Education

UN Report: Bias Against Women Hasn't Improved Over Past Decades

JUN 12 2023·Updated AUG 27

Story

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Facts

According to the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Gender Social Norms Index, global views on women have not progressed over the last ten years — with almost nine out of 10 men and women still holding biases against women. Those with at least one bias dropped from 86.9% to 84.6%.
Reuters
The report, which compared data from 2005-2014 and 2017-2022 from 80 countries surveyed, found that 50% of people believe men make better political leaders. 40% said men are better business executives, and 25% believe men assaulting their wives is justified.
Guardian
Another 46% said they think men have more of a right to a job, with 28% believing it's more important for men to attend college. This comes as, even in the 57 countries where adult women are more educated than men, a 39% income gap remains.
Al Jazeera
Anam Parvez, head of research at Oxfam GB [Great Britain], said the data "explains why the world is completely off-track in achieving gender equality by 2030." Parvez also stated, "In 2021, one in five women were married before they turn 18 [and] 1.7 billion women and girls live on less than $5.50 a day."
Guardian
The report said these prejudices, which were exacerbated by the pandemic, "are deeply embedded and influences both men and women to similar degrees," creating "hurdles" that are "manifested in a dismantling of women's rights in many parts of the world."
VOA

Sources Split

LEFT

CENTER

RIGHT

ESTAB
CRIT

CENTER

PRO
ESTAB

The Spin

Narrative A

Gender inequality isn't just about equal representation in college or the corporate world, it leads to hundreds of millions of women and girls living in abject poverty and struggling to feed themselves and their children. Such neglect for women has also resulted in unequal access to healthcare, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. As the global community works toward eradicating hunger and thirst, women must be kept at the forefront of our minds, as they often bear the brunt of the crises faced by billions around the world.

UN Women

Narrative B

The gender equality debate is stagnant because both sides define equality differently. Men and women are equal in value but not the same. In the workplace, for example, women tend to network in smaller, like-minded groups, while men are more likely to branch out with the sole goal of getting ahead. This doesn't mean women should be barred from the workplace, but rather we should take these decisions into account when analyzing macro-level outcomes. If the world looked at every disparity through this lens, we would have far more substantive conversations and reach more common ground.