Did you know that women in Rwanda enjoy the perks of one of the most equal societies in the world?
After the genocide in 1994, Rwanda was left in tatters; a nation in mourning for many thousands of its men. Two decades on, and women who survived the conflict with both emotional and physical scars have rebuilt their country.
From the ashes of a bloody genocide came the foundations of an equal – and more importantly, peaceful – society with a 64 per cent female majority in government.
Rwanda ranks fifth in the World Economic Fund’s Global Gender Gap report – meaning it is the fifth best country in the world for women to live in, after Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Britain ranks twentieth while Canada came in 35th and America lags behind in 45th place.
Westerners are notoriously high and mighty about gender equality – we look around, gleefully smug, and see women everywhere who are apparently free to climb whatever ladder they chose.
On paper, women have equal rights, thanks to the generations of powerful women who came before us in recent history and protested their second-class citizenship.
Yet, overall, the gap between male and female economic and political participation, health and education in Britain and the U.S proves we are still stuck in the middle ages.
We live in a less equal society than the Phillipines, Burundi, Slovenia, Namibia, South Africa and Nicaragua, to name but a few.
We could learn from Rwanda’s example. Globally women still suffer the consequences of gender inequality: From the gender pay gap to rates of maternal mortality in childbirth, female genital mutilation and limited rights to education.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates 830 women will die every day from preventable complications in childbirth. In other words, 303,000 babies will be born motherless every year because their mothers didn’t have access to medical help.
According to the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, one woman is raped in America every minute.
Working women in Britain are paid, on average, 9.6 per cent less than men. That effectively means women in the UK work for free from November 6 until the end of the year, just because they have a vagina.
In Pakistan, many girls don’t go to school because it is still deemed inappropriate for a woman to travel on public transport unsupervised.
In Ghana, many young women drop out of school – despite their eagerness for an education – because there are no sanitary towel disposal facilities.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, 27.2 million girls under the age of 15 have had their genitals butchered in brutal ritualistic ‘rights of passage’; a crime that is classified as a violation of human rights. WHO estimates 200 million girls alive today have been cut – and that’s only the ones who survived.
In Japan, thousands of underage girls are sexually exploited and trafficked as part of the booming ‘JK Business’, which sees grown men rent school girls for their own gratification. Many have criticised the culture for encouraging child abuse and paedophilia.
Whether in a far-off country or on your doorstep, women still have more obstacles to overcome than men. These obstacles are costly, not just for society, but for the economy too.
The seminal book written by The Economist‘s Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas D. Kristof, Half The Sky, states:
Think about all the major issues confronting us in this century. These include war, insecurity and terrorism; population pressures, environmental strains and climate change; poverty and income gaps.
For all these diverse problems, empowering women is part of the answer. Most obviously, educating girls and bringing them into the economy will yield economic dividends and help address global poverty.
Nearly everyone recognises that women around the world are one of the greatest under-utilised resources.
EmoticonEmoticon