Though you might get catcalled in the street and maybe don’t have as good a job as your male mates, you might think that living in the UK as a woman isn’t as bad as, say, living in a rural country in Europe, or some country out in Asia, or anywhere in Africa, right? Wrong, because the Global Gender Report by the World Economic Forum has put the UK at number 26, its lowest score since 2008. Just as an FYI, in 2006, we were ninth.
The rankings are done by analysing the gender equality of a country’s economy, education, health and politics, then scoring the country from 0-1 based on this first data. This year, the UK got 0.7383, which places us behind Latvia, Burundi, South Africa, Rwanda and Nicaragua. Obviously, the top countries were all Scandinavian, and, of course, the rest of Western Europe (apart from Luxembourg and Italy) is above us in the table.
Why is this? Jobs. The UK had a significantly lower score in the ‘economic participation’ section, which considers the ratios of women in the workforce, the number of women in senior roles and, of course, the gender pay gap.
The WEF explained: ‘[In the economic participation subsets] the UK appears to remain some way off, with the country ranking 48th in terms of both labour force participation and wage equality, and 66th for estimated earned income.
‘Unlike many of its peers, it has still yet to close its educational attainment and health and survival gaps (ranking 32 and 94, respectively), while it does moderately better in the fourth area we measure, political empowerment, where it ranks 33rd.’
The depressing part is, doing ‘moderately better’ means having a Cabinet comprising just 22 per cent women. Are we really this backward? The Labour party has already responded to the WEF’s findings.
READ MORE: Enough Of This Gender Pay Gap Bullshit, Let’s Do Something About It
Gloria De Piero, shadow minister for Women and Equalities, said: ‘This is a damning indictment of David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s record for women. Their policies have meant that women’s wages are lower this year than last year and the gender pay gap is back on the rise after years of falling under Labour.’
She then pledged: ‘[We] will stop the clock being turned back for women across Britain by increasing the minimum wage to £8 and taking action on equal pay by requiring big companies to publish their pay gap. And Ed Miliband has said that for the first time in Britain’s history he wants a Cabinet that’s 50 per cent women.’
With stats like this, it’s about time the Coalition sat up and tried to affect that change, too…
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Picture: Eylul Aslan
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.