortality Rate, Government Expenditures on
Health Care, Military Expenditures, Net Inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and
Meat Consumption per capita Regressed on Women’s Status (educational, political, or
overall), GDP per capita, Urbanization, and World-System Position (ten blocks).

TFR Infant Health Military FDI, net Meat per

mortality exp. exp. inflows capita
Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef. Coef.
(S.E.) (S.E.) (S.E.) (S.E.) (S.E.) (S.E.)
Educational status -.576 -9.299
(.138)*** (4.116)*
Political status .310 -.426
(.166)† (.183)*
Overall status -7.499 8.101
(3.698)* (3.221)*
GDP per capita .008 -.434 .098 -.031 1.684 1.889
(.014) (.232)† (.025)*** (.028) (.360)*** (.333)***
Urbanization -.009 -.166 .014 .021 -.095 .374
(.007) (.146) (.008)† (.010)* (.110) (.100)***
WSP 2 -.142 -1.150 -.354 -.373 19.864 3.555
(.313) (3.984) (.645) (.681) (9.386)* (8.732)
WSP 3 -.318 2.248 -1.508 -1.171 19.705 -4.994
(.400) (6.187) (.768)† (.813) (10.830)† (10.381)
WSP 4 -.371 -6.438 .162 -1.189 29.477 18.442
(.381) (5.273) (.787) (.833) (11.427)* (10.424)†
WSP 5 1.879 -3.088 .290 25.693 -2.333
(.563)** (.959)** (1.020) (13.904)† (11.812)
WSP 6 -.068 -1.923 -.868 -1.511 39.551 -4.720
(.413) (7.392) (.816) (.877) (11.759)** (10.897)
WSP 7 -.320 -1.184 .453 26.703 2.287
(.481) (.921) (.958) (12.171)* (11.379)
WSP 8 .542 -1.233 -1.839 30.781 6.894
(.478) (.773) (.846)* (11.098)** (10.278)
WSP 9 1.805 -11.328 -.770 -.593 28.863 .034
(.518)** (8.946) (.795) (.856) (11.521)* (10.812)
WSP 10 -1.021 -1.940 30.168 37.826
(.965) (1.145)† (13.884)* (13.503)**
y-intercept 2.549 35.198 3.017 2.014 -31.973 6.658
(.509)*** (9.706)** (.827)*** (.893)* (12.113)** (11.083)
N 62 29 117 101 130 131
R2 .818 .687 .653 .328 .202 .765

Notes: Block 1, the “center core,” is the omitted category for the WSP dummy-coded variables;
*** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05, † p<.10 (two-tailed tests)
159 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

Based on these results, we can say that there is clear evidence that where women have
higher educational status, fertility rates and infant mortality rates are lower. These findings point
to the major demographic and health consequences of women’s status. Our results also suggest
that women’s status has a distinct effect on social priorities. Where women’s status is higher,
military expenditures are lower and government health care expenditures are higher. Our results
also show that women’s status is associated with national links to the global economy. There is
less foreign direct investment in nations where women have higher status, which suggests that
gender equality leads nations to be less dependent on the global economy. Finally, diet and
agriculture also appear to be affected by women’s status. Where women’s status is higher, meat
consumption is higher. Clearly, women’s status is connected to a wide variety of processes and
social outcomes.
These findings can be understood by reflecting back on some of theoretical issues we
introduced above. Waring (1999) describes how social priorities are articulated in the global
economic system through valuation. Specifically, she uncovers the “patriarchal nature of
economics” and argues that “those who are making the decisions are men, and those values which
are excluded from this determination are those of our environment, and of women and children”
(p. 3). One example she explores is how military work is imputed into national economic figures
and is considered active work and is paid labor, while reproductive work, of the household and
human life, is considered inactive and goes unremunerated and unacknowledged. While Waring
does not seek women’s actual remuneration, she argues that without an imputation to account for
unpaid labor, women’s needs and contributions go unrecognized by policy-makers. Perhaps as a
product of differentiated historical, material and social conditions, in particular, women’s roles as
primary caregivers and nurturers of households, and men’s responsibilities to work outside the
household to obtain money, women in positions of power tend to value different things than do
men. For example, according to attitudinal research, women tend to express more concern for the
environment than do men (Bord and O’Connor 1997; Davidson and Freudenburg 1996). These
differences in valuation may explain many of our results, particularly the differences in military
and health care spending across nations with respect to the status of women.
Reflecting on the effects of women’s status on diet as well as infant mortality, it is worth
noting that women and girls in Third World nations disproportionately experience malnutrition as
compared to men and boys (Adams 1993; Dunaway 2001; Dunaway and Macabuac 2007). When
food is scarce, mothers eat less food in order to feed their children and husbands. Additionally,
male children are routinely fed better than girls (Adams 1993; Dunaway 2001; Dunaway and
Macabuac 2007). In many societies, meat consumption is a cultural sign of status, and meat is
often difficult to come by. For this reason, it is often reserved for men who are of higher status in
the sex-hierarchy (Adams 1993).

DIRECTIONS FOR ANALYSES OF GENDER IN THE WORLD-SYSTEM

Our aim here has been to develop a link between theories of gender and the world-systems
perspective, in particular to show that many aspects of the world-system are gendered, although
these aspects have typically been neglected by world-systems researchers. We pointed to some of
the existing theoretical work that examines both how gender relationships and women’s status
and actions affect many large-scale global processes and how global processes affect gender
 WOMEN’S STATUS AND WORLD-SYSTEM POSITION 160

relationships, women, and the household within nations. We then demonstrated the potential
importance of women’s status in world-systems research by empirically assessing two issues.
First, we demonstrated that there is a fairly strong association between world-system position and
women’s status within nations. This finding points to the potential for confounding in any
empirical models that use world-system position indicators but that do not take into consideration
women’s status – i.e., results showing that world-system position affects any particular dependent
variable may be spurious, or partially so, if the effects of women’s status are neglected. Second,
we presented exploratory models of six different dependent variables of interest in world-systems
research: total fertility rate, infant mortality rate, public spending on health care, military
expenditures, foreign direct investment, and meat consumption. For all six of these variables, we
found that women’s status had an effect above and beyond those of world-system position and
indicators of “modernization.” These results suggest that the neglect of gender relationships in
empirical research is a major oversight, and that the inclusion of indicators of women’s status has
substantial potential to add explanative power to analyses of a wide variety of social conditions.
Based on what we have presented here, we believe it is reasonable to conclude that, rather than
asking whether or not to consider gender in world-systems research, important questions for
scholars in the world-systems tradition include in what ways gender relationships affect the
global economy, political structure, and cultural relations, and in what ways are gender
relationships affected by the machinations of world-system processes.
We suggest that world-systems research should engage in efforts to both develop the
theoretical connections between gender and the world-system and to develop empirical measures
of gendered aspects of societies so that these factors can be included in macro-comparative
models. Further engagement with theories of gender may provide new or more nuanced answers
to old questions addressed in the world-systems literature and raise new questions and, therefore,
novel avenues for research. One of the powers of engaging a diversity of theories is the potential
to see the world in a variety of ways and, thereby, make discoveries that have been overlooked.
The utilization of theories of gender may be one avenue for adding further vitality to the world-
systems tradition.
However, theoretical development alone will not be sufficient to bring considerations of
gender into the world-systems tradition. One of the strengths of the world-systems tradition is its
substantial body of empirical research, including a rich and growing quantitative macro-
comparative literature. Incorporating gender into this literature will require the utilization of
overlooked data sources and the gathering of data on a variety of social features that have not
typically been central to analyses of world-system processes. An important source of data that is
emerging is that developed by the WomenStats project (Caprioli et al. 2009), which provides the
most comprehensive compilation of data, both qualitative and quantitative, on women’s status
currently available (http://www.womanstats.org/). The United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) (2009) also tracks data on gender equality. The Gender-related Development Index,
which is related to the widely used Human Development Index, is based on differences between
men and women in life expectancy, literacy, education, and income. The UNDP (2009) has also
developed the “gender empowerment measure,” which is based on women’s representation in
government and professional occupations. In addition to measures of women’s status, measures
that assess the activities of women that are typically overlooked by traditional economic measures
(e.g., GDP) would be highly useful. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an alternative to
GDP, developed by Redefining Progress, represents an important move in this direction, in that it
161 JOURNAL OF WORLD-SYSTEMS RESEARCH

includes measures of the value of household labor and parenting as well as volunteer work
(Talberth, Cobb, and Slattery 2007). However, the GPI has, to date, only been developed for the
United States. If relevant data for measures like this were collected for all nations in the world,
women’s labor could be better represented in analyses.
Recognizing how gender relationships and women’s status fit into the world-system is
clearly a worthy, if challenging, task for scholars. Nonetheless, addressing gender can add
theoretical depth to the world-systems tradition as well as enrich empirical research. Although
gender has remained, at best, on the fringes of the world-systems perspective in the decade since
Dunaway (2001) noted how women have been left out of this research tradition, perhaps the
coming decade will see the development of enduring links between theories of gender and the
world-systems perspective, thereby improving our understanding of our world.

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