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Global gender equality will take another 100 years to achieve, according to a study

2019-12-17T19:17:06.119Z


The World Economic Forum report says that it will take almost a century to achieve gender equity in the world. In Latin America, 59 years are required to achieve equity among men ...


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Hong Kong (CNN Business) - Most of us will not live to see gender equality achieved worldwide, according to a new study, which predicts that the milestone is almost 100 years away.

The Annual Global Economic Gap Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Iceland as the country with the highest gender equality for the eleventh consecutive year, followed by its Nordic neighbors, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen obtained the lowest score.

  • What they do in Iceland to be a leading country in gender equity

The report analyzed 153 countries in their progress towards gender parity, focusing on four main themes: economic participation, educational achievement, health and survival, and political empowerment.

"This year's report highlights the growing urgency for action," says the report. “At the current rate of change, it will take almost a century to achieve parity, a timeline that we simply cannot accept in today's globalized world, especially among the younger generations that have increasingly progressive views on equal equality. gender".

Some of the four themes show progress. For example: 35 countries have already achieved gender equality in education, and all countries are expected to achieve it within 12 years, progress that is largely due to recent developments in developing countries, according to the report.

Women's health and survival are also improving: 48 countries surveyed have achieved almost total equality on this issue.

Some other areas will take much longer, however. Women's economic participation and opportunities receded this year: "only a handful of countries" are approaching equality, and the world will need 257 more years to achieve it completely. On average, just over half of all adult women are in the labor market, compared with 78% of men, the report authors said.

The gender gap in political representation is also lagging behind: no country has completely closed this gap and, globally, it will take approximately 95 years to achieve equality.

Calculating the four areas together, in all countries with a wide range of attitudes towards gender equality, the report forecasts that it will take 99.5 years to achieve gender equality everywhere.

Latin America and the Caribbean

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the gender gap has been closed at 72.1%, so the WEF predicts that the region would take 59 years to achieve gender equality.

Among the 24 countries covered by the report, Nicaragua is the best, ranking 5th in the world rankings, behind the Nordic countries.

  • Nicaragua ranked 6th in 2019

It is followed by Costa Rica (13), Colombia (22), Trinidad and Tobago (24) and Mexico (25). The worst classified countries in gender equity according to the report are Brazil (92), Paraguay (100), Belize (110) and Guatemala (113).

This is the classification in this region:

Low gender equality in Asia

The rankings reflect greater regional trends; Western Europe has the smallest gender gap, followed by North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The regions with the worst performance are Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

The development rate of a country does not necessarily amount to a high ranking for gender equality, especially in East Asia, where Japan ranked 144 out of 153 countries, with South Korea at 127 and China at 106.

Although these countries obtain high scores in areas such as educational achievement, which is reflected in a strong cultural emphasis on school performance, they often have low scores in other areas of equality, such as political and economic empowerment.

For example, women in Japan spend four times as much time as men doing unpaid work, such as domestic work and home management, according to the report. This is time, effort and resources that deviate from their participation in the workforce or in politics.

"In no country in the world does the amount of time that men devote to unpaid work (mainly domestic and voluntary work) equal to that of women," says the report. To address this problem, he suggested that Asian countries implement policies that empower women, such as child care services in the workplace or paternity leave so that men can share more of the burden.

The Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, has been working for years on a “womenomics” initiative, aimed at increasing the number of women in the workplace. While it has met with some success (the percentage of working women has increased) it has also hit walls, as these women often struggle to advance to high-level positions.

Gender equality has also been a hot topic in South Korea in recent years. Tens of thousands of women joined the protests in 2018 and 2019 against a series of illegal filming cases. The women have been recorded in their homes, photos were taken under their skirts in the streets and they were caught in spy cameras hidden in bathrooms and changing rooms. Archive material is often widely shared online, uploaded to streaming sites and shared on voyeur forums.

Meanwhile, the gender economic gap remains particularly deep in countries in South Asia such as India, which ranks 112 on the global scale. Only about 25% of Indian women are in the workforce, compared to 82% of men, one of the lowest rates in the world. Even when they work, their estimated income is only about one fifth of men's income.

These gaps in work and pay probably come from a variety of factors, both institutional and social. According to the report, not enough equal opportunities are offered to women and resources invested in equality, and strong cultural norms and beliefs that dictate the role of women in the home and in society continue to exist.

There are also more basic threats: India ranks 150th in the category of health and survival, due to widespread violence, forced marriage and discrimination. In recent years there has been an ongoing rape crisis in the country, which has caused protests but brought few systematic changes.

Gender equality

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2019-12-17

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