Globally speaking, women lose. Via Jill Greenseth @ Flickr.
Through it’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program, the World Economic Forum puts out this nifty and yet seriously depressing little study known as the Global Gender Gap Report. You can find the links to the 2008 and 2007 reports here.
The GGGR rests on three major concepts in “[measuring] gender-based gaps in access to resources and and opportunities.” First: it recognizes that different countries have different levels of development and infrastructure regarding education, employment, health care, etc., and so doesn’t judge countries’ development relative to each other. Second, the study looks at outcomes (results like “number of women with job X”) rather than inputs (variables like “length or availability of maternity leave”). Third: it focuses on “gender equality, not women’s empowerment.” I take some issue with this language, but they’re using that to mean that they’re looking for places where women lag behind men in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. The results, you ask?
I am not qualified to assess the quality of their number-crunching methods (I welcome comments from those who are) but the results are as follows: out of 130 countries included in the study, the United States ranks 27th. The top 10 countries in gender equality–as delinated above–are, in order: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, New Zealand, Philippines, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, and Latvia.
The UK comes in 13th, Canada at 31st, Mexico at 97th. Click through to the whole list to see who ranked at the bottom, and maybe consider learning Norwegian. Or not; according to the study, if 100% = equality, Norway–the most equitable place on the globe for women, mind you–is only pulling a B-: 82.4%
Something to think about the next time you hear a comment about how feminism is obsolete.
LATVIA? I must not be up on my progressive Baltic nations.
Scandinavia: UR DOIN IT RITE. Now if only those countries weren’t so cold, dark, expensive and built on pickled fish.
I’ve always wanted to move to New Zealand. Not only are they good to hobbits, they apparently treat women well. As a woman hobbit, I will be booking my ticket shortly.
I always knew I should have taken Swedish in college.
This makes my dream of running a horse farm in Ireland all the more enticing.
Wait a minute. I’m not a demographer, but I am a contrarian, and there are a few things that bug me about these results:
* Ireland: Abortion is illegal. Divorce was illegal until 1995. Ireland is heavily Catholic.
* Philippines: Abortion is illegal. The country is heavily Catholic. Anecdotally, my Filipino/a friends say the treatment of women is poor.
* Moldova: Are you kidding me? The underage sex-trafficking capital of Europe — that’s a better place for women than the US?!
* Lesotho: The overall HIV infection rate is about 25%. The infection rate for women 20-40 is about 40%. Lesotho is one of the only countries in the world where men live longer than women. I can think of several possible reasons for this, and none of them are complimentary to Lesotho’s treatment of women.
I’m not going to say I’m smarter or more well-informed than whoever worked on this study, but I do think it’s reasonable to point out that some of the findings can be viewed as – I’ll be charitable here – counterintuitive.
Again the Scandinavian countries get it right and people are still afraid of socialist philosophies.
Krush, I’m coming with you.
I am sad to report that Canada is 31. Can’t say I’m surprised.
Contrarian, you’ll have to click through and look at a few of the different profiles to see what exactly the GGGR was looking at–and more importantly, what they weren’t looking at, what they’re calling “inputs,” which is where I think you’d find stuff about abortion rights and human-trafficking data. It’s problematic, but if they’re trying to do a large, cross-cultural sample, they’re having to limit their data in pretty severe ways.
Even without the examples you cite–and I’m glad you mention them–it seems clear there’s not a place on earth where women are treated truly equally.
P.S. I am still tempted to move to Ireland, Denmark, or New Zealand.
contrarian: yes. The fact that Ireland – my country – ranks so highly does not reflect well on any country below it. Apart altogether from the almost-total ban on abortion (and have you read about the X Case?), we have a serious lack of women in the political system, and I’m just home from a talk about the horrific state of affairs here with regards to sex trafficking.
Sweden was spoken of very highly at said talk, though – apparently its prostitution laws are stellar – so that seems appropriate.
Sweden seems like paradise to me, for numerous reasons.
PhDork: Thanks for the further breakdown of the report.
Also, move here! In its favour, Ireland is the land of Mary Robinson, one of the most amazing women alive. And we have really good cheese.
Eeva, I would LOVE to live in Ireland, and your excellent cheese is but one reason. I haunt listservs, looking for a gig at Trinity, or University College Galway, but nothing yet in my field. I have friends/colleagues who have landed work in England and Scotland, though, so I keep my fingers crossed.
Or UCC! You can’t leave out my alma mater! Our Quad is far nicer than either of the others.
Do you mind me asking what field you work in?
I’ve never been to Cork…yet, but your campus looks great online.
I’m trying to stay on the d-low since “blogger” is not really great for the ol’ CV, so I’ll say that I’m in what your fine institution would abbreviate to “DTS.” Shhhhh.
Oh, good stuff. I do know several people in that august department, so if a job ever does come up that you want, let me know and I’ll give you the inside scoop
I looked at some numbers, and I’m ready to proclaim this survey dead stupid.
Example: life expectancy for the USA vs. Lesotho. Americans live until ages 71 (women) and 67 (men). 71/67 = 1.06. Life expectancy for Lesotho is 33 (women) and 30 (men). 33/30 = 1.10.
In words: women in Lesotho live 10% longer than men in Lesotho, while American women only live 6% longer than American men. Therefore, Lesotho is “better” for women, so it ranks #1 in this category, while the USA is ranked #60.
Or to be more succinct: it’s better to live 33 years in Swaziland than 71 years in the USA.
Contrarian, that’s the whole “not comparing countries to each other” thing. I’m sorry they ranked (and then I went on to reproduce) that top-10 thing, because it’s misleading, and seems to indicate “women have it better here than there” when what they are really saying is “in a number of carefully defined categories, we have quantified the differences between men and women in each of 130 countries.” Another major problem (there are any number to choose from, like that whole “ignoring the inputs” things) w/ the design of the study is that it starts from the premise that women are less privileged than men in every area, which is probably true, but, logically speaking, “begging-the-question-y.” It’s not totally useless, but the more I look at it, the less I know what to make of it.
You might want to rethink moving to NZ. Our lame new right-wing National government has just pulled the plug on a scheme set up by the last left-wing Labour government that had identified that women in the public service were being paid significantly less than men, and was about to move on to actually rectifying the problem. But apparently eliminating pay inequity is too expensive in these recession-ridden times.