The Gender Gap

The World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan includes leaders from 45 nations. First Lady Laura Bush addressing the conference on the subject of women’s rights noted that women have achieved extraordinary gains in the Middle East and that change must come to any nation that wants to be considered truly free. "Women who have not yet won these rights are watching," she said.

A report released at the conference examines the economic gap between men and women around the world. “Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap” ranked Sweden #1 and the United States #17 out of 58 countries. The LA Times dutifully editorialized that “It’s not just the Arab world that needs to understand that countries are crippled when half the population is marginalized.” So, do we have a problem in the United States, or is this all just nonsense?

Let’s look inside the report. The rankings are based on five measurement criteria (with the US ranking in parentheses):

1. Economic Participation (19)
2. Economic Opportunity (46)
3. Political Empowerment (19)
4. Educational Attainment (8)
5. Health and Well Being (42)

Economic Participation of women includes their presence in the work force and their relative pay for equal jobs. Thus in a country where all the women work the gap would be zero while in a country where 35% of the women are able to stay home and raise a family the gap is 35%, and that is counted as a bad thing. In a country like the US where the average pay might be $25,000 for men and $20,000 for women the gap is 20%. In a country like Zimbabwe where the average yearly pay for men and women is, say, $1,000 the gap is zero, and that is counted as a good thing. Thus the top rated countries in this category are Thailand, Zimbabwe and Russia, while the US ranks 19th. What nonsense!