By Eve Hayek, NOW Public Policy
October 1, 2005
It turns out that when it comes to narrowing the gender gap, the United States is being outdone by 16 countries, including Estonia and Lithuania. For a country that considers itself the best of the best, in truth the U.S. barely made better marks than Costa Rica, Poland, Belgium and the Slovak Republic. The World Economic Forum, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Switzerland, ranks the U.S. a low 17 out of 58 countries surveyed in measuring the global gender gap. Both developed and developing countries were included in the survey, showing that the state of gender equity in the world is meager at best.
"Women's Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap" judged each country based on five criteria, with Sweden ranking No. 1 and Egypt coming in last place. The criteria included measures of health and well-being, economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment and educational attainment.
The U.S. was ranked 19th in economic participation for women and in political empowerment, but earned the low rank of 46th for economic opportunity and 42nd for health and well-being. Other countries that outrank the U.S. on the overall score include: Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Latvia, France, Netherlands and Ireland.
New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom and Germany led the list of nations that offer the most political empowerment for women - not surprisingly, those are also among the wealthiest and most democratic nations. While poorer countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt ranked at the low end of the women's political empowerment scale, the wealthier nations of Japan, Korea and Italy had similarly low scores on that measure.
Worldwide, working women are still averaging slightly less than 78 percent of the wages given to men. Women, who in some parts of the world provide more than 70 percent of agricultural labor and produce 90 percent of the food, are not even represented in budget deliberations. Women also continue to be a rarity in high level government positions, meaning that resource allocation is being decided without their input.
In the U.S., the legal and social systems continue to use maternity laws to penalize women economically for childbirth and child care responsibilities. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a majority of countries offer paid maternity leave, some with a guaranteed wage of 50 to 100 percent of salary. The United States is one of the exceptions, guaranteeing nothing at all to women who work for small and mid-size employers (under 75 employees), and requiring only 12 weeks of leave, completely unpaid, for those at large companies.
This fact puts U.S. women on the same playing field as women in Swaziland, Lesotho and Papua New Guinea. This is highlighted by a U.S. study which found that 49 percent of high-achieving women have no children, as compared to only 19 percent of high-achieving men. This shows that despite the gains made for women in the past several decades, many women are nonetheless forced to choose between success in her career and having children.
Some good news is that the U.S. ranked eighth in educational attainment, which the report's authors identify as "the most fundamental prerequisite for empowering women in all spheres of society." Despite this, the U.S. ranked poorly in the categories of health and well-being, and economic opportunity. The low ranking of the U.S. is primarily due to our country's large number of adolescents bearing children and the high maternal mortality ratio, especially given the greater numbers of physicians available in the U.S.
In developed countries such as the U.S., women gain employment with ease, but that employment tends to be concentrated in unskilled or poorly paid jobs which leave no room for promotion or better opportunities. The "glass ceiling" continues to prevent women in the U.S. and many other countries from attaining the opportunity for high advancement in their careers. Careers that have been "feminized," such as nursing and teaching, offer persistently lower paying jobs simply because they are seen as women's work.
This report shatters any myth that the U.S. is at the top when it comes to women's empowerment and shows how poorly this country continues to do in reducing the economic gap between men and women. For a country that boasts to the world about women's empowerment, in actuality the U.S. has a long way to go before making any claim of gender equality. Perhaps this report will help the U.S. and other countries to realize that women are important contributors to the world's economies, and encourage those countries to ensure that women are rewarded fairly and equitably for their work, to improve opportunities for women to share in political and economic power and to assure equal treatment through laws and constitutional provisions.
