Gender Equality

Came across this article in Lianhe Zaobao late last year. Today is International Women's Day so guess this sharing is opportune?

The four nothern Europe countries once again topped a report by the World Economic Forum on "equal opportunities between men and women". New Zealand came in 5th position, while the US dropped to no. 31st position.

A gender gap index, released by this think-tank organisation revealed that though gender equality has not been fully established in the four countries, namely, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland, these countries scored highly in the areas of salary, educational opportunities, level of political representation and health standards.

The index showed that these four countries, which were ranked the top four in 2006, achieved better results in the economic indicators. This was due to employment and salary for men and women being more on par.

New Zealand moved up two notches to its 5th position, while the Philippines retained 6th position for two consecutive years. Women's political representation went up in both countries. Germany dropped from 5th to 7th position.

In this ranking involving 128 countries, the US dropped from 23rd to 31st position, mainly because of less employment opportunities for women arising from the poor economy performance. The gender gap index used the score of '1' to indicate men-women equality. The US scored 0.70. The total population of the 128 countries is about 93 percent of the world population.

Besides Sri Lanka which was placed at 15th position, most of the Asian countries had low scores, at below 0.67. Singapore's score increased from 0.65 to 0.66 (pathetic!) and its position dropped from 65th to 77th position. The other two Asian countries, China and India were ranked 73rd and 114th position respectively.

A spokesperson said that the scores for women's health and education indicators went up in most of the countries. On the contrary, changes in economic and political representation were varied. She also said that only 25 out of last year's 115 countries slipped from their original ranking, which goes to show women's status has generally improved.

Afternote: Can there ever be equality between the two sexes? For me, it is a 'No'. Well, more opportunities are within my reach then as compared to my mother's time (and the generations before) BUT the scales remain tipped on one side. It's too demanding to be a woman - so many hats to wear; first, as herself, then having to juggle motherhood, as well as earn her own keep (the cost of living has gone up too much to be depending on a single household income). Some of my girlfriends have had their career being put on the back-burner almost as soon as they attain 'mummy-hood'. And to side-track a little: there are women employers who make the worst "discriminators", ie they are not necessarily more supportive of the need of work-family balance.