The United Nations recently released a first-of-its-kind report at the Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Rwanda that presents a comprehensive analysis of the progress made in human development of women and girls. The report jointly created by two UN agencies – UN Women and UN Development highlighted that less than 1 per cent of women across the world live in countries that have managed to achieve both high women empowerment and gender parity. More than 90 per cent of the global population of women live in countries with low or middle women’s empowerment and low or middle performance in achieving gender parity, the authors wrote in the report.
UN collated data from 114 countries and analysed them based on the twin indices of the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI) to get the most accurate understanding of the progress made towards women’s empowerment and gender parity in a country. “The WEI focuses solely on women, measuring their power and freedoms to make choices and seize opportunities in life. The GGPI evaluates the status of women relative to men in core dimensions of human development and exposes gaps in parity between women and men,” UN noted in the report.
The report also factored in new data on the progress made by these countries towards achieving UN-mandated Sustainable Development Goals that deal with closing gender gaps. None of the 114 countries analysed achieved full women’s empowerment or complete gender parity, they found. WEI showed that, on average, women are empowered to achieve only 60 per cent of their full potential. They also were found to achieve 28 per cent less than men across key human development dimensions, as measured by the GGPI, the report noted. “Of the 114 countries analysed, 85 have low or middle women’s empowerment and low or middle performance in achieving gender parity. More than half the countries in this group are in the high (21 countries) or very high human development group (26 countries).”
In India, women’s empowerment and gender parity were both found to be ‘low’, although it was assessed to be in the ‘medium’ category in terms of human development.
The report identified areas where comprehensive policy action is needed:
1. Health policies
2. Equality in education
3. Work-life balance and support for families
4. Women’s equal participation
5. Violence against women