The Global Gender Gap

We see it making an ever increasing amount of appearances across news headlines with each coming year; women’s rights. Women fighting against the inequalities they face everyday, not forced upon them by any inaptitude or incapability they may posses, but by cruel hand felt to them at birth. The card of being a women. One of the topics at the forefront of this rising debate, is the Gender Gap. What is the Gender Gap? It is the highlight of what issues that women face for the sole purpose of being a women. Briony Harris calls it “the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.” This leads to the Gender Gap Index. A way of putting statistics to the Gap; turing theory and speculation a cold hard facts.

The Gender Gap Index gives a series of statistics showing the differences between a number of topics ranging from births to pay gaps between men and women in countries across the world. It shows things such as the discrepancy in education between men and women, participation if women in government, difference in pay between men and women, physical security, and maternal mortality. It’s not just things like pay and mortality rates that create the Gender Gap, it’s a number of gender biased social constructs that have a major contribution to it. Things like harassment, child/arranged marriages, genital mutilation, human trafficking, sexual violence, and birth gender preference leads to a world where women are seen as property and a burden. All of these issues feed into the larger social construct that women are less than men which lead to the gaps we see in todays society.

Women are responsible for pregnancy, birth, and, depending on the household, taking care of the children. This puts women in a box that  is hard to break out of. Women are seen as a burden in the workplace rather than a contributing member to their labor force. Women are still seen as the main caretaker for children. When a women is looked at for a job, it is not always here credentials that is put into question. They are questioned on the idea of them not being as capable of a worker because they are going to be preoccupied with “motherly duty” and having to take extended periods of time off due to pregnancy. This is a major setback for women and leads to lower wages with no paid maternal leave.

When we think of the United States as one of the most developed countries in the world. With this we would expect the U.S. to be in the forefront of these statics. However, the case isn’t that. The United States can be seen not even in the top 10-15 in many of the Gender Gap Indexes. The U.S is ranked #33 in Save the Children’s Best Counties to be a Mother. It also shows things such as the U.S. being one of a very few countries that have no paid leave for mothers and that even though many European counties have paid leave for fathers, we have yet to adapt it. The Maternal Mortality Rate has been significantly increasing in the U.S., from 7.2% in 1987 to 17.3% in 2013 and has become one of the highest in the O.E.C.D.The United States has ample opportunity to make changes to the Gender Gap. Focusing on things such as women’s health and education, giving women the chance to spend more time on their goals and ambitions rather than health and pregnancy issues.

Even though over half of the world population is women, women and girls are treated as a minority. Over half of mankind still living on this earth are given little say on what happens within it. The Global Gender Gap is proof of this. Women are an untapped resource in today’s troubled world. If the gap were to be closed, there is no way of telling how many monumental steps we can take as a society in solving both social and scientific issues.