As per a UN report, data tracking biases against women seems to have shown no progress in a decade, with prejudices still being deeply rooted in society, despite powerful and global campaigns such as MeToo.
The UN agency updated its Gender Social Norm Index, which accounts for political, economic, education and physical integrity metrics by making use of the data collected from the World Values Survey, an international project studying how values and beliefs are changing worldwide.
46 per cent of the population feels men have more of a right to take up a job and about 43 per cent feel men make better business leaders. A quarter of the population feels it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife, and 28 per cent feels that university is more important for men. 69 per cent believes men make better political leaders than women and 27 per cent are of the opinion that it is essential women have the same rights as men.
Prejudices create hurdles for women and without tackling gender social norms, gender quality and Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved. Along with the lack of progress in gender biases, there is also a general decline in human development metrics post the Covid-19 pandemic.