2012 Gender Inequality Index

Click here for links on/for the 2013 Gender Inequality Index

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The U.N. (Development Program) released the 2013 Human Development Report (and the 2012 Human Development Index within it) a few days ago. It incorporates data from 2012 for the latest Gender Inequality Index (on pages 156-159). This index reflects gender inequality along three dimensions – reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market – as rated by five indicators: maternal mortality and adolescent fertility for reproductive health, parliamentary representation and educational attainment for empowerment, and labor force participation for the labor market.

Of the 186 countries ranked in the 2012 Human Development Index, 148 of those countries are ranked in the 2012 Gender Inequality Index. The U.S. ranks #42, the U.K. ranks #34, Canada ranks #18, Australia ranks #17, New Zealand ranks #31, and South Africa ranks #90.[The UN Development Programme has several times now updated/changed some of their data/info. Please share relevant updates/changes in the comments.]

Also out of those 186 countries (for the 2012 Gender Inequality Index…), Netherlands ranks #1, Sweden ranks #2, Denmark and Switzerland rank #3, Norway ranks #5 (though as you might expect, Norway ranks #1 overall in Human Development), Finland and Germany rank #6, Slovenia ranks #8, France ranks #9, Iceland ranks #10, Italy ranks #11 and Belgium ranks #12.

In addition, out of those 186 countries (for the 2012 Gender Inequality Index…), India ranks #132, Saudi Arabia ranks #145, Afghanistan ranks #147, and Yemen ranks #148.

More UNDP links are down/changed again. Click here for links on/for the 2013 Gender Inequality Index
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Click here for a PDF of the full 2013 Human Development Report. The 2012 Gender Inequality Index is on pp. 156-159.
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Click here for a more detailed account of the Gender Inequality Index that includes indicator data from 2012 as well as previous (grouped) years. This is a new webpage containing more index statistics than previous webpages and PDF files. [Update, the UNDP deleted this webpage again, but did replace it with one that contains relevant data.]
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Click here and scroll down to “technical note 3” on pages 5-6 for a PDF file that provides details on how the Gender Inequality Index is calculated.
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Unfortunately, the webpage with frequently asked questions (and answers) about the Gender Inequality Index seems no longer to exist among the United Nations Human Development Programme webpages. If anyone finds or has a link to it, please share it in the comments!

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What do readers think? All sorts of data here for all sorts of comments…

International Women’s Day! so, pink phones..?

Really, Oxfam? Pink phones? Was there no other way to achieve such a laudable goal?

Watch the Makers Documentary Online!

A while ago I complained about a TV series that seemed to be glorifying a bunch of rich white men as the people who made America.

And a short while ago Fem Phil posted about the PBS documentary, Makers: Women Who Make America.

In case anyone missed it on TV, you can watch the whole thing (yup all 3 hours) here or here.  (The first link doesn’t contain commercials, as far as I can tell.  Apologies if the video doesn’t work everywhere. I tried searching Youtube as well but couldn’t find another version.)

And if anyone ever followed Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy, she is still occasionally throwing out a blame or two, in between blogging about the various ailments her horses suffer from. She points out some irony regarding the commercials for the documentary:

“Despite the title, during the station break a voiceover described the doc’s subject as “women who ‘helped’ shape America.” Women are helpers, yo, just in case this film causes you to forget that for a moment.”

And in classic Twisy fashion, she helpfully suggests,

Here, Voiceover, let me “help” you kiss my entire ass.

(If it’s not obvious, I miss IBTP.)

I haven’t watched the documentary yet, but I’m hoping it’s good.  Twisty links to a few articles on it in her post.  And Chris Hayes talked about it some on his Feb 9th show–you know, the one where he devoted the WHOLE TWO HOURS to the women’s movement (both local and global, past and present.) The show, while containing a few awkward kumbaya moments, had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen about how to address the women’s movement without slipping into American-centric white middle class feminism. (If you can watch MSNBC shows, you can watch it here by hovering over “recent shows” on the left and finding Feb. 9th.)

 

Melissa Harris-Perry (left) and Sarita Gupta (right) on Up with Chris Hayes

Women making America

The PBS program, “Makers: Women who make American,” shows tonight both on TV and through webcasting:

 

MAKERS is a landmark digital and broadcast initiative from AOL and PBS showcasing compelling stories from women of today and tomorrow. A 3-hour documentary “MAKERS: Women Who Make America.”will premiere on February 26, 2013 8pm ET.
Visit the Makers: Women Who Make America website

Judging by the preview below, there’s lots to like and to dislike about the program. Among other things, it features US women of the last 50-70 years who largely are very visible in the media. And some of the faces are clearly remade according to what one would think are sexist demands. It does also have a good number of black women, it seemed to me, and some I knew were media people, but I wash’t as familiar with black faces as white.Not a good thing, I’d say, which is one reason why the central division APA had a lot of sessions on concerns that included blacks.

So be prepared to find some of it irritating, but also full of recollections of events that impact us still today.

Raising Female Leaders (in India)

The February 2013 South Asia Newsletter of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab references important research results on Raising Female Leaders in India.

“A quota system for female village leaders in India [reserving for women in India a randomly selected third of the village council leader positions] changed perceptions of women’s abilities, improved women’s electoral chances, and raised aspirations and educational attainment for adolescent girls.”

Here is a policy brief [in PDF format] from April 2012 titled “Raising Female Leaders” summarizing ongoing research/data collection/analyses that confirm and clarify very promising policies and policy lessons regarding progress on deeply ingrained gender stereotypes (by Lori Beaman, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, and Petia Topalova). (This confirmation and clarification -even if no surpise to many – arguably very, very important for all sorts of reasons…)

Featured/previously published evaluations:
Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India. Lori Beaman, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova. Science Magazine 335(6068), February 2012.

Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? Lori Beaman, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova. Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(4): 1497-1540, November 2009.

Sandra Jensen: Why she kicks ass

In a black and white photo, a woman stands outside by a table, microphone in hand. She has shoulder length straight hair and glasses. She is wearing a dress and sandals. She is smiling.

I found this short bio on tumblr and wanted to share it:

Sandra Jensen: Why she kicks ass

• She devoted lots of her time working as an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities; she worked part time as well as being heavily involved in volunteering.
• She was denied a heart-lung transplant by the Stanford University School of Medicine in California because she had Down syndrome. She then (along with supporters) began a very public battle, gaining nationwide attention arguing that Down syndrome should not be enough to automatically deprive a patient of a chance to survive, this resulted in her receiving the transplant (1996).
• She became the first person with Down Syndrome to ever receive a heart-lung transplant.

I’ll be over here in awe

 

I also found her obituary from 1997, which you can read here.

Jensen, an activist for disabled rights, served as president of a Sacramento disabled-rights group and was invited to watch then-President George Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Despite her disabilities, Jensen lived on her own, graduating from high school and busing tables at the Capitol cafeteria.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about her or her story online, but I did find this report, which is taken from NYT and US News articles.

Christina Hoff Somers on the Boys in the Back.

In fact, Dr. Somers is the step-mother of a colleague of mine, and so I won’t dwell on the possible motives for her friendly voice for feminism in today’s NY Times. It would be very mean to suggest she has her eye on sales of the book she is about to reissue. (That book is called The War Against boys.) So let me just note that she relays some interesting ideas about why boys do less well in school than girls, as it seems. She does seem to think its due to universally shared male characteristics, like being feckless and lazy.

As our schools have become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, collaboration-oriented and sedentary, they have moved further and further from boys’ characteristic sensibilities. Concerns about boys arose during a time of tech bubble prosperity; now, more than a decade later, there are major policy reasons — besides the stale “culture wars” of the 1990s — to focus on boys’ schooling.

We addressed the research behind the idea that boys and girls have brains fundamentally different in the way Somers described. Cordelia Fine, who will be speaking at the Central APA in a few weeks, has recently made the idea even more implausible.

Still, we can probably all get behind her closing sentence: The rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men.

More on gender discrimination in the sciences

An anonymous female scientist writes for The Guardian about gender, science, and discrimination. Worth a read!

Sexism as seen on Facebook

This comes with a trigger warning, but there’s a tumblr, “Sexism! As Seen on Facebook,” that documents sexism on Facebook. Sort of like a hollaback for social media.

Uganda: The Fight for Women’s Land Rights

Uganda: The Fight for Women’s Land Rights

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http://thinkafricapress.com/uganda/womens-fight-land-rights

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“In 2001, after the death of her husband, and her son shortly afterwards, Helen Kongai was left with no money and the threat of losing her land – the land on which she had long lived and farmed. But while Ugandan culture dictates that a husband’s family take back any land after he dies, Helen fought successfully to keep it.

“Now, at the age of 50 and a successful farmer, Helen runs a residential training centre from which she has trained thousands in sustainable organic agriculture and offers gender studies lessons in an attempt to bridge the gap between men and women, overcome customary discriminatory practices, and help women gain equal access to land…”

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See also:

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Send a Cow: Supporting African families out of poverty

http://www.sendacow.org.uk/our-work

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Helen Kongai – Ugandan Farmer: How small scale agriculture transforms the lives of women in Uganda

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2008_28_mon.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/04/090407_outlook_sendacow_page.shtml

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Recognizing the African woman farmer

https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/recognizing-the-african-woman-farmer/

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