Published in The Financial Express on Wednesday, 12 November 2014.
Reducing gender gap
Wasi Ahmed
As the discourse is on for a long time towards removing gender inequality, now overwhelmingly lopsided in favour of the males, can anyone forecast how long will it take, given the state of things as they are, to close the gap between the females and their male counterparts? A good 81 years, as predicted by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
It sounds too simplistic to set a criterion to resolve the male-female asymmetries, something that has been dominating the global scene ever since or even prior to the dawn of human civilisation. The key question difficult to answer is: equality by which measures or standards? Standards, no doubt, are difficult indexes to fit into different nations, even into various social segments of a single nation. However, not to question ‘when or how soon’ seems sensible, given that gap reduction is pre-eminently a critical area, and most countries are now in the process of working on it with increased focus in their national planning.
The global gender index reports were first introduced by the WEF in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparity and tracking its progress. The index flags national gender gaps broadly based on economic, political, educational and healthcare-related criteria.
According to the founder of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, the world would be better served with the speeding up of the process of reducing the existing yawning gender gap. His key message, not altogether a new one, is that achieving gender equality is a necessary precondition to economic prosperity. He sounded more candid when he remarked, “Only those economies which have full access to all their talents will remain competitive and will prosper.”
The expression ‘all their talent’ is significant in that it not only emphasises the role women plays in the socio-economic development of society, but more importantly, makes it clear enough that if prosperity is the goal, the aptitude, skill and talent of the women must be utilised to the fullest potential, or else, prosperity and competitiveness will continue to remain unachievable.
Eighty-one years is too long to see how things would change. However, as for now, the good news is that according to the recently released WEF Gender Gap Index-2014 Report, Bangladesh, despite performing poorly in women’s economic participation index, has advanced seven notches up among 142 countries securing 68th position in its overall ranking. The rank, a year back, was 75th among 136 countries. More inspiring indeed, Bangladesh has been placed 7th among the top 10 countries in the Asia Pacific region. And in South Asia, Bangladesh has been ranked at the very top. It is also heartening to note that the country has gone up in the ranking for women’s educational attainments as well as advancements in healthcare-related and post-delivery survival rates.
Although the country did well in the overall ranking, its position in economic participation index went down to 127th position from 121st in 2013. It is here that things are far from rosy. Needless to say, this is the most vital indicator in as much as it reflects the female-male ratio in labour force, wage equality for similar works, works done, access of females to important jobs as legislators, senior officials and managers and professionals and technical workers. It is true, economic participation is one of the challenging areas where integration has not seen much success over the decades. The WEF survey shows that since it started working on the subject, women’s access to economic participation has improved slightly by 4.0 percentage points — that too because of progress made in the advanced countries. The WEF in its report said that while women were rapidly closing the gender gap with men in areas like health and education, inequality at work places has remained a chronic case, as of now. The report says that no country in the world has been able to fully reduce the gender gap. The maximum that has been achieved was by the Nordic countries which, according to the report, reduced more than 80 per cent of the gender gap.
It may not be out of place to mention here that a recent CPD (Centre for Policy Dialogue) research has revealed that in Bangladesh women’s participation in economic activities would have been substantially higher if the household activities performed by them were quantified in economic terms.
What the WEF report has referred to by economic participation is indeed broad-based, as already mentioned. For a country like Bangladesh, with little access for women to a host of areas, progress in their involvement cannot be expected to get expedited prematurely. One must agree that a good deal of improvement in women’s role in society, despite severe odds, has been the result of unrelenting efforts, mostly by non-government organisations. Speeding up the process is what matters most.
wasiahmed.bd@hotmail.com