Prejudice against women remains deeply rooted in much of the world and has practically not diminished in the last decade, indicates a study released Monday by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Nearly nine in 10 people have some kind of prejudice against women, and one in four accepts that a man hits a woman, according to the report.
Half of the world’s population believes that men make better political leaders than women, and 40% believe that they make better business leaders.
Even in places where education levels are higher, women continue to earn, on average, 39% less than men.
The compiled data refers to 80 countries representing 85% of the world population and was collected between 2017 and 2022.
According to UNDP, the most recent surveys suggest that progress in recent years has been limited, despite major women’s rights movements such as the MeToo movement.
If the numbers 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% today.
However, there are some exceptions, with countries where the number of people who do not appear to have any gender bias increases significantly.
In Germany, the percentage of respondents with at least one prejudice dropped from 56% to 37% in the last decade, while in Japan it dropped from 72% to 59% and in Uruguay from 77% to 61%.
In other cases, however, there were setbacks: in Russia the value rose 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 nations, the perception of women has changed little during this period, with minimal variations in this indicator.
UNDP argued that governments have a key role to play in changing social norms, noting, for example, that parental leave regulation has changed perceptions of family care responsibilities in many places. Labor reforms, for example, changed beliefs about women and work.
The authors of the report claimed that these persistent prejudices against women explain the recent advance of movements against gender equality and, in some countries, the increase in human rights violations.
The UNDP also underlined that, without advances in women’s rights, it is impossible to advance on development issues, at a time when many indicators in this area are falling.
“Social norms that affect women’s rights are also detrimental to society in general, holding back the expansion of human development,” said the director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, Pedro Conceição, in a statement.
Source: TSF
