United Nations_In a report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Monday, June 12th, gender biases have not improved over the past decade, with inequality stagnant and cultural biases and pressures continuing to hinder women’s empowerment. The world therefore will probably not meet the UN’s goal of gender parity by 2030, which also means all growth areas linked to women’s development will see little improvement by 2030.
The report stated that while inequality has been stagnant over the last decade, nearly 90% of men and women have fundamental biases against women. These biases are not seen just among men but across both genders and the share of people with at least one bias has hardly changed in the last decade. In 38 of the countries surveyed, 84.6 percent of people have at least one bias. Ten years ago, this percentage was 86.9 percent, showing only a marginal decline in attitudinal change.
Another startling revelation was that nearly half of the world’s population believe that men make better political leaders and 43 percent say men make better business executives.
While education has always been upheld as the key to improving economic outcomes for women, this link is now broken due to the pandemic. The gap between education and income has widened. In the 57 countries where adult women are more educated than men, it was revealed that the average income gap stands at 39 percent.
Despite women’s rights movements including the #MeToo campaign and a plethora of social awareness campaigns placing the spotlight on violence against women, more than one in every four people believe that a man beating his wife is justifiable.
The survey used the UNDP’s Gender Social Norms Index which has data from the World Values Survey. It drew data spanning 2010-2014 and 2017-2022 covering 85 percent of the global population.
