Gender Equality Across the Globe: Are We There Yet?
Remarkable progress has been made over the years in the goal to achieve gender equality worldwide. Today, women in many parts of the world enjoy more political, social, and economic rights than they did in the past years. But, in many other countries, the achievement of gender equality is still limited by laws and social factors such as lack of adequate legislative frameworks promoting gender equality in addition to cultural norms that limit women from controlling their own lives and participating in the politics and economic.
Since gender inequality is more spread in developing countries, so this is a serious issue of concern in every and each country in the whole world. In both developed and developing countries, women face discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace. Women across the globe also struggle with unequal access to socioeconomic opportunities such as education, health, and employment as well as unequal participation in political decision making. These challenges are without any doubt the most critical challenges women in many parts of the world can face, what means that a particular and huge attention is needed to face these crucial gender issues.
Bar Chart about the participation of women in the workplace:
Infogram website: https://infogram.com/barchart-1-1h984w1rqj5z2p3?live ( to see the values since they are not appearing on medium)
This bar chart compares the changes in the participation of women in the workforce in five European countries — Spain, Austria, Switzerland, France, and Italy — from 2008 to 2014. The chart was developed based on data from the Women in Public Service Project, a program administered by Wilson Center’s Global Women’s Leadership Initiative. As seen in the chart, the participation of women in the workforce in the selected European countries has improved significantly. In Austria for example, the participation of women in the workforce grew from 53.4% in 2008 to 55.3% in 2014. In some countries, however, women remain underrepresented in the workforce. In Italy, for example, women represent less than half (40.5%) of the total workforce in those four years. Unequal representation of women in the workplace is problematic since it stops them from achieving their full socioeconomic potential.
Map showing where the legislations of sexual harassment in the workplace are on the world’s map:
Infogram website: https://infogram.com/is-there-legislation-on-sexual-harassment-in-employment-1hmr6gjn9mpz6nl?live
At the workplace, women face not only underrepresentation, but also sexual harassment. Unfortunately, as showed in this map presenting data obtained from the Women in Public Service Project, many countries across the globe lack sufficient legislations to protect women against sexual harassment at the workplace. Before 2016, most countries in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia were missing legislations on sexual harassment in employment. The lack of workplace sexual harassment legislations decrease the extent to which a women can participate in the workplace in a safe and fulfilling manner. In addition to that, the absence of workplace sexual harassment legislation in many parts of the world means that victims of sexual harassment have no way of seeking even their legal rights after the harassment. It is difficult to end workplace sexual harassment if there are no legal laws for reporting sexual harassment and punishing the criminal.
Infosheet showing general inforamtion about gender inequalities:
Infogram website: https://infogram.com/infosheet-1h0n25prgqll6pe?live
Women represent half of the world’s population what also means half of the power. However, women face discrimination at the workplace as well as other domains of life such as social services and politics since most of the countries around the world doesn’t have the laws needed to protect women from these inequalities on different levels. This info sheet titled “Gender equality must become a lived reality” presents an example of this discrimination through data obtained from Women in Public Service Project, designed in a bar chart showing the percentage of women in decision making in two Arab countries and two European countries during two successive years. What is obvious is that the percentages in both years are below the half which is 50%, which is a crucial issue. After that, many general reasons were presented by the United Nations such as: tradition and mentality, illiteracy, bad mentality… Thus, this info sheet is a general summery of the whole topic in the aim to shed the light more one this crucial issue that must be solved as soon as possible.
Pie chart showing the Perceptions About the Value of Education for Women in the Arab World:
Infogram website: https://infogram.com/pie-chart-1h0r6rwmx97l4ek?live
As we all know, one of the contexts where gender inequality is widely spread is in the Arab world. Due to social norms and bad mentality women in the Arab world are viewed as inferior to men, with their roles mainly limited to maternal and household responsibilities. However, perceptions about the position of women in the Arab society are changing somehow. As showed in this pie chart created using data from the Women in Public Service Project, only less than 20% approximately of the population in eight Arab countries — Libya, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq — agree that a university education is more important for a boy than for girl. This means that the views about the position of Arab women in those societies are changing over the time, but the gender inequality experienced by women in this region still remains higher than in many other regions of the world.
To wrap it all up, we are not there yet in achieving gender equality. Statistics reveal that women across the globe are still subject to marginalization, discrimination, social, and economic settings. Although the data presented here offers a general picture of gender equality across the globe, it does not offer comparisons across the various regions of the world. Data comparing gender equality in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa can provide a better picture of regions that are struggling of the issue of gender inequality.
References:
- http://data.50x50movement.org/data/view/582cf9121933d43772a691be
- http://data.50x50movement.org/data/view/599b670b3932f46d722a90c1
- http://data.50x50movement.org/data/view/599b724d3932f46d722aa8e3
- http://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/gender-equality/
- http://data.50x50movement.org/data/view/599b74ed3932f46d722ab319
- Zarar, Moula Bukhsh, Akbar Khasheli. (2017, May 19). Causes and Consequences of Gender Discrimination against Women in Quetta City. Retrieved from: https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/causes-and-consequences-of-gender-discrimination-against-women-inquetta-city-2151-6200-1000277.php?aid=90685
