March 8 2006
In no country in the world do women enjoy the same opportunities as men, and in all regions they are still placed in an unfavourable position within the political and economic spheres.
Gender equity is far from being achieved. The possibilities enjoyed by men and women in all countries around the world are unequal. Let us remember that nearly 70% of the world’s poor are women. The most obvious inequities are evidenced at the economic and political levels.
The exclusion of women is highly visible at the political level. In spite of making up more than half of the world’s population, only 15% of women are members of parliaments around the world. According to international studies, the female participation required for women to have a real influence on political processes should be of at least 30%. However, only some countries - mostly Nordic ones – exceed such rate, among them Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The presence of women in decision-making bodies is the only indicator of gender inequality that does not vary according to poverty in the country. Some of the world’s richest countries, such as France or Japan, have between 10% and 12% of women in their respective parliaments, below the 13% rate achieved by countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region. Likewise, women hold only an average 6% of posts in national government cabinets. It is only in countries such as Norway, Sweden or Finland that women achieve participation rates in ministerial cabinets that are over 40%. National decision-makers, mostly male, tend to be reluctant in dealing with issues concerning women: 47 UN member countries have not signed or ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted in 1979, and another 43 countries have done so with reservations.
With regards to economic participation, women have less access to the labour market at global level and they are also subjected to employment discrimination as evidenced by a lower average salary. The largest inequities regarding these two aspects are registered in Middle Eastern countries, North African countries and some Latin American countries like Chile, Mexico and Peru. The income gap, as measured by dividing the total salaries earned by women by those earned by men, yields an average 0.33 in the Middle East and North Africa, 0.43 in Latin America and the Caribbean and 0.47 in South Asia. North America and Central Asia are the regions showing the highest levels of equity, with 0.63. Europe has an income gap of 0.57.
Although it might be thought to the contrary, countries do not need high incomes in order to eliminate gender disparities and grant equal opportunities for women and men, and some nations with serious problems of poverty are indeed advancing towards the elimination of inequity between males and females.
We invite you all to review the Gender Equity Index (GEI), developed by the Social Watch Research Team, which ranks 134 countries on a global scale with values from 1 to 12. The highest-ranked countries are Australia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Nordic countries generally stand out with a good performance in terms of gender equity due to their advanced implementation of active policies aimed at achieving gender equality and increasing women’s power and participation. With a score of 11, there follow a majority of European countries, including some from Eastern Europe like Moldova, Latvia and Lithuania, and others such as Canada, Colombia, the United States, the Russian Federation, France and the United Kingdom. The countries with the worst GEI performance are Yemen (score of 3), Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Pakistan and Togo (score of 4), followed by Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Guatemala, India, Lebanon, Nepal, Syrian Arab Republic, Sudan and Turkey (score of 5).
The GEI developed by Social Watch takes into account the dimensions of education, economic participation and participation in political and economic decision-making (“empowerment”).
This tool is a first step towards combining different dimensions within an index. A more thorough analysis of this information can be found on the Social Watch website, in pdf format.
Dr. Karina Batthyány
Social Research Coordinator
Social Watch
The GEI and other gender indexes
The Gender-related Development Index (GDI) was constructed by the United Nations Develop- ment Programme (UNDP)to measure develop- ment taking the gender dimension into account.
The GDI takes the same areas or dimensions used in the Human Development Index (HDI)and in- corporates the differences between men and women into each of the variables and dimensions that make it up:health,education and income.
The Gender Equity Index (GEI)developed by Social Watch is conceptually different in that it is designed to measure the degree of gender equity in different countries without any connection to the average level of socio-economic development of the population.
This difference in perspective means that a country ’s ranking on the GDI may be very differ-ent to where it appears on the GEI scale.For ex- ample,in the Social Watch GEI classification Moldova figures among the 25 countries with the least gender inequity and Ireland is one place be- low on the list,in the third group of countries.In contrast,in the UNDP calculation of GDI ranking Ireland comes 10 th and Moldova 113 th .What lies behind these differences?
On the GDI Moldova and Ireland are quite similar when compared in dimensions like life expectancy at birth,the adult literacy rate or the combined (primary,secondary and tertiary)net enrolment rate.However,when it comes to the index of estimated income (purchasing power parity in dollars)there are big differences between men and women.In Moldova,annual average in- come is USD 1,168 for women and USD 1,788 for men,but the figures for Ireland are USD 21,056 and USD 52,008 respectively.It can be seen that in Ireland men ’s estimated income is more than twice that of women,but in Moldova the gap is considerably narrower.
Therefore,although there is greater gender inequity in Ireland,it ranks higher on the DGI scale than Moldova.This is because the higher aver-age income in Ireland has considerable weight in the way this index is calculated by UNDP.
Another important factor is that the GEI fo- cuses exclusively on gender equity,and one of the dimensions assessed is empowerment.But in the UNDP report this dimension is covered by a specific index which is separate:the Gender Em- powerment Measure (GEM).
The World Economic Forum recently de- signed another index to measure gender inequity around the world,the Gender Gap Index (GGI).
This seems an attractive idea because it takes a wider range of factors into consideration,5 but so far this greater descriptive capacity has meant that fewer countries can be assessed using the indicator.The GEI calculated by Social Watch can be applied to around 130 countries,whereas the GGI only provides information on 58.
