Ninety percent (3.1 billion) of the women in the world today live in countries where there is a mammoth women’s empowerment deficit and the gender gap is a yawning chasm. This is according to a joint United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Women global report, which was launched on July 18, at the Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Rwanda.
With a mere seven years to the 2030 deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, one of which is gender equality, the researchers and writers who produced the report have found that no country in the world has achieved full gender parity. Additionally, fewer than one percent of women and girls live in a country with high women’s empowerment and a small gender gap, said the report, which saw UN Women and UNDP join forces to propose the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI) and the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) as the twin indices for measuring gender parity and women’s empowerment.
The former, according to the report, “evaluates the status of women relative to men in core dimensions of human development, including health, education, inclusion, and decision-making”. The latter, “measures women’s power and freedoms to make choices and seize life opportunities across five dimensions: health, education, inclusion, decision-making, and violence against women”.
Despite there being near parity in numbers – data from Statista placed the global population in 2020 at 3.91 billion men and 3.85 billion women – the researchers found only four countries where women’s place in the legislature did not closely resemble lip service. In Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua and Rwanda women hold a majority of seats in parliament, the report said, and in Antigua and Barbuda, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Iceland, they outnumber men in local governments. On the other hand, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), women have held 50 percent of the seats in parliament since 2019 when a quota was set by presidential decree. However, that country’s record on women’s rights is subpar as there is still significant discrimination against women and girls, including laws that allow men to claim ‘guardianship authority’ over adult women and loopholes where they receive reduced sentences for killing female relatives, among other things.
Most of this might seem far-fetched and some of it familiar. It is both. There is that wow factor when one considers the progress made in the first four countries named, particularly Cuba and Rwanda, where well-known setbacks some years ago might have appeared to be insurmountable. One could empathise with the women in the UAE, whose apparent legislative empowerment is so cosmetic it could very well have been produced by Mary Kay. However, one might instead want to save that empathy for the home front.
The finalised data for Guyana’s 2012 population census, found on the Bureau of Statistics’ website, places the adult population in this country at 723,181 of which there were 358,845 men and 364,336 women. The hypocrisy offered up as women’s empowerment was evident in their representation in the 2011 Cabinet – of the 20+ members, five were women – 23.8 percent. The parliamentary opposition had similar numbers. When the government changed in 2015, the Cabinet increased, but of the 26+ places, only nine went to women, upping the percentage to 34.6.
The 25 ministerial portfolios handed out after the 2020 election saw seven going to women – 28%. While all of the data is fairly recent, the representation of women in the governing of this country has always been the bare minimum, even when a woman was the president. This boggles the mind as the evidence over the years shows women and girls on par with or outstripping their male counterparts in nearly every educational field.
Yet, insultingly, women’s empowerment seems relegated to craft making, sewing, manufacturing condiments and such like. Not that there’s anything wrong with any kind of economic empowerment, but since women’s political participation has grown by leaps and bounds (they have long been suspected to be the majority at polling booths during elections), they need to see themselves represented more in local and central government. Indeed the patriarchal mindset, which also exists among women, that a man, any man, would do a better job, needs to be expunged from our consciousness. We have all seen, on too many occasions, men placed in positions beyond their mental, moral or educational capacities; it is not a good look.
Correcting the leadership gender disparity across all sectors of society might also be the catalyst that breaks the back of pervasive violence against women. While more women, and men too, are speaking out against this scourge, it bears remembering that much of it is linked to power and control. Erasing the stereotypes of women as the weaker sex would work in favour of them realising their fullest potential, which is what every human deserves.
