are found in the Middle East and North Africa where the GDI is up to 33 per
cent lower than the HDI. These gaps are not just a product of low incomes.
South-east Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa impose very small penalties for
gender inequalities comparable to those found in much richer OECD coun-
tries. The GDI has been criticized for its focus on gender gaps in earned
income which downplays gender gaps in education and largely ignores those
in mortality, which are the two most important problems facing women in
many developing countries (Bardhan and Klasen, 1999). The abnormally high
mortality of women in India and other developing countries is discussed in
more detail in Chapter 4. The concept of earned income to construct the indices
excludes un-paid labour which is substantial in many developing countries and
so devalues its implicit worth. The GEM is criticized for being too heavily
focused on representation at the national political level so misses the substan-
tial representation of women in local governments in for example, India. The
GEM makes no allowance for the lack of power of some parliaments. China
and Cuba have high proportions of women in parliament, but parliaments have
little influence so higher GEM rankings do not reflect the actual political
power held by women (Bardhan and Klasen,1999).
Growth as progress towards an ideal end-state
GDP growth can be understood as progress towards some ideal end-state or
goal. The World Bank, by classifying countries according to income groups,
has a clear notion of an ideal end-state. For 2006 these groups were low-
income countries (LICs) with a GDP per capita of $905 or less, lower-middle-
income countries (LMCs), $906–3,595, upper-middle-income countries
(UMCs),$3,596–11,115 and high-income countries,$11,116 or more. The
common usage of the term ‘developing countries’ then refers to countries with
a GDP per capita less than $11,116. The ideal end-state is clear; it implies that
developing countries should promote rapid economic growth until they have
achieved income levels sufficient to give them high-income developed-coun-
try status. In 1991 the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr Matahir Mohamad,
launched ‘Vision 2020’,an ambitious thirty-year set of goals for the country:
Hopefully the Malaysian who is born today and in the years to come will be
the last generation of our citizens who will be living in a country that is
called ‘developing’. The ultimate objective that we should aim for is a
Malaysia that is a fully developed country by the year 2020. (Vision 2020)The plan aimed to double real GDP every ten years for three decades by target-
ing 7 per cent growth in real GDP per year. Growth alone was not considered
enough:
Malaysia should not be developed only in the economic sense. It must be a
nation that is fully developed along all the dimensions: economically,Thinking about Growth 31