Women in MarketsA Systems Perspective

Some Things to Consider

Presented by Mary MorganFor CARE International

July 1, 2015www.economicsunplugged.com

Institutions = Rules of the Game

Institutions are humanly devised to structure

interaction and improve efficiency.

Institutional Economics ParadigmLevels of Institutions in an Economy

Oliver Williamson, 2000

Source: Williamson, O.E., 2000. The new institutional economics: Taking stock, looking ahead. Journal of Economic Literature, 38 (3), pp. 595-613.

• Customs, traditions, norms• Informal Institutions-gender, ethnicity, class,

religion1. Embeddedness

• Formal rules – property, Law (Judiciary)• Economics of property rights

2. Institutional Environment

• Transaction cost economics• Contracts – aligning governance structures with

transactions3. Governance

• Prices, incentives• Agency

4. Resource Allocation & Employment

Social Regulation

All economic behavior is influenced by social institutions, which motivate the behavior of all the actors in the market (Harriss-White 1998).

Dominant Economic ParadigmNeoclassical Economics

Market Systems• A bounded context • Includes actors and

institutions directly or indirectly engaged in the system

• public and private actors

• a dynamic space

Guiding Questions

• What is the market system telling us?• Is it a women’s market system or a man’s

market system? • Why are women working in those markets?• Where are women working in the market

system?• What access do they have to TA? • What market systems include women?

What are women doing in the system?

Systems Thinking Elements

Feedback • Feedback' exists between two parts when

each affects the other (Ashby, p. 53)• In complex systems, where most of our work

occurs, several parts affect each other, and it is not possible to isolate the feedback between two parts– one can only look at the whole and start to map out the feedback loops

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Feedback

No investment in inputs

No accessible input supplies

Low quality/quantity product

No interested buyers

No accessible/appropriate financial

products

R

Leverage

• Places (points) in a complex system where a small shift to one element can influence change in the whole system

• Points of power• Could be information flows, incentives, rules,

reducing delays, flow of resources• Meadows, D.,1999. Leverage points: Places to

intervene in a system [online]. Hartland, Vermont: The Sustainability Institute. Available from: http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf [

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Feedback

Investment in inputs

Accessible input supplies

Quality/quantity product

Interested buyers

Accessible/appropriate

financial products

R

--

- -

Facilitate Rural Distribution

B

+

Facilitate Rural Procurement

+

Delay

+ Increase

- Decrease

B

Facilitate financial products

B

+

+

Boundary of System

• Not just transactions!!!!!• Establishes a limit to the system’s functions

and internal processes: input – process – output

• One market system can be interconnected with other systems

Campbell, R.,2014. Framework for Inclusive Market System Development [online]. Washington, DC: USAID-Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO). Available from: https://www.microlinks.org/library/framework-inclusive-market-system-development

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