The number of women in legislative and cabinet roles is “an area where the US does considerably less well than other countries”, Saadia Zahidi, head of the Global Challenge on Gender Parity at the World Economic Forum, told NPR. Saudi Arabia has improved the most for economic participation and opportunity, Burkina Faso for educational attainment, Georgia for health and survival, and UAE for political empowerment.
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According to data, only 32 women participate in the labor force for every 76 men.
The US ranked 28th, and its spot is dropping. And then for the world as a whole, political empowerment is an area that everyone needs to be making progress on. Rwanda also has a very high ranking, at number 6 thanks to its policies to get women into parliament after the genocide. Worldwide, the gender gap across all pillars (economy, politics, health & education) has closed by 4% since 2006. According to the index, only 19 percent of MPs and 18 percent of ministers are women.
The United States also dropped out of the Top 5 countries that are doing the best on economic participation and opportunity, owing to slightly less wage equality for similar work, the authors said. Iceland has particularly been recognized for its progressive gender-related policies: As Mic’s Natasha Noman noted in April, Iceland was the first country in the world to legalize equal inheritance rights, elected Europe’s first female president in 1980 and instituted equal parental leave in 2000. The country of two millionoffers a few of the most generous paternity benefits in the world, allowing fathers 30 calendar days of paid time off second only to Iceland for length of (compensated) time to spend with a little one. But the U.S.is the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave. Today, women make $11,000 as opposed to men who earn $21,000. In education, the gap has decreased compared to 2006 and now stands at 95%. There are more women than men enrolling in universities in 97 countries, although men still outnumber women in skilled jobs within 68 countries and there are only four countries with majority women leaders.
Studies have also found that about 10 percent of the overall reason why there is a such a wide wage gap between men and women in the U.S.is because women are much more likely to take breaks from work to care for family members. More research this week showed the pay gap between men and women exists in 90 per cent of sectors.
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Turkey ranked 109th in terms of women serving as legislators, senior officials and managers in business life, with 87 percent of those holding key positions in professional life consisting of men.
