The Global Gender Gap Report is a yearly study sponsored by The World Economic Forum.
This is a prestigious group that meets in Davos Switzerland each year.
It attracts more than 2500 of the world's leading figures in business and politics—people
like Bill Gates and German Chancellor Angela Merkel show up.
So do celebrities: Bono, Mick Jagger, and Angelina Jolie.
The purpose of the gathering is admirable: to brainstorm on ways to make the world a
better place.
One way the Forum hopes to improve the world is to highlight “role models” of gender
equity around the world.
Since 2006, the Forum has produced yearly reports ranking the world’s nations on gender—equality
in key areas such as Economic opportunity, political empowerment, health and education.
The just-released 2015 findings are typical of earlier reports.
Rwanda, the Philippines and Nicaragua somehow get higher equity rankings than the US, Australia,
Canada and Denmark.
Journalists, with few exceptions, have been electrified by the Gender Gap Study.
Many have praised it for showing just how backward we are in the United States.
The Factual Feminist has concerns about the soundness of the gender gap study.
The researchers are well-intentioned, but their study shows a lack of common sense.
This is strictly a study of gaps between the sexes.
If men and women in nation X are equally illiterate, disenfranchised, and just as likely to die
at an early age—that all but guarantees a high ranking.
No gender gap—no problem.
But that isn't always true.
Gaps favoring women are just fine.
If women turn out to be better educated, more likely to vote, less vulnerable to violence
or early death—those gaps can actually help a county in the rankings.
Look at Russia.
According to the Davos study, Russian women enjoy 11 more healthy years of life than men.
That is bad news for Russian men—but great for Russia's standing in the studies “Healthy
Life Expectancy” A Davos report that honestly showed the burdens
and benefits of women and men around the world would be far more useful than this quirky,
one-sided study.
This 2004 chart from the World Health Organization shows men throughout the world at vastly higher
risk for injury and violence.
Gender gaps are complicated—but the World Economic Forum disguises that.
It’s giving an over-simplified and distorted picture of what's really going on.
There are other troubling features: the study does not distinguish between free societies
and dictatorships, and it greatly rewards countries that use gender quotas in allocating
political positions.
Countries that combine dictatorships and gender quotas (Cuba, Rwanda, Burundi) are almost
guaranteed “role model” status in the category of political empowerment.
Again, that is misleading.
Rwanda’s 2003 constitution establishes gender quotas for the lower parliament.
Women now occupy 64% of the seats.
But that same constitution gives the current president close to absolute power—including
the right to dissolve the parliament.
The human rights watchdog group, Freedom House, gives Rwanda’s failing grades where political
rights are concerned.
In Mozambique and Burundi, almost everyone (male and female) is in the full-time labor
force.
That improves their Davos ranking, but is it a sign of progress and opportunity—or
even true equality?
These countries are not bastions of gender equality—what they are is desperately poor
and nearly everyone is forced to work—men women and often children too.
In wealthy countries like the U.S. and Germany lot of mothers choose to work part time, or
even leave the workforce when they have children.
But that creates gaps that get penalized by the Davos metrics.
This brings me to one of my most serious objection to the report: It promotes the idea that statistical
parity between the sexes in synonymous with justice, and well-being.
But is that always true?
There is a serious body of psychological literature that suggests that as countries grow richer
and freer, the sexes become less alike.
In an earlier Factual Feminist video, I described a study where researchers looked at gender
and personality norms in 55 countries.
Throughout the world, women tend to be more nurturing, risk averse, and emotionally expressive,
while men are more likely to be competitive, risk taking, and stoical.
But they found that personality differences between men and women are the largest and
most robust in the more prosperous, advanced industrial societies—like the US, Canada,
France, and Germany.
Why should that be?
The authors hypothesize that prosperity and equality bring greater opportunities for self-actualization—men
and women are empowered to be who they most truly are.
This cross-cultural research is far from conclusive, but it is intriguing and it has great explanatory
power.
I recently read an Atlantic article about women in tech.
The author was surprised that Mexico and Turkey had far more female coders than more progressive
countries like Belgium and Switzerland—where women are far more likely to go into health,
education or the humanities.
Why?
Maybe it’s because women in wealthy countries women have the freedom and opportunity to
be whatever they want to be.
I urge those at the World Economic Forum to consider this tantalizing possibility: Gender
gaps are not necessarily indicators of injustice or discrimination.
In countries like the United States or Norway they may be evidence of freedom and happiness.
My verdict: The report is misleading and confusing.
It is unlikely to do anything to advance genuine equality or well-being in the world.
But it may serve one important purpose; It tells us a lot about the sorry state of gender
equity research.
What do you think of the World Economic Forum gender gap study?
Do you agree that it suffers from a common sense deficit?
Am I missing something here?
Let me know in the comments.
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Thank you for watching the Factual Feminist.