This came out yesterday, but I don’t think I have seen any reference to it. It’s a new study by a think tank, so it should be treated with all the requisite care, but it IS making headlines, such as the one used for the title of this diary, in the Financial Times
The World Economic Forum is releasing today the first ever study that attempts to quantify the size of the “gender gap” in 58 countries.
Entitled Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap, the report measures the size of the gap between women and men in five critical areas based on UNIFEM’s (United Nations Development Fund for Women) findings of global patterns of inequality between men and women:
- economic participation – equal remuneration for equal work;
- economic opportunity – access to the labour market that is not restricted to low-paid, unskilled jobs;
- political empowerment – representation of women in decision-making structures;
- educational attainment – access to education;
- health and well-being – access to reproductive healthcare.
The United States (17) lags behind many Western European nations in addition to falling behind New Zealand (6), Canada (7) and Australia (10). It performs particularly well on educational attainment (8) and slightly less so on economic participation and political empowerment.
However, it ranks poorly on the specific dimensions of economic opportunity and health and well-being, compromised by meagre maternity leave, the lack of maternity leave benefits and limited government-provided childcare. Moreover, its health and well-being rank is brought down, in comparison with other developed nations, by the large number of adolescents bearing children, and by a relatively high maternal mortality ratio – especially given the high number of physicians available.
The specific rankings are never very relevant, but the general area where you are does have value (it’s not surprising to see Scandinavia near the top and Egypt near the bottom). I am most surprised by the rankings of Germany (too high?) and Switzerland (too low?) and would appreciate comments from local bootribers.
I’d say that a criteria about how easy it is for women to combine work and childcare is missing, but hey, what do I know?!
