Gender Equality Report Demonstrates That Much Work Is Still Needed To Achieve True Equality Between Men and Women

If you're seeking a society with the greatest equality between men and women then the top five countries to move to are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines. This is according to the 2013 Gender Gap Report released last week which is compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Related: 
*  World Gender Gap Index 2013: 

   See How Countries Compare
*  Download the full spreadsheet

It's not surprising that three of the four Scandinavian countries are in the top five, but the inclusion of the Philippines is a surprise.

If you're looking for Canada's ranking in the overall results this country (incredulously) placed 20th behind such "gender equal" and "feminist" oriented societies as Nicaragua, Lesotho, and South Africa.

Looking at the rankings in the four categories one has to question the methodology used to rank the countries overall and if categories were weighted to arrive at the overall results.  For example, Canada placed 1st in Educational Attainment, 9th in Economic Participation and Opportunity, 49th in Health and Survival and 42nd in Political Empowerment.  By comparison the United Kingdom placed 35th, 31st, 92nd and 29th in the respective categories, and the United States placed 6th, 1st, 33rd and 60th respectively.  If you were simply to add the rankings in each category and use the sum total as the final results then you would expect Canada to be ranked well above the U.K. and only slightly behind the Americans.  And yet the U.K. is in 18th place overall, two spots above Canada and the U.S. is ranked 23rd, behind Canada.

One aspect of measuring the rate of gender equality in any nation is to examine the issue of women's safety.  One way to do this is by looking at the rate of occurrence of violence against women, particularly sexual assaults or rapes.  The United Nations annually collects data on rapes compiled from police reports of member states.  According to the most recent statistics available here is how all the countries mentioned above rank for occurrences of rape reported to police.  The rankings are based on data provided by 122 countries and are adjusted for the population of each country.

If these rankings were to be added as a separate category to those used by WEF then the placement of the countries in the list would change considerably.  It's something that the WEF should consider since the ability of women to feel safe and not fear being sexually assaulted by the men they encounter is a factor that uniquely addresses the issue of a "gender gap."

It's unfortunate that something like the Gender Gap Index needs to be calculated.  In the best of worlds education would be equally accessible to both sexes; in the workplace the tasks and roles that women take on would be valued equally to those of men whether it is on the shop floor or in the executive office; there would be no inequality in the provision of health services; the numbers of women sitting in legislative bodies would be representative of their numbers in the general population; women would not fear being sexually assaulted by any of the men they encounter; and society would not have to address issues of sex discrimination and misogyny. 

In some countries the situation of women in one or two of the categories mentioned above is approaching what can be termed equality.  However, what the Gender Gap Report demonstrates most is that in many countries there is still much work to be done to achieve true equality between men and women.  Feminists would assert that equality is necessary because if we are to continue to advance as a society then equality of genders is a prerequisite.  After all, how will our daughters, grand-daughters and other women of future generations judge today’s society if we don't dismantle the barriers which exist to achieving equality for the gender that comprises over 49.6% of the planet's population? 

© F. Khan.  All rights reserved.