One in four people in the world or what is the same 2,000 million inhabitants of the planet believe that a husband is justified in hitting his wife. Or equally or more striking is that 25% of women over the age of 15 have received some type of violence, “whether it be social or physical control,” the United Nations highlights. These are two of the main conclusions of the Gender and Social Norms Index (GSNI) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which reveals that “in the last 10 years there has been no progress in the eradication of prejudices against women.
Phrases like “that’s not for ladies”, “athletes should be paid less because they arouse less interest”, “behind a great man there is always a great woman” or simply “a woman you had to be” are phrases that almost think or say 9 out of 10 people in the world.
The results of this report from the United Nations Development Program are built on the data collected in the World Values Survey, which collects information from 80 countries during two time frames, 2010 and 2022, and “has coverage of 85% of the population of the planet”, say the authors of it. “Political rights and civil liberties have been in decline around the world for at least a decade,” they conclude.
Half of Spanish society, according to United Nations data, has some gender prejudice
The research focuses on four areas in which women and girls experience any type of disadvantage or discrimination. Education, politics, economy and physical integrity are the sections that bring together questions such as “if a man is more qualified to run a company”, “going to university is more important for men than for women” or “abortion is not it is never justifiable”, among others.
Preconceived ideas that are based on practically the entire world population and in which men and women share them, in almost similar percentages.
“These biases continue to fuel the obstacles women face, manifested in the dismantling of rights in many parts of the world due to organized backlash against women’s equality, as well as escalating human rights violations. in some countries”, point out the UNDP authors. In Spain, biases are also a barrier to achieving gender equality, but far from the global percentages. Half of Spanish society, according to United Nations data, has some gender prejudice, while the other half claims not to have it based on the questions asked by the UNDP. However, they are very present on a day-to-day basis: «Oncethey told me i hadThey had to buy me the uniform because they said that it had a size that was not normative, “says Eva María Perez, model.
It is not the only case, in education it has also happened. “We have fought against all odds,” explains María Bernal, lawyer and general secretary of the Spanish Association of Women Jurists. «I have an anecdote in the first year of my degree when a professor threw me out of class because he said that he was in favor of the fact that the law did not need women. Fortunately, we have already overcome this and now we are more women than men in the faculty », she adds.
According to Eurostat data, the presence of women in universities has grown to almost half of the European female population between 25 and 34 years old has a university degree. Furthermore, almost half of the Member States have already achieved the target at Community level for 2030.
85%
of the world population
is prejudiced against women
Spain is one of the countries with the highest number of women graduates within the European Union and in the answers to the questions of the World Values Survey it obtains the lowest percentage among the four categories of the study, where economic biases predominate. “Today, women have more education and skills than ever before. Yet in the 59 countries where women are more educated than men, the median earnings gap remains a staggering 39% in favor of men.
The gender wage gap in Spain is 28.21%
In this case, the gender wage gap in Spain is 28.21%. Spanish wage inequality leaves our country on the bench, according to the latest Global Gender Gap 2022 report. If equality between men and women continues to advance at the current speed, it would take 132 years to reach full parity. “It is a reflection of the society in which we live,” replies Amanda Gutiérrez, president of FutPro, the majority union of Spanish women’s soccer players. “Prejudices are not only on the field, but also in the offices and we have seen it when negotiating the collective agreement for the players,” she adds.
The salary difference is the most evident. “Do you think that with 16,000 euros a year you can live as a professional?” Gutiérrez asks. “I would say that not even a person can live with dignity with just that,” he adds. That is the figure reflected and agreed upon in the I Collective Agreement for women’s professional soccer, an amount far removed from what their male soccer colleagues receive: 186,000 euros per year. But it is not the only discrimination: «If you wantaccess the physio you had to do it after them”, reveals the president of FutPro. “There has been progress, but not enough.”
“Power” Gap
Despite the quantification of the percentage of the world population with some type of gender bias, “it is difficult to do it, because many of them remain in the collective imagination,” warns the UNDP in the report. “These biases are also tangible in the enormous lack of representation of women in leadership positions,” they add.
On average, the percentage of women who hold the head of State or government has remained unchanged, it does not reach 10% in this latest report and it has not touched 12% since 1995 when it broke that ‘psychological’ barrier of 10%. . The percentage is not much higher in other positions in the political sphere, according to the United Nations study Women in Politics in 2023. “These data tell us that women continue to be a minority as Heads of State and Government”, highlights the Executive Director of UN Women, Sima Bahous.
As of January 1, 2023, women represent 22.8% of Cabinet Ministers. Europe and North America (31.6%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (30.1%) are the regions with the highest proportion of women in Cabinets.
“This year we have seen steady progress in the number of women in politics, which is encouraging”
martin chungong
Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union
However, in most other regions, women are grossly underrepresented, with a drop to 10.1% in Central and South Asia, and 8.1% in the Pacific Islands (Oceania, excluding with Australia and New Zealand).
Only 13 countries, the majority in Europe, have gender equality in the Cabinet, where 50% or more of its members are women who serve as heads of ministries.
“This year we have seen steady progress in the number of women in politics, which is encouraging,” said Martin Chungong, Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). They remain profoundly underrepresented in government leadership, making up less than one in four Cabinet Ministers and men continuing to dominate crucial portfolios such as the economy, defense and energy.
The authors of the report stress that if the change towards greater gender equality is to be promoted, “it is necessary to focus on the expansion of human development through investment, insurance, and innovation.” “Social norms that limit women’s rights also harm society as a whole and slow down the expansion of human development,” replies Pedro Conceição, director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office.
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