Gender Inequality
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Throughout history gender inequality has been a huge problem. The disadvantages facing women and girls are a major source of inequality. All too often, women and girls are discriminated against in health, education, political representation, labour market, etc.—with negative consequences for development of their capabilities and their freedom of choice. All around the world today woman still struggle with fighting for equality. “The position of women in 159 countries; it yields insights in gender gaps in major areas of human development.”
Around the World Gender Inequalities:
Woman that live in Saudi Arabia are forbidden to drive. Even with all the protests, woman must rely on their fathers or husbands get to place to place. In countries like Egypt or Bahrain, husbands have the right to stop their wives leaving the country while other countries require written permission from a husband to travel.
40 percent of young women in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are married by age 18. “Child marriage not only increases the chance of complications of giving birth that often prove fatal, but also contravenes the fundamental human right of choice of partnership.” Meanwhile women that live in Pakistan are expected to accept arranged marriages, if they refuse could lead to “honor killings” that typically go uncontested by the government.
In most of the Middle East, countries are governed by religious ideals and gender inequality is pervasive. Men are typically viewed as superior, they can divorced their wives relatively easily and even through mere oral renunciation. Women, on the other hand, face many more obstacles. Abused women in Lebanon don’t even have the right to file for a divorce, unless an eyewitness is willing to testify.
With the exception of Israel, Iran, Tunisia, and parts of Egypt, women in the Middle East do not have the right to pass citizenship on to their children while men have the ability to not only pass it to their children, but also to their non-national wives.
While allowed to participate in the army, women are still not permitted to serve in frontline combat in Turkey and Slovakia. As recently as 2016, this gender inequality persisted in the U.K. as well.
In some countries, the courts automatically grant custody rights to the father, and women are left without any means of financial support. For example, in Bahrain, family laws are not systematized, enabling judges to deny mothers custody of their children.
Unequal legal rights make women increasingly vulnerable to violence. One of the most obvious forms of violence against women in the world today is that of spousal rape. India’s recent ruling that rape laws do not apply to married couples clearly illustrates the sexual subjugation and violence to which women remain exposed.
Even in developed countries, women are at a disadvantage when it comes to earnings. The highest-paying fields are still dominated by men, and on average, women earn just 77 percent of what men earn for the same amount of work. “At this rate, it could take a full 45 years before this gender inequality disappears.”
In some countries, customary or religious law effectively prohibits the ownership of land by females, even if their constitution claims equal rights. In many countries like North Sudan, Tanzania, and Lesotho, land ownership and control tends to go to the male head of the household. “In Zambia, women and men are allowed to acquire a registered land title, but customary land tenure is also recognized making it unlikely for a woman to be allocated land without the approval of her husband.”
Women make up more than two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults, and access to education is especially a problem in Afghanistan where groups that oppose female education attack many schools. Female rights are also compromised due to limited awareness of what they should be entitled to, which could only be remedied through greater access to education.
Works Cited
“Human Development Reports.” | Human Development Reports, hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii.
McCune, Emma. “10 Examples of Gender Inequality in the World.” BORGEN, 30 Nov. 2017, www.borgenmagazine.com/10-examples-gender-inequality-world/.
Ridgeway, Cecilia L. “How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World.” Scholars Strategy Network, scholars.org/brief/how-gender-inequality-persists-modern-world.
Photo by Daniel Kulinski
