How is it that we can live in a century with most advanced technology ever but can’t get something like equal opportunities for women? Regardless of what your political belief is the statistics show that there is a global gender gap, yes even in the 21st century. The issue lies not only in America but in countries all over the globe and the gender gap doesn’t include just health and pay. Each year the World Economic Forum posts the data it collects on the global gender gap. According to their website, the sub-indexes that are used for the data are: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. Economic Participation and Opportunity look at the “participation gap, remuneration gap and the advancement gap.” The big components of this are the income gap, participation in the work force and wage equality. Educational Attainment measures male and female access to education in a country. Health and Survival aims to look at the life expectancy of both males and females and compare the ratio. The final, Political Empowerment, aims to analyze the ratio of men to women in political positions such as parliament. It does not however contribute local government to its statistics.
In the study conducted by the World Economic Forum, the results gave a ranking of countries. In the top five were Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Nicaragua. Interestingly four of the five were in Western Europe. The bottom five were Chad, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen. Mostly Middle Eastern Countries. For Ice land their scores for health and survival were ranked 121 but were number one in Political empowerment. In fact, the top ten were all ranked under 20 for political empowerment. While some scores in the other sub-indexes were above 100. It sees that political empowerment became a big part of ranking or at least a trend in comparison to the bottom five where only two countries ranked below 100 (90 and 97.) Chad did tie with many other countries to rank 1 for Health and survival. Like Political Empowerment, there was a similar trend between the top and bottom five for Economic Participation and Opportunity. Where the top five held higher ranking in the Economic Participation and Opportunity compared to the bottom five.
The United States ranked 51 in the results for 2018. This moved us down from our rank of 49 in the 2017 report. Our Highest two categories were Political Empowerment, ranked 98, and Health and Survival, ranked 71. We had little change from last year’s report in Political Empowerment, as we improved slightly in Economic Opportunity and Participation. While we continue to hold top 20 in Economic Opportunity and Participation we slipped in education. This tells us that we are failing in providing equal education and need to improve this and the Health and Survival, which could be contributed to a lack in health care. However, it is interesting that men have a lower life expectancy than women. On the political side we are probably restricted in the fact we haven’t had a female head of state and the study looks back 50 years for this statistic. While now we have the highest percent of females in congress I suspect this report next year will have the lowest ranking for Political Empowerment that the United States has had and will probably bring us back in the top 50.
I found Israel’s ranking very interesting considering its geographical neighbors seemed to be much lower on the list. Israel was ranked 46 overall. The country tied for first in educational attainment with the highest score of 1.000. Additionally, their Political Empowerment ranked 48 which is significantly higher than the United States. Health and Survival for Israel was its biggest defeat at 97. I think the biggest observation I could make between Israel and its neighbors had to do with the religion. It is not surprising that the Muslim culture views women lesser and thus that their scores are significantly lower. It is interesting to see how the small country surrounded by this Muslim Culture has fought many wars and years and now ranked even higher than the U.S., a significantly developed country where many religions are accepted. Therefore, I wonder how much America’s acceptance of different religions play important factors into our statistics.
One fact to understand is how domestic roles may affect these statistics. Women’s work may be affected by their pregnancy and therefore may restrict their ability to perform the jobs they need to. Women usually take weeks off after the birth of their child and this time off can significantly harm their careers and ability to be promoted or perform their current job. Then there is the male in the relationship that may take a couple of days off to care for his wife and newborn, but a couple of days is nothing to several weeks or months. Should men be more involved with the domestic responsibilities of caring for a newborn or children or focus more on providing? I think it depends on the two in the relationship. I don’t believe anyone can speak for someone else and say it should be shared work or separated into specific gender roles. It should most definitely be left up for the couple to communicate and establish what each partner should do in the relationship and wants to do in the relationship.
Help Received: Class notes, World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap 2018 results and explanations, America’s Health Rankings on Maternal Death rates.