Although greater awareness regarding gender issues has been increased, no country has yet managed to eliminate the gender gap.
This disheartening conclusion is drawn by the World Economic Forum, which has launched a new ’Gender Gap Index’, to quantify inequalities between women and men in 58 countries.
The objectives of this study are twofold: identifying strengths and weaknesses, and providing a guide for policy making.
They also launched their report timef with the 10th anniversary of the Beijing World Conference on Women, the results of which were assessed in New York from the 28 Feb to 11 March 2005.
The results, unsurprisingly, rank European Nordic countries (ie Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland) on top of the list, as countries with the narrowest gender gap.
Criteria and methodology
The authors based their study on UNIFEM’s (UNited Nations Development Funds for Women) findings on global patterns of gender inequalities.
Five dimensions have been examined:
Economic Participation
Economic Opportunity
Political Empowerment
Educational attainment
Health and well-being
For each criteria, they used two types of available data: 1. published national data and data from international organisations and 2. Survey data from the annual Executive Opinion Survey of the World Economic Forum.
Gender gap in Health and well-being
This area measures: access to sufficient nutrition, healthcare and reproductive facilities, fundamental safety and integrity of the person.
The report particularly stresses women’s vulnerability to violence and highlights that it is widely spread, even in countries with a very close gender gap. Amnesty International on-going campaign on this issue underlines the same results.
Results concerning European countries
EU countries come out well from the survey: 10 EU members in the top 15 positions.
Some new EU Member States place well in the list, appearing among the top 25. This may be related to the political approach of the former socialist governments of the region which encouraged the notion of equality between men and women.
