It might feel like we’re making massive strides towards gender parity but unfortunately, there is still a long, long way to go.
In fact, a whopping 90% of men and women still hold biases against women, according to a new UN report.
These were the findings behind the new Gender Social Norms Index released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The stats, which make for dire reading, are based on data looking at areas including politics, work, and education in 75 countries.
Of those studied, 91% of men and 86% of women admitted to having at least one bias against women when it came to politics, economics, education, violence or reproductive rights.
Researchers found that over half of the world’s men and women feel that men make better political leaders.
More than 40% feel that men make better business executives and that they have more right to a job when jobs are scarce.
Shockingly, 28% even think it’s justified for a man to beat his wife.
In earlier research, the UNDP claimed that no country will achieve gender equality by 2030 as overall progress globally has slowed down.
Based on current trends, it would take 257 years to close the gender gap in economic opportunity.
The number of female heads of government is lower today than five years ago, with only 10 women in such positions in 193 countries
And it’s not just to do with education either.
In the 50 countries where adult women are more educated than men, they still receive on average 39% less income than men – despite devoting more time to work.
Out of all the countries studied – there were only six which had a majority of people without gender biases.
These were Andorra, Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.
But that doesn’t mean that these places are free of discrimination. In fact, in places like Sweden for example, the number of people who hold at least one bias increased over the nine years the data was being collated.
In both the UK and the U.S, more than half of the people held at least one bias.
While in some countries there have been improvements, in others, attitudes appear to have worsened in recent years.
But in the last century, there have been major pushes to achieve equality.
In 1995, the Human Development Report highlighted sizeable gender disparities much worse than now. And in the last two decades, there has been substantial progress, particularly in education and health.
Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office concludes: ‘These impressions are cause for hope, not pessimism, for the future’.
He continues: ‘We have come a long way in recent decades to ensure that women have the same access to life’s basic needs as men. We have reached parity in primary school enrollment and reduced maternal mortality by 45% since the year 1990.’
Raquel Lagunas, acting director of UNDP’s gender team adds: ‘We need to invest and double efforts to address the hardcore areas of power – political power, economic power – and we hope this is going to have impact in the countries we work in and open conversations with governments because gender equality is a choice.’
Things to think about.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/05/almost-90-people-prejudiced-women-shows-study-12354710/?ITO=squid
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