Gender Gap Report: what it’s like to be a woman in this world?
In one of her songs, Madonna sings: “Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots ’cause it’s okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading cause you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly you’d love to know what it’s like, wouldn’t you? What it feels like for a girl”
Have you ever thought of this? I have, and sometimes I do, and I am pretty sure had we all thought what it’s like to be anyone else, the world would be better. Differently better.
Woman empowerment is a hot topic. There are hundreds of pages you can read on that on the web, and many experts hit the issue with the new facts and evidence showing the poor state of things.
But the point is that living in the today’s world is illusive: having all sorts of attributes of the ‘modern world’ in-hands makes us rare thinkers of conspicuous disbalances we face, hear and read every single day — no matter what it’s like — poor vs. rich, highly-skilled vs. uneducated or men vs. women. But if the first two set a range of values which sometimes make them tricky to compare, the third one is simple cos it’s dyadic — either men or woman — and therefore should be much more evident for any of us. But is it?
In 2018 the World Economic Forum released a detailed report on Gender Gap which analyses the gap across countries based on the Global Gender Gap Index introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time. The Index measures four aspects — Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment
The key findings are:
- There’s still a 32% average gender gap across all 4 aspects;
- The biggest gaps of 77% and 42% are in political and economic empowerment respectively;
- On average, just 18% of ministers and 24% of parliamentarians globally are women. Similarly, women hold just 34% of managerial positions across the countries where data is available and less than 7% in the four worst-performing countries;
- There are still 44 countries where over 20% of women are illiterate;
- The most gender-equal country is Iceland. It has closed over 85% of its overall gender gap. Iceland is followed by Norway (83.5%), Sweden and Finland (82.2%). Although dominated by Nordic countries, the top ten also features a Latin American country (Nicaragua, 5th), two Sub-Saharan African Countries (Rwanda, 6th, and Namibia, 10th) and a country from East Asia (Philippines (8th). The top ten is completed by New Zealand (7th) and Ireland (9th);
- Projecting current trends into the future, the overall global gender gap will close in 108 years across the 106 countries covered since the first edition of the report. The most challenging gender gaps to close are the economic and political empowerment dimensions, which will take 202 and 107 years to close respectively.
I bet you didn’t get much from these percentages. Then there’s gonna be a small story which explains the point in a clearer way.
Many years ago a friend of mine moved from Russia (75th rank) to Canada (16th rank). She is an extremely smart person and in Canada she got admitted to a well-reputed university. She studied hard and worked part-time there. Finally, she got her master’s, then found a full-time job and after years of work she became a Research Director. Recently, her husband and she moved to the UK which is on the 15th rank which statistically predetermines a better state of things. However, what she suddenly faced in the UK was a patriarchy society, in which she felt the need to ‘gently fight for the right to be a smart young woman’. Why could that be real?
The UK’s rank in the segment of Economic participation and opportunity is 0.705 meaning that woman and men labor force rates, wages and positions (among legislators, senior officials, managers, technical and professional workers) are equal in 70,5% only, while Canada’s indicator reaches almost 75%. If 4% difference makes a real psychological sense, can you imagine that tremendous change between Iceland and Yemen with the value below 0.3? But keep in mind that numbers say nothing compared to what you may find by reading or listening to personal stories of what it’s like to be a woman in the Middle East, Africa or Asia.
The good news is there is always a chance to change this tremendous inequality. By launching social projects centered around women empowerment, leading societies are now changing mentalities to advance the lives of future generations.
In our podcast, nearly every guest supports empowerment programs, projects, and initiatives. Howard Weinstein likes all sorts of actions that educate and empower woman and calls women the real change-makers. Dr. Mitch Besser plays a crucial role in empowering women through HIV prevention model which applies the mother-to-mother model. Meagan Fallone empowers women via professional education and technical training giving women a chance to outcompete men (who are often lazy — trust me, I am a man). And these are really impressing stories! But what if you could be the next hero giving hope and power to women around the globe? Like researchers test both hypotheses before choosing the right one, all of us who wants to run a social project may think of testing men-women equality to replace that blind belief in patriarchy. Otherwise, if no pice of personal intention is made, that’s gonna be a long-long way of hundreds of years to fill the gap and reach the desired equity. I’m hardly sure you’re gonna wait (or waste) so much.
So read the report, think what can be done to empower women in your country, and join the world-changers!
Ciao,
Shake the world team.
