COLOMBIA – The Philippines and Sri Lanka offer women more equal treatment at work and in politics, education and health care overall than the US, where lawmaking is male-dominated, according to a World Economic Forum study.
A WEF study of the differences in social and economic opportunities between men and women worldwide finds Sweden with the smallest gap, followed by Norway and Finland, with the Philippines at sixth, Sri Lanka 13th, Colombia 21st and the U.S. 22nd. The study, published today, examined 115 economies.
“No country in the world has yet managed
to eliminate the gender gap,” the Geneva-based World Economic Forum said. While
the US scores among the top three in education and access to health care, it
drops to 66th in ‘political empowerment’ rankings with “no history of female
leadership in the executive office,” the WEF said.
Under a United Nations convention dating
from 1979, governments are committed to preventing discrimination against women
and in 2000, the promotion of women’s rights was one of eight Millennium
Development Goals. These UN targets aim to eradicate extreme poverty and
hunger, improve the health of women and children, fight HIV/AIDS and bring about
environmental sustainability by 2015.
“It would be hard to say the Philippines
is necessarily a better place for women to live than the US, but you can see
that the gap between men and women in many developing countries is more equal
partly out of economic necessity," Margareta Drzeniek, a senior economist
at the WEF, said in an interview. “Because women have to work, there’s more
acceptance" of them in positions of authority.
The study also found that within the
25-nation European Union, France and Italy at 70th and 77th respectively score
lowest, behind China’s 63rd place and Brazil’s 67th. Sweden is the only country
in the world where men and women hold equal numbers of positions in parliament
and among government ministers.
“Gender-based inequality is a phenomenon that
transcends the majority of the world?s cultures, religions, nations and income
groups," the WEF report said.
The World Economic Forum is funded by
more than 1,000 corporations and best known for its annual conference in the
Swiss ski-resort of Davos.
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