Though the consequences of gender gaps in the labour market and academia visibly shape social and economic tendencies, it’s a disparity that remains understudied in Armenia, leaving the general public underequipped to understand and react to this dynamic.
Last week, the American University of Armenia (AUA) hosted a workshop with international scholars to facilitate an exchange of knowledge, experience, and research methods related to studying gender inequalities and evaluating policies.
The initiative also aims to help push the study of gender economics to the forefront, given the lacking data-driven research of the topic in Armenia.
“We really want to reinforce the importance of having evidence-driven policy analysis and policy evaluation,” Knar Khachatryan, an Associate Professor at AUA, told CivilNet.
This workshop, held within the framework of the Swedish Institute’s Eastern Partnership Cooperation Project, also aimed to shed light on what’s happening in Armenia with regard to gender equality. Topics of interest included household tasks, paid and unpaid work, or other related issues, said Khachatryan.
Though studies on the topic in Armenia are sparse, the ones conducted reveal a disparity that is observed in day to day life.
The 2020 UN Women report on Armenia showed that women spend 58.5 hours weekly on domestic work, while men spend only 28.4 hours. This figure is consistent with the global statistic which indicates that women spend 2.5 times as many hours a day on unpaid care and domestic work as men.
Another 2024 report showed that Armenia ranked 65th out of 146 countries on an evaluation of gender parity regarding economic participation and opportunity. On an evaluation of gender parity in educational attainment, Armenia ranked 83rd out of 146 countries.
According to Khachatryan, social norms and behaviours, women’s underrepresentation at managerial levels and in business, as well as problems that they may have with access to finance are some of the key issues related to the gender inequalities in Armenia.
“There are these general observations. Now we try to dig deeper and find what are the real causes of this,” she said.
The Global Gender Gap Report also revealed that, in Armenia, for every woman in a leadership role, there are more than two men.
Outside of Armenia, the situation is no different.
In the research she presented at the workshop, Dr. Lídia Farré, tenured scientist at the Institute for Economic Analysis and affiliated professor at the Barcelona School of Economics in Spain, found that women are underrepresented in top positions at the highest level in academic and decision-making positions.
She noted that when these gaps are not acknowledged in research, it creates a skewed perception when it comes to understanding disparities between male and female dynamics and further amplifies inequalities in lived experiences.
“If we look at the society in general, for instance, if women are not represented in the political arena or among politicians, then what we can see is that the policies are not designed or are not implemented to benefit women,” Farré said.
She explained that the gender gaps are also reflected in the contents of research, in the field of medicine for instance, if they only take into account one part of the population.
A gender gap in the choice of studies and profession persists globally, namely in the United Kingdom, according to research presented by Dr. Sarah Smith, professor of economics at the University of Bristol.
She presented data revealing an underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, as well as in economics. However, while the notion of a leaky pipeline was observed among women studying STEM, meaning there’s a difficulty to retain them in those fields, there is a dry pipeline when it comes to economics, meaning there’s a problem attracting women to economics studies in the first place.
Smith explained that missing the input and contribution of a major part of the population is a problem given the importance of STEM and economics in terms of shaping society.
“(Economists are) making really important decisions that affect everyone in the country. And we know female economists think about different issues, they care about different things, so lacking those other perspectives really does matter,” said Smith.
Among the key takeaways, she noted that stereotyped beliefs shape what students choose to study and lead to distorted gender ratios.
“I think there are a lot of people who perpetuate the stereotype that economics is about money,” she said, while in reality she explained it touches on inequalities, gender gaps, poverty, among other issues.
In the 2021 co-authored policy brief on Armenia, Khachatryan argues that “gender inequality is not just an issue of fairness” and that “inequality results in considerable resource misallocation, where women’s productive potential is not fully realized.”
Khachatryan is currently working on a research project focused on how and why students choose their career paths, both in and outside of STEM fields.
