Prejudice against women remains deeply entrenched in much of the world and has remained virtually unchanged over the past decade, according to a study released Monday by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Nearly nine in 10 people have some form of prejudice against women and one in four accepts that a man hits a woman, the report said.
Half of the world’s population believe men make better political leaders than women, and 40% believe they make better business leaders.
Even in places where education levels are higher, women continue to earn an average of 39% less than men.
The data collected covers 80 countries representing 85% of the world’s population and was collected between 2017 and 2022.
According to the UNDP, the most recent surveys show that progress has been limited in recent years, despite major women’s rights movements such as the MeToo movement.
If the figures are compared with those collected between 2010 and 2014, which can only be done with data from 38 countries, there is stagnation.
For example, the percentage of people with some prejudice against women improved slightly: from 86.9% then to 84.6% now.
There are some exceptions, however, with countries where the number of people who do not appear to be gender biased is increasing significantly.
In Germany, the percentage of respondents with at least one prejudice fell from 56% to 37% in the past decade, while in Japan it fell from 72% to 59% and in Uruguay from 77% to 61%.
In other cases, however, there were setbacks: in Russia the value increased from 87% to 91%, in South Korea from 85% to 90% and in Chile the increase went from 74% to 80%.
However, in many other countries, the perception of women has changed little over this period, with minimal variations in this indicator.
The UNDP argued that governments play a key role in changing social norms, pointing out, for example, that the regulation of parental leave has changed existing perceptions of family care responsibilities in many places. For example, labor reforms were introduced to change attitudes about women and work.
The report’s authors stated that these persistent prejudices against women explain the recent rise of anti-gender equality movements and, in some countries, the increase in human rights abuses.
The UNDP also stressed that without progress on women’s rights, it is impossible to make progress on development issues at a time when many indicators in this area are declining.
“Social norms that affect women’s rights are also harmful to society in general, as they hold back the expansion of human development,” Pedro Conceição, director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office, said in a statement.
Source: DN
