Women Empowerment and Digital Bangladesh
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Women Empowerment and Digital Bangladesh |
Modern
social science looked into the social disorder and termed it as gender
discrimination. This discrimination is sharply visible in our social and state
level activities and attitude. To address this issue there are many initiatives
taken by the state, society, UN system, PVDOs and NGOs over the world. Now
women development is a common issue of all UN member nations. In view of
eliminating gender discrimination, Bangladesh also has many initiatives in
rural and urban areas both. Considering all those social phenomena, present
government included Women development in priorities and it was also one of the
election commitments that given to the people by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
It was told that Digital Bangladesh is a dream of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
that expressed the willingness to use IT in the field of management,
administration and governance to ensure transparency, accountability and
answerability at all levels of society and state.
By
depriving half of the population, that is the women of the nation, the dream of
a Digital Bangladesh will remain only a dream. To tran
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Women Empowerment and Digital Bangladesh
As
government activities are concern, the Ministry of women and children affairs
is the key organ to look after the development and interest of the women flock
of the country. This government organ is working through the department of
women affairs and Jatio Mohila Parishad directly for the betterment of women.
As Bangladesh is a part of Beijing platform for action, several ministries including
women affairs, education, agriculture, environment and forest, fisheries,
health and family welfare, home, industry, labor, law, local government, rural
development, social welfare and Planning are working in an integrated manner
for empowering the women. As political empowerment is concern, it has started
form the year 1996 when Sheik Hasina was leading the government as prime
minister. At that period, directly elected representatives from women was
included in local government level.
Presently
this process gets extra momentum as one vice-chairman at Upazilla level already
been included and deputy mayor at municipality level is going to be included.
Moreover substantial number of women was nominated in last parliamentary
election from Awami league led coalition, which obtained mandate form the
people. One thing must be mentioned that number of women parliamentarian is the
record in 9th parliament that indicates the political development among women.
Social empowerment of women is deep rooted in the mind set of a society, which
contents in women and men both. Some time both of the section of society
contents similar idea on an issue that could be against women empowerment. To
overcome social barriers, it needs a movement, which already been started in our
society. Once conservatives are now not that much of against to the women role,
which is enriching the society and state.
In
true sense social empowerment of women depends on the progressiveness of state,
society and individuals. Present government is secular in nature, stronger to
create progressive social mobilization and that is the ray of hope to build a
society with openness, where women will be socially empowered.
Economical
empowerment of women remains with the involvement of women in economic activities.
This initiative is also already been started in the frame of our state and
society. As an election commitment, this government is also more attentive to
the women participation in economic activities. Employment, self-employment and
entrepreneurship are the main segments of economic activities. To encourage
women for performing in economy, it is not only the responsibility of
government alone. Public-Private partnership, GO-NGO partnership and Private
initiative are the needs to make the women economically empowered. For a
digital Bangladesh, all activities related to the women empowerment are also
connected to the philosophy of digital Bangladesh Approach. So women need to be
digitally empowered. As the ground is being prepared to empowering women in
social, political and economical level, it could be hoped that our mothers and
sisters will be emancipated soon.
CHAPTER THREE
Women’s Empowerment Overview
This study is a first attempt by the World Economic Forum to
assess the current size of the gender gap by measuring the extent to which
women in 58 countries have achieved equality with men in five critical areas:
economic participation, economic opportunity, political empowerment,
educational attainment, and health and well-being. Countries that do not
capitalize on the full potential of one half of their societies are
misallocating their human resources and undermining their competitive
potential. Consolidating publicly available data from international
organizations, national statistics and unique survey data from the World
Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, the study assesses the status
accorded to women in a broad range of countries.
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Women Empowerment and Digital Bangladesh |
Even in light of heightened international awareness of
gender issues, it is a disturbing reality that no country has yet managed to
eliminate the gender gap. Those that have succeeded best in narrowing the gap
are the Nordic countries, with Sweden standing out as the most advanced in the
world. These are followed by New Zealand (6), Canada (7), United Kingdom (8),
Germany (9) and Australia (10), countries that have made considerable progress
in recent decades in removing obstacles to the full participation of women in
their respective societies. France (13) ranked ahead of the United States (17)
among the 58 nations. Seven East European nations hold places among the top 25,
with Latvia (11), Lithuania (12) and Estonia (15) the highest ranking in that
group. Switzerland (34), Italy (45) and Greece (50) perform poorly, lower in
rank than many of the East European group, and below Latin American nations
such as Costa Rica (18), Colombia (30) and Uruguay (32). Brazil (51), Mexico
(52), India (53), Korea (54), Jordan (55), Pakistan (56), Turkey (57) and Egypt
(58) occupy the lowest ranks.
These country comparisons are meant to serve a dual purpose:
as a benchmark to identify existing strengths and weaknesses, and as a useful
guide for policy, based on learning from the experiences of those countries
that have had greater success in promoting the equality of women and men. The
study provides concrete measures of the gender gap within the five categories
identified above, providing an unambiguous framework for future policy-making
in each of the countries. By quantifying the size of the gap in each of five
key categories, the study highlights the priority areas for reform.
The Status of Women: Current Reality
The past three
decades have witnessed a steadily increasing awareness of the need to empower
women through measures to increase social, economic and political equity, and
broader access to fundamental human rights, improvements in nutrition, basic
health and education. Along with awareness of the subordinate status of women
has come the concept of gender as an overarching socio-cultural variable, seen
in relation to other factors, such as race, class, age and ethnicity. Gender is
not synonymous with women, nor is it a zero-sum game implying loss for men;
rather, it refers to both women and men, and to their status, relative to each
other. Gender equality refers to that stage of human social development at
which the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of individuals will not be
determined by the fact of being born male or female, in other words, a stage
when both men and women realize their full potential.
In recognition
of the importance of establishing gender equality around the world, the United
Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) was established as a separate fund
within the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1984. At that time, the
General Assembly instructed it to ensure women’s involvement with mainstream
activities. The Platform of Action resulting from the 1995 Beijing World
Conference on Women expanded this concept, calling it “gender
mainstreaming”—i.e. the application of gender perspectives to all legal and
social norms and standards, to all policy development, research, planning,
advocacy, development, implementation and monitoring—as a mandate for all
member states. In this way, the gender factor is no longer to be only a
supplement to development but central to the practice of development. As a
result of the Beijing conference— and the many years of work leading up to
it—more than 100 countries announced new initiatives to improve the status of
women. In 2000, the follow-up Beijing +5 conference further strengthened the
application of the mainstreaming concept, and used it to highlight the need for
more progress in reaching equality worldwide.
Achieving gender
equality, however, is a grindingly slow process, since it challenges one of the
most deeply entrenched of all human attitudes. Despite the intense efforts of
many agencies and organizations, and numerous inspiring successes, the picture
is still disheartening, as it takes far more than changes in law or stated
policy to change practices in the home, community and in the decision-making
environment. In many parts of the world rape is not considered a crime, goes
unpunished and continues to be used as a tool of war. Even in highly developed
countries, violence against women of all kinds is routine, and often condoned.
Female sexual slavery and forced prostitution are still terrible “facts of
life” for poor, often very young, women. Genetic testing for defects of the
unborn is used in some parts of the world to determine the sex of the foetus,
so that females can be aborted, while in some countries, female infants are
buried alive. Forced marriage and bride-burning are still prevalent in the
Asian sub-continent. A pregnant woman in Africa is 180 times more likely to die
of pregnancy complications than in western Europe. Women, mostly in rural
areas, represent more than two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults. In the
United States, 90% of AIDS cases under 20 years of age are girls. In many
developed countries, where basic gender equality appears to have been achieved,
the battlefront has shifted to removing the more intangible discrimination
against working women. Women still hold only 15.6% of elected parliamentary
seats globally.
It is clear that
the world has a long way to go to achieve equality and that this work will
require concentrated efforts on many fronts. The work of the United Nations and
many other agencies in advancing gender equality has converged in three closely
interconnected areas: strengthening women’s economic capacity, with a focus on
new technologies and the new trade agenda; promoting women’s leadership and
political participation; eliminating violence against women and supporting the
implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW).
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Women Empowerment and Digital Bangladesh |
The Contribution of the World Economic
Forum
In recent years,
the Women Leaders Programme of the World Economic Forum has been focused on
supporting the advancement of women to positions of leadership in society, and
on promoting consideration of other issues affecting women’s lives.
Furthermore, for the past four years, the Forum’s Global Competitiveness
Reports have provided data on the qualitative aspects of women’s participation
in the workforce. The Forum has begun to explicitly incorporate in its measures
of competitiveness aspects of gender equality, recognizing that, far from being
a matter of mere political correctness, the advancement of women is an
important strategic issue. Countries which do not capitalize on the full
potential of one half of their societies are misallocating their human
resources and compromising their competitive potential.
Despite
worldwide evidence of the low levels of female participation in social,
educational, economic and political spheres, there is still a tendency to see
it as a real problem only in a limited number of countries. Yet, as noted
above, the reality is that no country in the world, no matter how advanced, has
achieved true gender equality, as measured by comparable decision making power,
equal opportunity for education and advancement, and equal participation and
status in all walks of human endeavour. Gender disparities exist, even in
countries without glaring male-domination, and measuring these disparities is a
necessary step towards implementing corrective policies. Yet measurement is
challenging and country performance difficult to assess using disaggregated and
diverse data for each nation. Our study is an attempt to consolidate these data
in a manner that allows us to take a closer and more structured look at
relative country strengths and weaknesses.
The year 2005
marks the tenth anniversary of the Beijing World Conference on Women, bringing
renewed focus and energy to the efforts to empower women. Thus, it is timely
for the Forum to undertake the present study, in order to facilitate the work
of aid agencies, governments and policy-makers by providing a benchmarking tool
to assess the size of the gender gap in 58 countries, ranking these nations
according to the level of advancement of their female population and
identifying successes and failures, based on economic, political, educational
and health-based criteria.
Criteria for Measurement
Five important
dimensions of female empowerment and opportunity have been chosen for
examination, based mainly on the findings of UNIFEM, concerning global patterns
of inequality between men and women:
1.
Economic participation
2.
Economic opportunity
3.
Political empowerment
4.
Educational attainment
5. Health and well-being
The gender gap
in each dimension is then quantified using two types of recent available data:
a) published national statistics and data from international organizations, and
b) survey data of a qualitative nature from the annual Executive Opinion Survey
of the World Economic Forum. Following, is a brief description of each of the
five categories and the rationale behind them. Details of the specific
variables examined and their sources may be found in the Appendix.
The economic participation of women—their presence in the
workforce in quantitative terms—is important not only for lowering the
disproportionate levels of poverty among women, but also as an important step
toward raising household income and encouraging economic development in
countries as a whole.
Amartya Sen
makes a compelling case for the notion that societies need to see women less as
passive recipients of help, and more as dynamic promoters of social
transformation, a view strongly buttressed by a body of evidence suggesting
that the education, employment and ownership rights of women have a powerful
influence on their ability to control their environment and contribute to
economic development. Economic participation concerns not only the actual
numbers of women participating in the labour force, but also their remuneration
on an equal basis. Worldwide, outside of the agricultural sector, in both
developed and developing countries, women are still averaging slightly less
than 78% of the wages given to men for the same work, a gap which refuses to
close in even the most developed countries.
While
globalization has generated opportunities for local producers and entrepreneurs
to reach international markets, it has at times intensified existing
inequalities and insecurities for many poor women, who already represent
two-thirds of the world’s poorest people. Since the gains of globalization are
often concentrated in the hands of those with higher education—those who own
resources and have access to capital—poor women are usually the least able to
seize the longerterm opportunities offered. Instead, as demonstrated in East
Asia in the 1990s, it is all too often the case that women are only able to
secure employment during rapid expansions, employment that is usually
transitory and insecure, and performed under harsh conditions.
Globalization
has dramatically changed the conditions under which the struggle for gender
equality must be carried out, especially in developing countries. One of the
important tools of gender mainstreaming, aimed principally at poverty
reduction, has been the concept of “gender budgeting,” i.e. focusing attention
in the process of budget formulation within a given country in order to assess
whether a particular fiscal measure will increase or decrease gender equality,
or leave it unchanged. Gender budget initiatives (GBIs) not only identify
targeted expenditures, or allocate more money to women, but also aim to “break
down and identify the differentiated impact and incidence of general public
revenue and expenditure on women and men…[and] significantly contribute to
overall objectives like equity, equality, efficiency, transparency, the
realization of social, economic and cultural rights, and good governance,” thus
offering a practical way of evaluating government action (or inaction). Close
monitoring and analysis of gender effects has become a mechanism for holding
policy-makers increasingly accountable for the impact of policies on the lives
of both women and men, so that the large percentage of women who participate
economically in the informal sector, and who in some parts of the world provide
upwards of 70% of agricultural labour, and produce over 90% of the food—yet are
nowhere represented in budget deliberations—can be taken into account in the
economic adjustment measures which might directly affect their welfare.
The present
study attempts to capture the gap between men and women in terms of economic
participation by comparing unemployment levels, the levels of economic activity
and remuneration for equal work.
Economic
opportunity concerns
the quality of women’s economic involvement,
beyond their mere presence as workers. This is a particularly serious problem
in developed countries, where women may gain employment with relative ease, but
where their employment is either concentrated in poorly paid or unskilled job
“ghettos,” characterized by the absence of upward mobility and opportunity.
This is most commonly the result of negative or obstructive attitudes, and of
legal and social systems which use maternity laws and benefits to penalize
women economically for childbirth and child care responsibilities, and
discourage—or actively prevent—men from sharing family responsibilities.
The
ghettoization of female labour is a phenomenon which crosses all cultural
boundaries, and professions, affecting women in virtually all countries.
Internationally, women are most often concentrated in “feminized” professions,
such as nursing and teaching, office work, care of the elderly and
disabled—termed “horizontal occupational segregation”—where they tend to remain
in lower job categories than men. Typically, because these functions are
carried out by women, they are the lowest paid, in addition to offering limited
or no opportunity for advancement. The term “feminization of poverty” is often
used to illustrate the fact that the majority of the 1.5 billion people living
on US$1 a day or less are women and that the gap between women and men caught
in the cycle of poverty has not lessened, but may well have widened in the past
decade.
At the other end
of the spectrum, advancement within professions, such as law, medicine and
engineering, in which women are increasingly well represented in developed
countries, is of great concern. One survey of graduates carried out by Yale Law
Women points to the growing numbers of women attorneys (25-35%), only a small
number of whom are partners in firms (5-15%), and to the importance of what
they call “family-friendly” and “female-friendly” practices in the profession.
United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) figures indicate that the
vast majority of the world’s countries offer paid maternity leave, often with a
guaranteed wage of 50-100% of salary. Interestingly, the United States offers
women 12 weeks, but with no pay whatsoever, putting it in league with Lesotho,
Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.
Although, as of
2000, women are wage-employed in roughly equal numbers with men worldwide, the
number of women represented in managerial positions is much smaller. Women have
made slow and uneven progress in obtaining a share of managerial positions,
which, according to 2002 statistics of the ILO, ranged between 20-40% in 48 out
of 63 countries. In addition, women who are in managerial positions often need
to make a painful choice between a successful career and family. A study in the
United States has found 49% of high-achieving women to be childless, as
compared with only 19% of their male colleagues.
In this study,
we use data on the duration of maternity leave, the percentage of wages paid
during the covered period and the number of women in managerial positions to
capture the variation between the economic opportunities available to women in
different countries. In addition, we have included a unique dataset on
qualitative elements such as the availability of government-provided childcare,
the impact of maternity laws on the hiring of women, and wage inequalities
between men and women for private sector employment. These data, obtained from
the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey, are particularly useful in
quantifying “ground-level” realities. Very often there are discrepancies
between the de
jure environment and
the de facto situation. By quantifying the
perceptions of business leaders in the 58 countries these anomalies can be
identified.
Political
empowerment refers
to the equitable representation of women in decision-making structures, both
formal and informal, and their voice in the formulation of policies affecting
their societies. The Inter-Parliamentary Union reports a world average of only
15.6% in combined houses of parliament. The statistics by region offer few
surprises, ranging from 6.8% in the Arab States to 18.6% in the Americas, and
39.7% in the Nordic states. While women are poorly represented in the lower
levels of government, they are rarer still in the upper echelons of
decision-making. The absence of women from structures of governance inevitably
means that national, regional and local priorities—i.e. how resources are
allocated—are typically defined without meaningful input from women, whose life
experience gives them a different awareness of the community’s needs, concerns
and interests from that of men. For example, a study in three widely differing
countries (Bolivia, Cameroon and Malaysia) showed that, were women to have a
greater say in spending priorities, they would be far more likely to spend
family and community resources for improving health, education, community
infrastructure and the eradication of poverty, as opposed to the military,
alcohol or gambling. Indeed, the demand for changed priorities is heard from
virtually all women’s organizations, from the most advanced and politically
savvy in developed countries, to fledgling women’s NGOs in the developing
world. However, in order for spending and development priorities to change,
there must be at least a critical mass of women represented, who are learning
the rules, using the rules and changing the rules of the decision-making
“game,” and thus having an impact on discourse and decisions at all levels,
from the family, to the nation, to the international community.
Here, we have
measured the dimension of political empowerment by using data on the number of
female ministers, seats in parliament held by women, women holding senior,
legislative and managerial positions and the number of years a female has been
head of state (president or prime minister) in each of the 58 countries.
Educational
attainment is,
without doubt, the most fundamental prerequisite for empowering women in all
spheres of society, for without education of comparable quality and content to
that given to boys and men, and relevant to existing knowledge and real needs,
women are unable to access well-paid, formal sector jobs, advance within them,
participate in, and be represented in government and gain political influence.
Moreover, the risk increases for society as a whole that the next generation of
children will be similarly ill-prepared. If, as a broad body of empirical work
has shown, education and literacy reduce mortality rates of children—including
the bias toward female child mortality—and help reduce fertility rates, the
importance of literacy for women is all the greater, considering that women
still constitute two-thirds of the world’s illiterate population. Although the
ECOSOC statistics show that girls actually outnumber boys in tertiary level
education in a very few countries—most notably in some of the Middle East and
former Soviet bloc countries—an obvious gender gap in education tends to appear
early in most countries, and, on average, grows more severe with each year of
education. In addition, the number of women represented among tertiary level
educators is lower than among primary level educators. However, if the content
of the educational curriculum and the attitudes of teachers serve merely to
reinforce prevalent stereotypes andinjustices, then the mere fact of literacy
and education does not, in and of itself, close the gender gap; schooling as a
catalyst for change in gender relations will be more effective only if
appropriate attention is also given to curriculum content and the retraining of
those who deliver it.
Information and
communication technologies, which have become a potent driving force of the
development process, represent yet another dimension in which a knowledge gap
has emerged between women and men: a gender-based digital divide. A study by
the USAID has found that countless women in the developing world are further
removed from the information age because of their lower levels of education and
deeply ingrained negative attitudes towards other forms of achievement.
“Without access to information technology, an understanding of its significance
and the ability to use it for social and economic gain, women in the developing
world will be further marginalized from the mainstream of their communities,
their countries and the world.” In the present study, gender disparities in
educational attainment are captured using data on literacy rates, enrolment
rates for primary, secondary and tertiary education and average years of
schooling across the population. In this way, we are able to illustrate not
only the current levels of women’s empowerment through education, but also the
potential of future generations of women in a particular nation.
Health
and well-being is a
concept related to the substantial differences between women and men in their
access to sufficient nutrition, healthcare and reproductive facilities, and to
issues of fundamental safety and integrity of person. According to the World
Health Organization, 585,000 women die every year, over 1,600 every day, from
causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. The Planned Parenthood Federation
of America quotes estimates that of the annual 46 million abortions worldwide,
some 20 million are performed unsafely, resulting in the deaths of 80,000 women
from complications, accounting for at least 13% of global maternal mortality,
and causing a wide range of longterm health problems.
Women’s
particular vulnerability to violence is perhaps the most obvious aspect of
reduced physical security and integrity of person, but one which is perhaps the
least amenable to accurate statistics. Even Sweden, long recognized as a leader
in the area of gender equality was recently called to task by Amnesty
International, which stated that “the prevalence of gender-biased violence
shatters many people’s image of Sweden as being the most gender equal country
in the world”. A recent front-page article in the International Herald Tribune
also noted that the implementation of violence-related laws in Sweden was
marred by “spotty prosecutions, vague statistics, oldfashioned judges and
unresponsive governments”. The complexity of the social and cultural issues,
combined with the stigma and fear of disclosure lead to a situation where only
a small proportion of the crimes of sexual assault, child abuse, wife battering
and gunrelated violence are ever reported, making accurate data extremely
difficult to obtain. Indeed, it is difficult to measure the true extent of
violence against women as most
incidences of domestic violence and
sexual assault go unreported. It is typical for women themselves to be blamed
for “provoking” the violence perpetrated against them by men—often those
closest to them. The victims of such violence are then frequently stigmatized
and isolated in society, even forced into marriage with their violators, with
little or no control over their own persons. Each year an estimated two million
girls, usually aged 4 to 8, are forcibly subjected to female genital mutilation
(FGM), which routinely leads to death, chronic infection and bleeding, nerve
tumours, obstructed childbirth, painful scarring, etc. Although most prevalent
in Africa and the Middle East, the practice of some form of FGM has been
reported among immigrant communities in parts of Asia and the Pacific, North
and South America and Europe.
While we lack
reliable data on violence against women, we have incorporated several other
variables related to the dimension of health and well-being. Since women are
often the majority of the victims of poverty, we have included data from the
Executive Opinion Survey on the effectiveness of governments’ efforts to reduce
poverty and inequality. In addition, we include the adolescent fertility rate
as an indicator of health risks among women aged 15 to 19 years, and as an indicator
of the lack of other choices available to young women. Finally, we include
reproductive health data, such as the percentage of births attended by skilled
health staff, and maternal and infant mortality ratios. Since these variables
are particularly affected by the level of poverty in a given nation, i.e. poor
health facilities in general as opposed to poor reproductive health facilities, we have adjusted
these data by the number of physicians available per 1,000 people, as an
indicator of the quality of the country’s health system in general. In this
way, we do not penalize developing countries in particular, but all those
nations that provide poor reproductive
health facilities to women, given the existing health infrastructure.
Calculating the Scores
The goal of our
methodology is to provide crosscountry comparisons, a broadly comprehensive
assessment of the extent to which countries are capitalizing on the full
potential of their societies. This is obtained by combining raw figures on the
national economy, politics and education with the perceptions of the business
community on the employment of women in their respective countries. We have
attempted to consolidate in one index several dimensions of gender equality,
including those that form part of the prominent indexes currently present in
the literature, most notably the political factors that enter the UNDP Gender
Empowerment Measure, and the literacy and healthrelated factors that form part
of the Gender-Related Development Index. In addition, we provide a measurement
of the participation per
se of women in economic activity, as
contrasted with the opportunities available to them once they become
participants in the labour force.
The ranking of
the 58 countries in our study is by no means inclusive of all the issues that
affect women. There are other approaches to prioritizing global gender
inequality in the current literature, such as that of the United Nations
Millennium Project’s Task Force on Gender Equality, where it is defined in
terms of capabilities (education, health and nutrition), access to resources
and opportunities (income, employment, property) and security (vulnerability to
violence). However, since our work is exclusively quantitative, data
availability has imposed limitations on our choice of variables. For example,
insufficient global data on violence against women prevented us from including
this variable in the “health and well-being” dimension, but does not negate the
importance of this factor in capturing gender equality. Nevertheless, the index
provides valuable comparisons across countries in economic, political, health
and educational realms.
The set of 58
countries covered in the current study includes all 30 OECD countries and 28
others from the “emerging market” world. Overall, the set of countries covers
much of Europe and North America, in addition to providing relevant examples
from Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. The existence of reliable
data has been the main consideration in our choice of countries, and lack of
such data has necessitated omitting many countries from the developing world.
The data used in
this study come from publicly available sources, including the World Development Indicators of the World Bank, and the Human Development Report of UNDP, as well as the annual Executive Opinion Survey of the World Economic Forum. In 2004,
the Executive Opinion Survey recorded the opinions of nearly 9,000
business leaders in 104 countries. Respondents were asked to record their views
on the importance of a broad range of factors central to creating a sound
business environment, including the quality of fiscal management, labour
practices, the quality of the country’s infrastructure and its educational
institutions. For example, one of the variables included in the Economic
Opportunity category (see Appendix), the “impact of maternity laws on the
hiring of women”, was derived directly from the following Survey question:
In
your country, maternity laws:
1=
impede the hiring of women
7=
are not a hindrance for hiring women
As described
earlier, the questions from the Executive Opinion Survey included in this study
have a similar format and use a 1 to 7 scale. The mean response of all
respondents in a particular country is the final score reported for that country
on the relevant variable. Clearly, the “hard” data taken from other
international organizations is reported on different scales or units. To make
all data comparable, hard data was normalized to a 1 to 7 scale, with the best
value in each category being allotted a 7, and the worst value a 1. For
example, out of the 58 countries covered by the study, Egypt had the shortest
maternity leave allowed (approximately 7 weeks) and therefore Egypt was
allotted a 1, while Sweden had the longest leave (52 weeks) and was therefore
allotted a 7. All other countries were assigned a value between 1 and 7.
Similar methods
for normalizing hard data have been used in several previous reports of the
Forum’s Global Competitiveness Programme. Once both survey and hard data are on
the same scale, the scores for each country are calculated by taking the
unweighted mean of all the variables within a particular category. Finally, the
overall scores for each country are calculated as an unweighted average of the
scores obtained in each of the five categories.
Since all five
of these dimensions are inextricably linked, it is essential, ultimately, that
gender equality be achieved in all of them. For example, equal educational
opportunities cannot be effective, if women are barred entry into the
workforce. Entering the workforce, in and of itself, does not mean that women
will not be ghettoized or encounter a “glass-ceiling;” having work of whatever
kind may be immaterial, if the conditions under which it must be endured are
intolerable or lifethreatening, or if it must be sustained in the face of
overwhelming additional burdens beyond the hours of paid labour. The
disproportionate representation of elderly women among the poor means that
economic participation may mean little, if the tax regime does not take into
account income disparities and the differing capacities of women and men to
contribute to an old age safety net. For these reasons, we have assigned equal
weights to all five dimensions when calculating the final scores as well as
within each dimension when adding the scores obtained on each variable.
Thus, however
difficult comparisons may be, measuring the gender gap as well as possible, in
each of these dimensions, both within and between countries, provides guidance
to policy-makers as to where efforts must be made in each country.
Regional and Country Performance
In this section,
we present graphic illustrations of our findings. The first six charts below
show the performance of each region on the overall index as well as the five
components. This is followed by figures illustrating six selected cases: Sweden
(1), the United Kingdom (8), the United States (17), China (33), Greece (50)
and Egypt (58), showing the relative advantages and disadvantages within each
nation. Finally, we provide two correlation plots: one showing the correlation
between the Gender Gap Index ranks and the Growth Competitiveness Index ranks
for 2004–2005 and the other showing the correlation between the Gender Gap
Index ranks and the log of the GDP per capita. While correlation does not
necessarily entail causation, these comparisons provide a preliminary
indication of the link between women’s empowerment and a nation’s long-term
growth potential.
True models of
gender equality do not exist. Given the lamentable international picture, no
one who studies the gender gap can doubt that no country in the world has yet
managed to achieve it. True, the Nordic countries are getting closer, leading
the way in providing women with a quality of life almost equal to that of men,
with almost comparable levels of political participation, and with relatively
equal educational and economic opportunity and participation. Yet, as this
study indicates, other countries show wide variation, lagging far behind in
particular areas, some across all five dimensions.
Aside from this
general conclusion, and broad country comparisons, the data we have presented
here shed light on the disparities within countries, in some cases either
confirming information gathered in other ways, or, in others, countering
prevailing assumptions. By identifying and quantifying the gender gap, we hope
to provide policy-makers with a tool offering
direction and
focus for the work of significantly improving the economic, political and
social potential of all their citizens. In addition, we hope that this work
provides the impetus for policy-makers to strengthen their commitment to the
idea of women’s empowerment, and to concentrate the political will, energy and
resources, in concert with aid agencies and civil society organizations, to
make gender equality a reality.
CHAPTER FOUR
What
I can do?
When
your are deciding what to do, remember that every situation is different.
However, you should always report the sex discrimination you believe your believe
you are experiencing to your are experiencing to your employer. your then have
the option to use your employer’s internal complaint system, file a grievance
whit you union, file a complaint with a lawyer or legal services organization
like Equal Rights Advocates to discuss your choices. They can help you to
understand your choices, their benefits and risks, as well as the strengths and
weaknesses of your case. What to do if you think your rights have been
violated:
Write
Down What Happened
As
soon as you experience discrimination, start writing it down. Write down dates,
places, times, and possible witnesses to what happened. If possible, ask your
co-workers to write down what they saw or heard, especially if the same thing
is happening to them. Remember that others may (and probably will) read this
written record at some point. It is a good idea to keep the record at home or
in some other safe place. Do not keep the record at work.
Start
a Paper Trail
When
you report the discrimination to your employer, do it in writing. Describe the
problem and how you want it fixed. This creates a written record of when your
complained and what it fixed. This creates a written record of when you
complained in response to it. Keep copies of everything you send and receive
from your employer.
Review
your Personnel File
It
is your right to see your personnel file. If you work for a private employer,
in certain states including California, you have the right to request and
receive copies of everything in you file that you have signed.
Use
the Grievance procedure at Work
Many
employers and schools have policies for dealing with sex discrimination
complaints. You may be able to resolve the problem through this process. To
find out your employer’s policies, look in your employee manual/ personnel
policies and/ or speak to a human resources officer. It is important to follow
your employer’s procedures.
Involve
your Union
If
you belong to a union, you may want to file a formal complaint through the
union and try to get a shop steward or other union official to help you work
through the grievance process. Get a copy of your union’s grievance policy and
see if it discusses the problems you are experiencing. If you use your union’s
grievance procedure, you must still file a complaint with a government agency
if you want to file a lawsuit in federal or state court.
File
a Discrimination Complaint with a Government Agency
If
you to file a lawsuit in federal or state court, you must first file a formal
complaint of discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity
commission (EEOC) and/ or your state’s fair employment agency (in California,
this is the Department of Fair Employment and Housing). If you are a federal
employee follow federal guidelines on how to lodge a discrimination complaint.
Do
not miss Deadlines with the EEOC or Other Government Agencies!
Do
not delay in filing a complaint with your employer! If you start to feel that
your employer’s process for dealing with the discrimination may not help you,
don’t wait to file a formal complaint. This is very important! You cannot bring
a lawsuit against your employer unless you have first filed a complaint of
discrimination with the EEOC or your state fair employment agency.
Under
federal law in California, you have 300 days form an act of discrimination to
file a complaint. Under federal in other, you may have only 180 days to file a
(including UNICEF), governments, national and regional NGOS, and
community-based groups and media organizations since 1998.68
An
UNFPA support research on the prevalence of domestic violence and has helped to
create women’s health centers in areas where such violence is common. It also
works in partnership with governments, NGOS and local communities to support
programmers to eliminate FGM.
WHO
is coordinating a multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence,
which aims to develop methodologies to measure violence against women and its
health consequences cross-culturally in six countries.
The
pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Iner-american Development Bank
(IDB) are collaborating to pilot a coordinated, multi-spectral rezone to
violence against women in Latin America.
The
Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women, established
at UNIFEM in 1996 by a Un General Absolution resolution, has supported
innovative projects around the world that address all of gender-based violence.
Conclusion
Women
and children are often in great danger in the place where they should be safest:
within their families. For many, ‘home’ is where they face a regime of terror
and violence at the hands of somebody close to them- somebody they should be
trusted. Those victimized suffer physically and psychologically. They are
unable to make their own decisions, voice their own opinions or protect
themselves and their are stolen from them by the ever-present threat of
violence.
This
Research looks specifically at domestic violence. The term ‘domestic’ includes
violence by an intimate partner and by other family menders, wherever this
violence takes place and in whatever form. In recent years, there has been a
greater understanding of the problem of domestic violence, its causes and
consequences, and an international consensus has developed on the need to deal
with the issue. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination against Women adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
some 20 years ago, the decade-old Convention on the Rights of the Child, and
the platform for Action adopted at Fourth International Conference on Women in
Beijing in 1995, all reflect this consensus. But progress has been slow because
attitudes are deeply entrenched and, to some extent, because effective
strategies to address domestic violence are still being defined. As a result,
women worldwide continue to suffer, with estimates varying from 20 to 50 per
cent from country to country. This appalling toll will not be eased until
families, governments, institutions and civil society organizations address the
issue directly. Women and children have a right to state protection even within
the confines of the family home. Violence against women is perpetrated when
legislation, law enforcement and judicial systems condone or do not recognize
domestic violence as a crime. One of the major challenges is to end impunity
for perpetrators. So far, only 44 countries (approximately) have adopted
specific legislation to address domestic violence.
As
this Research demonstrates, domestic violence is a health, legal economic, educational,
and developmental and, a human rights issue. Much has been done to create
awareness and demonstrate that change is not only necessary, it is also
possible. Now that strategies for dealing with it are becoming clearer, there
is no excuse for inaction.
ITS WAS VARY NICE WORK FOR THE STUDENT
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