1995 HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT MEASURES GLOBAL GENDER GAP
Women's Health and Education Improve, But Access to Political and Economic Opportunities Lags Far Behind
A frustrating global pattern in women's lives shows them making rapid strides in education and health while lagging seriously behind men in economic and political status. Thus, while the gender gap in education was more than halved in developing countries between 1970 and 1990, women still represent 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty today, according to the Human Development Report 1995. Worldwide, women hold an average of only 10% of parliamentary (legislative) seats and 6% of cabinet positions in national governments.
"Over the past 20 years, doors to education and health opportunities have opened rapidly for women, but the doors to economic and political power are barely ajar," say the authors of the report, a team of world-renowned independent scholars under the guidance of Mahbub ul Haq, former Finance and Planning Minister of Pakistan and currently Special Adviser to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. The report, which was commissioned by UNDP, was released today. It is published by Oxford University Press in the USA.
As in previous reports, the Human Development Report 1995 takes a country-by-country look at human development, using a range of economic and social indicators. This year's report focuses sharply on the status of women, using two new measures of human development. The first, the "Gender-related Development Index," reflects gender imbalances in basic health, education and income, while the second, the "Gender Empowerment Measure," evaluates a nation's progress in advancing women at the political and economic level.
The conclusions the report draws are "a major indictment of the continuing discrimination against women in most societies," says UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth, in a foreword to the report. "Investing in women's capabilities and empowering them to exercise their choices is not only valuable in itself but is also the surest way to contribute to economic growth and overall development."
A special feature of this year's report is a new study on paid and unpaid labor by women and men. It finds that if women's unpaid work were properly valued, it is quite possible that women would emerge in most societies as the major breadwinners or at least equal breadwinners since they put in longer hours of work than men. The report concludes that women's work remains grossly unpaid, unrecognized and undervalued, on the order of US $11 trillion a year.
"Nations that sit back and ignore the disparities between men and women in their society do so at their own risk," says chief author Mahbub ul Haq. "To deny women full participation in economic and social development is to rob future generations of the opportunity to reach their full potential."
The 1995 report, which is published in ten languages, is in its sixth year as a major source of new development thinking and advocacy for change. As in previous years, its core is the "Human Development Index" (HDI), which ranks 174 countries by a measure that combines life expectancy, educational attainment and basic purchasing power.
This year, Canada, the United States and Japan lead the rankings in overall human development, while Cyprus, Hong Kong and Barbados rank first among developing countries.
The new "Gender-related Development Index" (GDI) reveals that, among 130 countries for which comparable literacy, life expectancy and economic data were available, the four top countries are in the Nordic region- Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, in that order. "This is hardly surprising," say the authors of the report. "These countries have adopted gender equality and women's empowerment as conscious national policies."
The highest ranking developing countries on the GDI are: Barbados (rank 11), Hong Kong (17), the Bahamas (26), Singapore (28), Uruguay (32) and Thailand (33).
The "Gender Empowerment Measure," or GEM, looks at women's representation in parliaments, their share of positions classified as managerial or professional, their participation in the active labor force and their share of national income. It ranks 116 countries with comparable data.
Once again, the Nordic countries lead the world, with Sweden and Norway on top. As the report points out, the Nordic countries have crossed the critical 30% threshold for women's participation in political and economic decision-making. Since May 1994, when GEM data were gathered, Sweden crossed a milestone by being the first country in history to have 50% female representation among cabinet ministers. France also progressed, moving from 6.9% female representation among cabinet ministers last year to 27.9% in May 1995.
The report documents the considerable progress of developing countries in building women's basic capabilities and in closing the gender gap in education and health. For instance, in adult literacy and combined primary and secondary school enrollment, the gender gap was halved between 1970 and 1990. The Arab States led this advance by more than doubling female literacy rates.
In the area of health, female life expectancy has increased 20% faster than male life expectancy over the past two decades. High fertility rates, which severely restrict the freedom of choice for women, have fallen by one-third. Maternal mortality rates have nearly halved.
Despite these improvements, women's economic and political opportunities remain severely limited. Women still constitute less than one-seventh of top administrators and managers in developing countries as well as in France, Japan, Luxembourg and Spain. The female wage rate is, on average, three-fourths of the male wage rate, including in the USA. And in 55 countries, there are fewer than 5% or no women representatives in parliament.
Other findings:
In no country are women offered the same opportunities as men. Sweden comes closest, with a GDI value of 0.92 (out of a maximum possible value of 1.00). But 45 countries are below a value of 0.5, indicating both high gender disparities and low rates of achievement in terms of health, education and income.
Removing gender inequality has little to do with national income. China is ten GDI ranks above Saudi Arabia, even though its real per capita income is one-fifth as high. Thailand outranks Spain in the GDI, even though Thailand's real per capita income is less than half of Spain's.
Women receive a disproportionately small share of credit from formal banking institutions. In many African countries, for example, women account for more than 60% of the agricultural labor force and contribute up to 80% of the total food production yet receive less than 10% of the credit to small farmers and 1% of the total credit to agriculture. In 1990, multilateral banks allocated $5.8 billion for rural credit to developing countries, yet only 5% reached rural women.
Violence continues to stalk women's lives. A third of the women in Barbados, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the United States report sexual abuse during childhood or adolescence. An estimated one million children, mostly girls in Asia, are forced into prostitution annually. An estimated 100 million girls suffer genital mutilation. In Germany, it is estimated that up to four million women a year suffer from domestic violence. And studies in Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States suggest that one women in six is raped in her lifetime.
The starkest reflection of the low status accorded to women is the discrimination against them in the law. In many countries, women are still not treated as equal to men whether in property rights, rights of inheritance, laws related to marriage and divorce, or the rights to acquire nationality, property or seek employment. In many parts of the developing world, women do not have legal control over the land they farm.
This year's report comes at a critical time, just one month before the Fourth World Conference on Women to be held this September in Beijing, and it lays a foundation for Beijing and beyond. Acknowledging that each nation will need to adopt its own prescription for overcoming obstacles to equal rights, the report identifies a five-point strategy for action:
1) Implementing a timetable to eliminate legal discrimination, including a global campaign for the unconditional ratification of CEDAW (the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) by the 90 UN member states that have not yet signed or ratified it or that have entered reservations.
2) Making changes in social and institutional norms in order to extend more choices to women and men in the workplace, such as more flexible work schedules and expanding maternity and paternity leave.
3) Attaining a critical 30% threshold as a minimum share of decision-making positions held by women at the national level. Only six countries- Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Sweden-have crossed the 30% threshold in parliamentary or cabinet representation.
4) Expanding key programs aimed at universal female education, improved reproductive health and better access to credit.
5) Targeting national and international efforts to programs that give all people, particularly women, greater access to political and economic opportunities. Interested countries should move toward earmarking at least 20% of their budgets and international donor nations 20% of their aid budgets to human priority concerns, including basic education, primary health care, safe drinking water, family planning services and nutrition programs for all.
"The job is doable," says Mahbub ul Haq. The total bill to provide basic social services to women in every developing country is estimated at around $20 billion a year, roughly 5% of the total size of public sector budgets in developing countries today. Adds Dr. Haq, "Since women have lagged behind in basic social services, it is only fair that they be given priority when additional provisions are made."
The Human Development Report 1995 concludes by observing that when the struggle for gender equality finally succeeds, it will mark a great milestone in human progress. "The alternative cannot be tolerated," comments Mahbub ul Haq. "Human development is development of all the people. No society can progress half-liberated and half-chained. Human development, if not fully engendered, is fatally endangered."
