The World Economic Forum released it's Global Gender Gap Index yesterday, and if you live in the United States, the news is grim.
The US is ranked 31, just behind Cuba and Lithuania. Ugh - very unimpressive. You can see the whole list of rankings here. Iceland took home the gold with a #1 ranking.
According to the World Economic Form's website, "The report's Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities. " They also explain the United States 3-drop in ranking as "owing to minor drops in the participation of women in the economy and improvements in the scores of previously lower-ranking countries."
Ok - being ranked 28 wouldn't really impress me either.
They measure the gender inequality gap in the following categories:
- Economic participation and opportunity - outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
- Educational attainment - outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
- Political empowerment - outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
- Health and survival - outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio
What are your thoughts on this? Think anyone will care? (Side note - did it make NBC Nightly News). What can we do to decrease these gaps? In which categories do you think our scores were the worst?
Cross-posted on Quarter Life Feminist.
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certainly Political empowerment had to be low (for the US.) and of course Economic Participation and opprotunity (we still cling to female and male centric jobs which are also differentiated by pay unfortunately).
Interestingly in this report when women do better in certain categories (Educational attainment, Health and survival) this is rated as gender equality.
So this term might be misleading. Looking at Russia, if it isn´t cynical to call a difference of life expectancy of almost 14 years gender equality, I don´t know what is.
Yeah, Russia is totally undeserving of its spot at number 51. It is totally defrauding everyone into thinking that it is a bastion of equality! The text of the study makes it pretty clear why they calculated the scores the way they did. The score is supposed to be a ratio of women's equality to men. If they lowered the score when women did better, it would be nonsensical. If they kept raising the score past the equality point, then something like a 14-year gap in life expectancy could help cover up a country's excessive teen pregnancy rates, lack of women in governmental power, and unacceptable wage gap. While Russian women might live longer, those last 14 years don't sound so pleasant; I hear getting paid a third less for your whole fucking life makes it harder to save for retirement. But boohoo, poor men, who lose out on the chance to eat cat food for the last 15 years of their lives. Russian women are totes the real oppressors here, what with them using their nonexistent governmental power to make policies that have negative effects on men's lives.
Let us see, what do we have here...
- Yeah, Russia is totally undeserving of its spot at number 51. It is totally defrauding everyone into thinking that it is a bastion of equality! [...] While Russian women might live longer, those last 14 years don't sound so pleasant; I hear getting paid a third less for your whole fucking life makes it harder to save for retirement. But boohoo, poor men, who lose out on the chance to eat cat food for the last 15 years of their lives.
So you believe Russia is a shithole and pretty much don´t care about Russian men. Noted.
- The text of the study makes it pretty clear why they calculated the scores the way they did. The score is supposed to be a ratio of women's equality to men. If they lowered the score when women did better, it would be nonsensical. If they kept raising the score past the equality point, then something like a 14-year gap in life expectancy could help cover up a country's excessive teen pregnancy rates, lack of women in governmental power, and unacceptable wage gap.
Teen pregnancy wasn't even in the ratings. Like I said in my previous post the term "equality" is misleading and even cynical here. Call it "Women's progress" or whatever term there might be, but not gender equality.
Uh, the stats make it pretty clear that Russia is a shitty place to live, at least if you're a woman. As I said, the wage gap is terrible and they have no political power, but you dismiss it all on the basis that they come out ahead in one area -- an area that is not such a huge benefit if the average woman is spending those extra 14 years in poverty. The majority of impoverished Russians are women, but you don't seem to care about anything but the menz, so you can just gloss over that bit, too, I bet. If you can't see how high teen pregnancy rates would directly impact women's scores in political and economic parity, that's your own naivety.
Russian women simply do not have the economical or political power to be making any sorts of decisions that would affect life expectancy. If women are living longer than men, that's a result of something men have done to other men, not something you can blame on gender descrimination. That doesn't mean it's not a problem that deserves attention; it just means that it shouldn't be the focus on a study about gender discrimination.
Finally, you can whine about how they did up the stats all you like, or you could actually do something about it. All the data given to you, right there on a silver platter, formatted in a consistent, computer-readable format. It would take maybe a couple hours to write a script that would read the file and tally up the scores in a different way. But I won't hold my breath for your new and improved version; it's so much easier to complain about how women do everything wrong.
- Uh, the stats make it pretty clear that Russia is a shitty place to live, at least if you're a woman.
The stats make it pretty clear that Canada is a shitty place to live in (as a woman of course) compared to Lesotho (10th) or South Africa (6th).
Let us look at life expectancy at birth (according to the Cia Factbook):
Lesotho:
Life expectancy at birth:
male: 41.18 years
female: 39.54 years (2009 est.)
South Africa:
male: 49.81 years
female: 48.13 years (2009 est.)
Must be wonderful to live there.
- As I said, the wage gap is terrible and they have no political power
And Russia still beats countries as the UK or Germany when it comes to the Economic category in that report so that apparently says a lot (Usa 17th, Denmark 20th (overall 7th), Russia 24th).
So let us talk about political power. So when there are more male politicans, men have automaticly more political power than women even though women have more votes in a Democrazy? Wow, I guess male Russian workers or the young men forced into military service via conscription are really happy right now with all their political power Russia must be a dreamland for men. In reality we often see that a politicans gender doesn´t necessarily have anything to do with their politics (just compare Sarah Palin with Barack Obama).
- you dismiss it all on the basis that they come out ahead in one area
I dismissed nothing, feel free to read my posts again and again and show me where I dismiss something. All I am saying is, when group a dies 14 years earlier than group b, don´t call it equality.
Also (as in most western countries) women beat men in 2 (out of 4) categories. Health and Education.
-an area that is not such a huge benefit if the average woman is spending those extra 14 years in poverty. The majority of impoverished Russians are women
I am a bit astounished that you do not see the correlation. Most poor people in Russia are widowed women because of one simple reason, their husbands died. Russian women will benefit when their husbands life longer which is another good reason to not call that equality.
-but you don't seem to care about anything but the menz, so you can just gloss over that bit, too, I bet.
Again, if Russian men die early, this does not mean that Russian women win. Quite the contrary.
- If you can't see how high teen pregnancy rates would directly impact women's scores in political and economic parity, that's your own naivety.
Indirect, yes of course, but direct, not according to the report. You might also want to compare the teenage pregnancy rate of Lesotho (7th overall) with Canada.
- Russian women simply do not have the economical or political power to be making any sorts of decisions that would affect life expectancy. If women are living longer than men, that's a result of something men have done to other men, not something you can blame on gender descrimination.
That is a stupid argument. First of all, staying at home and caring for the children and not work under harsh conditions is a decisions that Russian women make that indeed affects life expectancy. Also most people have no direct political power and as long as men and women organisize themselves in families the men vs women view on overall wage differences is a very simple but faulty one. What do single Russian women earn compared to male single Men? I really don´t know, but examples from the US or Germany show me that the pay gap melts (it doesn´t disappear though) once you take other factors into account.
As for the, what men have done to other men part, take female genital mutilation for example. This is something women do to women. So this is a lesser problem that shouldn´t be mentioned in that report? I really don´t get it. One could also argue that when women decide to stay at home, or decide to take studies that do not pay that much than STEM for example and diretly contribute to the gender pay gap themselves we should ingore those gender gaps? The report recorded gender gaps and pretty much didn´t look at discrimination.
- That doesn't mean it's not a problem that deserves attention; it just means that it shouldn't be the focus on a study about gender discrimination.
I always like the "when women have it worse than men it is discrimination, when men have it worse than women it is men´s fault" argumentation. But besides that, this report isn´t even a study about gender discrimination and if you would have read my posts you would have understood that that was my main problem. If they called it "Discrimination of Women Report" I wouldn´t have complained, but that report was about gender gaps. And clearly when you see a gap and say "oh there really is no gap" than you are at fault here.
I cite:
The Global Gender Gap Index,1 introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, is a framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress.The Index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education- and healthbased criteria, and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups, and over time.The rankings are designed to create greater awareness among a global audience of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them.The straightforward methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings are intended to serve as a base for designing effective measures for reducing gender gaps.
- Finally, you can whine about how they did up the stats all you like, or you could actually do something about it. All the data given to you, right there on a silver platter, formatted in a consistent, computer-readable format. It would take maybe a couple hours to write a script that would read the file and tally up the scores in a different way. But I won't hold my breath for your new and improved version; it's so much easier to complain about how women do everything wrong.
Can you actually read? I am asking because I really didn´t blame anything on women, quite contrary to what you blame on men. Secondly, there are reports (at least one that I know of) that rate countries via male status and those reports certainly do not use gender neutral words like the above report, which for the last time is the only complaint I am bringing up on that one.
Sheesh. Is that a display of a feminists view on equality?
Sweden, here I come.
Ugh. Canada has improved slightly from a 2008 low of 31. We're 25 now. But what a drop from 2006 and 2007 when we were ranking in the 'teens.
That's what a Conservative government gets you, I guess.
MORE WOMEN IN POLITICS!! I'm guessing our lowest score would be in the political area, since women are so sorely underrepresented.
Some of the countries really jumped around in the rankings; it's kind of interesting. South Africa went from 22 to 6 in one year! Switzerland went from 26 in '06 to 40 in '07 (ouch), then jumped up to 14 in '08. I guess part of that is that the rankings are pretty neck-and-neck. The US rank dropped 3 places, but the score itself only dropped by .0006 points (0 being total inequality; 1 being complete equality, for those who didn't click through). I'm Canadian, so IDK -- did anyone in the US notice that difference in their own lives last year?