Geography of InequalityGENDER

IREL 204World Geography

Geography of Inequality

• GENDER: – the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities

and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women

– Is not a biological category, like male and female

– In Geography – Gender refers to the inequality of the sexes.

5 General Gendered Categories

• Demography & Health; • Family & Social Conditions; • Education & Opportunity; • Economic & Productive Activity; • Politics/public life (civic engagement)

Global Gender Inequality

Source: OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development

Demography & Health• There is a gender gap in longevity around the world (how long

men and women live)• Overall, women tend to live more than men.

– Possible reasons: • BIOLOGOCIAL:

– Estrogen in women combats conditions such as heart disease by helping reduce circulatory levels of harmful cholesterol.

– Women thought to have stronger immune systems than men.

• BEHAVIORAL:– Men are more associated with risky behavior like smoking,

alcohol consumption, and life-threatening activities.

• This gap does not mean that the quality of life is better for women than it is for men, no matter how much longer they live.

Global Life Expectancy

Source: Population Reference Bureau (PRB) www.prb.org/images/final-life-expect-map

• Yet women face many difficulties and challenges that men do not – including:– malnourishment – overworking – maternal mortality – female infanticide– Abortion– Limited access to health, education, and

opportunities

Infant Mortality Rate and Total Fertility Rate

6

27

51

88 Africa

Asia

LAC*

MDR** 1.6

2.6

2.5

5.1

Annual deaths to infants under age 1 per 1,000 live births

Average number of children per woman

Infant Mortality and Childbearing, by Region

* LAC=Latin America and the Caribbean; ** MDR=More Developed Regions. Source: Population Reference Bureau, 2005 World Population Data Sheet.

The map on infant mortality indicates the disparity between MDR’s (More Developed Countries) and LDR (Less Developed Countries) – where more infant deaths occur in regions like Africa, Asia, Latin America & the Caribbean.

On a global level however – 300,000 more girls than boys die every year, and many more are never born because they are aborted after gender-detection tests .

Some quick stats• 2 million females are killed before or at birth simply

because of their sex (www.indiafemalefoeticide.org)

• More than 60 million women are ‘missing’ from the world today as a result of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide (Amnesty; www.amnesty.org)

• 50 million women are ‘missing’ from India (www.thp.org)

• In China, the 2000 census revealed the ratio of girls to boys is 100:199. The norm is 100:103 (chinadatacenter.org)

• Of 8,000 fetuses aborted in a Bombay clinic, 7999 were female (learningpartnership.org)

• An estimated 100 million girls will marry before their 18th birthday over the next 10 years.

• This is one third of the adolescent girls in developing countries (excluding China).

• Young married girls often lack knowledge about sex and the risks of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS.

World Health Organization, 10 Facts on Women’s Health: http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/women_health/en/index5.html

• About 14 million adolescent girls become mothers every year.

• More than 90% of these very young mothers live in developing countries.

World Health Organization, 10 Facts on Women’s Health: http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/women_health/en/index6.html

• Every day, 1600 women and more than 10 000 newborns die from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth.

• Almost 99% of maternal and 90% of neonatal mortalities occur in the developing world.

World Health Organization, 10 Facts on Women’s Health: http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/women_health/en/index7.html

Maternal Mortality Rates Worldwide

Family & Social Conditions

• Cultural norms & social structures that undergird the way we conceptualize gender norms maintain practices that keep women subjugated, disenfranchised and in many cases, at risk.

• In many parts of the world, much of what goes on remains undocumented as many women live in rural areas and never report – or never know where to go to ask for help.

Some Quick Stats• Violence causes more death and disability worldwide amongst

women aged 15-44 than war, cancer, malaria or traffic accidents (Directorate of Public Health)

• One in three women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in some other way, most often by someone she knows. One in four women were abused during pregnancy (Amnesty International; www.amnesty.org)

• Three out of four fatalities of war are women and children (Network for good)

• In the former Yugoslavia, 20,000 women and girls were raped during the first months of the war (Physicians for Human Rights)

Quick Stats• Annually, 2 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage (

secondsightresearch.tripod.com)

• Only 1% of the world’s assets are in the name of a woman (SEWA; www.unesco.org)

• 5,000 women in the world are estimated as killed in ‘honor killings’ (Christian Science Monitor; www.csmonitor.com)

• Every year in India, 5000 brides are murdered or commit suicide because their marriage dowries are considered inadequate (www.learningpartnership.org)

• Every year, 2 million girls between the ages of five and 15 are coerced, abducted, sold or trafficked into the illegal sex market (International Humanitarian Campaign Against the Exploitation of Children; www.helpsavekids.org)

More stats• 1 out of 7 married women worldwide are raped by their spouse and

marital rape accounts for 25% of all rapes (Wesley Center for Women)

• Every day 6,000 girls undergo female circumcision (Amnesty; www.amnesty.org)

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and death for women worldwide (Intervarsity press)

• Between 200,000-300,000 women are trafficked to Europe every year (Human Rights Watch)

• Well over $7 billion a year is generated from sex-trade trafficking (Peace Women)

Education

• Education is another category in which there exists widespread gender inequality.

• Most typical barriers include:– Cultural and political barriers

• Status of women• Social norms

– Civil unrest (wars, upheaval, etc)– Limited budgets

• The general status of women and literacy is improving; currently, more girls are enrolled in primary school across the world than ever before.

• There still exist wide gaps between men and women with regard to literacy and access to education.

This map demonstrates the number of girls per 100 boys in primary school (2001). The highest difference is noted in Africa – ranging between less than 70 to 90 girls/100 boys, parts of the Middle East and Asia.

77

53

89

73

55

87

70

9186

77

World Sub-SaharanAfrica

Latin Americaand the

Caribbean

Asia Arab States

Female Male

Adult Literacy, by RegionLiteracy Rates, by Sex, 2000-2004

Percent

Some Quick Stats• More than half of women in the world, over the age of 15,

cannot read or write (Women’s Learning Partnership; www.learningpartnership.org)

• Two thirds of people who cannot read or write are women (Women-watch; www.un.org)

• Two thirds of the children who receive less than four years’ education are girls (Women’s Learning Partnership; www.learningpartnership.org)

• Nearly 60% of children not in school are girls (Women’s Learning Partnership; www.learningpartnership.org)

Percent of Population Over Age 15 Who Are Illiterate, 2000

Number of People Over Age 15 Who

Are Illiterate (thousands), 2000

Percent of Population Ages 15 to 24 Who Are

Illiterate, 2000

Number of People Ages 15 to 24 Who

Are Illiterate (thousands), 2000

Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male

Middle East and North Africa

42 22 50,057 26,671 23 11 8,585 4,573

Algeria 43 24 4,211 2,360 16 7 530 227

Bahrain 17 9 32 25 1 2 1 1

Egypt 56 33 12,253 7,374 37 24 2,500 1,678

Iran 31 17 6,696 3,819 9 4 655 296

Iraq 77 45 5,070 3,057 71 41 1,593 962

Jordan 16 5 220 78 1 1 3 5

Kuwait 20 16 103 130 7 8 15 19

Lebanon 20 8 246 91 7 3 23 9

Libya 32 9 533 168 7 0.5 43 1

Morocco 64 38 6,286 3,702 42 24 1,265 750

Oman 38 20 246 155 4 0.5 9 1

Palestined 16 6 136 48 — — — —

Qatar 17 20 21 57 3 7 1 3

Saudi Arabia

33 17 1,723 1,092 10 5 187 101

Syria 40 12 1,879 566 21 5 376 85

Tunisia 39 19 1,307 621 11 3 106 27

Turkey 24 7 5,453 1,539 6 1 392 81

United Arab Emirates

21 25 117 345 6 13 10 29

Yemen 75 33 3,525 1,444 54 17 874 292

Economic Productivity

• Worldwide, outside of the agricultural sector, in both developed and developing countries, women are averaging slightly less than 78% of the wages given to men for the same work, a gap which refuses to close in even the most developed countries.

Economic Productivity• Women’s nominal wages are 17% lower than men’s worldwide.

• Women perform 66 % of the world’s work, produce 50 % of the food, but earn 10 % of the income and own 1% of the property.

• In some regions, women provide 70 % of agricultural labor, produce more than 90 % of the food, and yet are nowhere represented in budget deliberations .

• In Arab states, only 28% of women participate in the workforce.

• If the average distance to the moon is 394,400 km, South African women together walk the equivalent of a trip to the moon and back 16 times a day to supply their households with water.

World Economic Forum, ‘Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap’, 2005

Economic Productivity • Women produce nearly 80% of the food on the planet, but receive less than

10% of agricultural assistance (Peacekeeper; www.iamapeacekeeper.com)

• More than 1 billion people live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day. 70% of people in abject poverty are women (www.kamilat.org)

• Although women do two thirds of the work in the world, the rate of paid employment for women is two thirds that of men (International Labor Organization; www.ilo.org)

• There is no country in the world where women’s wages are equal to those of men (Women’s Learning Partnership; www.learningpartnership.org)

• Worldwide, when women do the same work as men, they are paid 30-40% less than men (Feminism; www.newint.org)

• Women constitute around 60–80 % of the export manufacturing workforce in the developing world, a sector the World Bank expects to shrink significantly during the economic crisis [7].

• Women are concentrated in insecure jobs in the informal sector with low income and few rights; they tend to have few skills and only basic education. They are the first to be fired.

• The global vulnerable employment rate is expected to range between 50.5–54.7 percent for women, compared to a range of 47.2–51.8 percent for men [9].

• 80 percent of women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

Food for thought:

• The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) figures indicate that the vast majority of the world’s countries offer paid maternity leave, often with a guaranteed wage of 50-100% of salary.

• Interestingly, the United States offers women 12 weeks, but with no pay whatsoever, putting it in league with Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.

POLITICS & PUBLIC LIFE

• Access to public life entails access to fundamental decision-making that directly affects the individual.

• For women, this is a crucial human & civil right, especially because their gender is often legally disenfranchised, marginalized, and punished.

Some quick stats• Out of over 250 countries, only a few are currently headed by women (as of

April 2009):

In Asia and Pacific• Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines • Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, President of India • Sheikh Hasina Wajed, Prime Minister of Bangladesh • Quentin Bryce, Governor General of Australia

• In other parts of the world• Luisa Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique • Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany • Tarja Halonen, President of Finland • Mary McAleese, President of Ireland• Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia

• Rosa Zafferani, Co-Head of State, San Marino • Michelle Bachelet Jeria, President of Chile • Michele Pierre-Louis, Prime Minister of Haiti • Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, President of Argentina • Michealle Jean, Governor General of Canada

• Other women leaders in government include:

• 5 Vice presidents:– Sandra Pierantozzi, Vice President of Palau– Milagros Ortiz Bosch, Vice President of the Dominican Republic– Annette Lu, Vice President of Taiwan– Aisatou N'Jie Saidy, Vice President of Gambia– Astrid Fischel Volio, Vice President of Costa Rica

• 4 Governor-generals: – Silvia Cartwright, Governor-General of New Zealand– Ivy Dumont, Governor-General of the Bahamas – Adrienne Clarkson, Governor-General of Canada– Pearlette Louisy, Governor-General of Saint Lucia

• Only 15% of parliamentary seats across the world are held by women (www.globalpolicy.org)

• Women ministers remain concentrated in social areas (14%) compared to legal (9.4%), economic (4.1%), political affairs (3.4%) and the executive (3.9%) (www.un.org)

• 3.5% of the world’s cabinet ministers are women and women have no ministerial positions in 93 countries worldwide (Feminism; www.newint.org)

• 13 developing countries in the sub-Saharan region – (the poorest area on Earth) - had higher proportions of women MPs than the US (12%), France (11.8%) and Japan (10%).

• Rwanda has 25.7% and Uganda, 24.7%.

• Of the Gulf states which have parliaments, neither Kuwait nor the United Arab Emirates give women the right to vote or stand for election.

• Saudi Arabia denied its 179,564 women the right to vote in 2004 (Amnesty International; www.amnesty.org)

• On May 2003 Qatar appointed Sheikha bin Ahmed Al-Mahmud as the Gulf state's first woman cabinet minister. The appointment followed an April 29 referendum in which Qataris overwhelmingly approved a written constitution recognizing a woman's right to vote and run for office.

Some Final Thoughts• Men in the Arab states have 3.5 times the purchasing power of their female counterparts.

• 70% of people in abject poverty-- living on less than $1 per day-- are women.

• Among the developed countries, in France only 9% of the workforce and in the Netherlands 20% of the workforce are female administrators and managers.

• Women's participation in managerial and administrative posts is around 33% in the developed world, l5% in Africa, and 13% in Asia and the Pacific. In Africa and Asia-Pacific these percentages, small as they are, reflect a doubling of numbers in the last twenty years.

• There are only 5 women chief executives in the Fortune 500 corporations, the most valuable publicly owned companies in the United States. These include the CEOs of Xerox, Spherion, Hewlett-Packard, Golden West Financial, and Avon Products.

• In Silicon Valley, for every 100 shares of stock options owned by a man, only one share is owned by a woman.