FYI: Did you know?
- More than 60% of the worlds poor are women.
- Half a million women die yearly from complications that arise during pregnancy and childbirth.
- The risk of death resulting from pregnancy is 180 times greater for a woman in Africa than for one in Western Europe.
- In developing countries, only 50% of births are attended to by trained personnel and the figure drops to just 2% in some regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Each year, 3 to 4 million women are the victims of violence worldwide.
- Two thirds of illiterate adults in the world are women.
- In some regions, the rates for women in paid employment have hardly risen at all since 1990, and almost everywhere they are lower than the rates of men.
- In most of the regions of the world, women remain grossly underrepresented in national parliaments.
- Rich countries spend USD100 billion a year to protect their markets with tariffs, quotas and subsidies. This is double the amount they disburse in aid for developing countries.
- If donor countries reached the 0.7% Official Development Assistance (ODA) target, they could generate the USD80 billion in additional funding needed by developing countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, including addressing maternal health and education for girls.
Sources:
Social Watch. (2005a). No country treats its women the same as its men: The gender equity index-A new perspective. In Roars and whispers, Gender and poverty: Promises vs. action. Montevideo, Uruguay: Instituto del Tercer Mundo.
_____. (2005b). The social map: Population, poverty and inequalities. Montevideo, Uruguay: Instituto del Tercer Mundo.
Social Watch, an international watchdog citizens network on poverty eradication and gender equality based in Uruguay, reveals that women make up more than 60% of the worlds poor. One factor causing this is the varying degrees of labour discrimination women face throughout the world. They have more limited access to the labour market, and the average pay for women is lower than it is for men. The worst economic inequities are seen in the Middle East, North Africa, and some Latin American countries, like Chile, Mexico, and Peru.
Meanwhile, womens exclusion is clearly visible in the political sphere, the report reveals. Although women account for more than half of the world's population, they occupy only 15% percent of seats in the world's parliaments on average and a mere 6% of government cabinet positions.
According to studies worldwide, in order for women to exercise real influence on political processes, they would have to hold at least 30% of political positions. But there are a few countries that exceed this rate, and most of them are all in northern Europe: Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Similarly, only in countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland do women fill more than 40% of ministerial posts.
Overall, national political decision-makers continue to be overwhelmingly male, and this is often reflected in the failure to address issues that concern women. There are 47 UN member nations that have still not signed or ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted in 1979, while another 43 countries have only done so with reservations, the report notes.
While countries with higher income and less people living in poverty tend to do better in gender equity scores, as evinced by Australia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden - top performing countries in the reports Gender Equity Index (GEI) - Social Watch finds no direct link between wealth and gender equity.
Contrary to what many might assume, Social Watch said countries do not need high levels of income to eliminate gender disparities and offer equal opportunities to women and men. There are some nations facing severe poverty that have nonetheless made significant progress in achieving greater gender equity.
For example, the report revealed that in some of the world's wealthiest countries, like France and Japan, women occupy only 10% to 12% of seats in parliament or congress, which is less than the rate of 13% seen in sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region of the planet. Thailand ranks higher than Spain in gender equality but has only half its income.
FYI: Which country treats women well?
BEST PERFORMER
WORST PERFORMER
Value 12 Australia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden
Value 11 Bahamas, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Slovakia, USA, Estonia, Russian Federation, Philippines, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, New Zealand, Poland, UK
Value 3 Yemen
Value 4 Pakistan, Cte dIvoire, Togo, Egypt
Value 5 India, Nepal, Turkey, Guatemala, Syria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Sudan
Source: The Gender Equity Index <www.socialwatch.org>
Nordic countries generally perform well with regard to gender equity, most likely because they have implemented active gender policies for a relatively long time, and these have led to an increase in women's powerand participation. Most of the countries in the second-highest ranking group, with 11 points, were also European, including some eastern European nations like Moldova, Latvia and Lithuania, alongside Canada, Colombia, the United States, the Russian Federation, France, and the United Kingdom. The countries with the worst GEI performance were mainly from Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. [insert FYI: Which country treats women well here]
Sources:
Social Watch. (2005). No country treats its women the same as its men: The gender equity index-A new perspective. In Roars and whispers, Gender and poverty: Promises vs. action. Montevideo, Uruguay: Instituto del Tercer
Mundo.
______. (2006). No country in the world treats its women as well as its men. Retrieved March 20, 2006 from <www.socialwatch.org/en/noticias/noticia_117.htm>
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