The following is an excerpt from the article written by Miren Gutiérrez for the Inter Press News Service Agency:
“Do you think a man could ever be president?” the little boy in Ireland asks his mother. All his life he has only seen women presidents, currently Mary McAleese. Joanne Sandler, deputy executive director for programmes at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), tells this little anecdote to show that in some places it can be routine for women to be found in leadership roles.
“In places like Ireland and Finland it is becoming less extraordinary to see a woman in power,” says Sandler. And it is this kind of female power that could bring more women into leadership, she says. “When you see women in positions of power, in ministries, obviously the self-image of girls changes, and they envision themselves in those places. But that kind of change will take a very long time, though it has started,” she adds.
The change does not necessarily correspond to a nation’s level of economic development. Italy ranks 84 in the latest Gender Gap Index (GGI) of the World Economic Forum, where the number one marks the smallest gap. That places it behind Bolivia (80), Peru (75) or Armenia (70), even though it is among the world’s biggest economies. Panama is number 38 among 128 countries surveyed, while Liberia with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as president is not ranked. Sri Lanka is ranked 15, the United States 31, Argentina 33, Mongolia 62, Indonesia 81, Nicaragua 90 and Bangladesh 100. The Philippines fares extraordinarily well at number six, after Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand. Pakistan ranks 126, with the biggest gap only after Yemen (128) and Chad (127).
Like national wealth, personal wealth is not an essential pre-requisite. “There is not a relationship between more money and less gender discrimination,” says Sandler. “Money and power have an influence in those women achieving power. But money alone doesn’t explain it.
“Look at the elections in Liberia. A woman who has education, a former employee of the World Bank and the U.N., with an impressive resume, against a man who had no high school education, a soccer player (George Weah). Imagine the opposite: against a man with Johnson-Sirleaf’s background, would a woman with Weah’s credentials be a serious contender? To be a contender for high level political office, women have to bring a lot of extra qualities in order to get into the race. They need the same things as a man, plus others.”
Ayesha Kajee, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs and board member of Transparency International’s South Africa chapter, says “money is most certainly a partial equaliser for women, in terms of access — access to education, capital, property and opportunity. But even amongst wealthy elites, men tend to wield considerably more power than women. Thus, wealth does not guarantee equity between men and women.”
Supposedly developed societies which continue to operate under highly patriarchal and authoritarian family and leadership structures can on the other hand “institute policies that result in institutionalised and societal antipathy towards empowering women,” Kajee says. “Women themselves in these societies are often tacitly complicit in the latter, because they have been socialised to think that access to power is undesirable, unfeminine or irreligious.”
“There is a relationship (between gender and development), but change happens for many different reasons,” says Sandler. “We observed in the 2002 edition of the Progress of the World’s Women, looking at political participation, that as you empower women, you can for example legislate a quota without so much cost, that positive action is not so costly.
“If you look at those countries that have achieved or surpassed the 30 percent representation in parliament, they all have some sort of positive action. In that regard it is not a north-south issue or a question of level of development; it is about political will, and it can be independent of human development.” That would explain why countries like the Philippines rank so high in the GGI.
It is some systems that favour gender empowerment more than others that can make a difference, says Kajee. “In purely electoral terms, PR (proportional representation) systems have been much more successful than FTPT (first-past-the-post or simple majority vote) systems in encouraging and opening up access to women’s political participation.
“Countries that are economically underdeveloped but have prioritised girl child education or access to market opportunities for women, or that have legislative or traditional norms that encourage women to grasp opportunities, may be reaping the benefits of such policies in increased female leadership in political and corporate life,” she says.
Read the entire story here. You can also look at a sample of the Global Gender Gap Index for 2007 here.
