Gender Analysis of the Policy Responses to High Oil Prices: A Case Study of South Africa

The 2007-8 surge in oil prices has created concern about its impacts on poor and vulnerable populations in developing countries. Government management of the energy crisis was shown to be important in reducing adverse impacts. This study uses an applied general equilibrium framework to examine alter...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFeminist economics Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 216 - 240
Main Author Fofana, Ismaël
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.07.2015
Taylor & Francis LLC
Subjects
Crude oil prices
Developing countries
Energy crisis
Energy policy
Energy shortages
Exchange rates
Foreign exchange rates
Gender
Household economics
LDCs
Management of crises
Oil price
Prices
South Africa
Studies
time use
Women
South Africa
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Summary:The 2007-8 surge in oil prices has created concern about its impacts on poor and vulnerable populations in developing countries. Government management of the energy crisis was shown to be important in reducing adverse impacts. This study uses an applied general equilibrium framework to examine alternative policy and external shocks with the recent surge in oil prices in South Africa through a gender lens. Simulation results show that although the 2007-8 energy crisis contributed to slowing down South African gross domestic product (GDP) growth and reducing employment and earnings, the distributional impact between men and women has been neutral. This neutrality is driven by an increase in capital inflows, which has mitigated the exchange rate depreciation owing to the oil price hike. Without an increase in capital inflows, the crisis would have significantly depreciated the exchange rate and contributed to decreasing women's market opportunities and increasing women's workload as compared to men.
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ISSN:1354-5701
1466-4372
DOI:10.1080/13545701.2015.1023330