By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-11-15 07:11

There has not been much introspection worldwide over the 2007 Global Gender Gap Report, released last week by the independent World Economic Forum, as far as a browse of the Internet reveals.

The authors of the report studied what they considered the "four critical areas of inequality between men and women", namely, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.

According to the authors, they looked closely at the gaps between men and women in each country and ranked a total of 128 countries according to gender equality or inequality instead of the level of economic development and advancement of women in those countries.

Economic development does make a difference, since the four Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland occupy the top four places.

However, Japan ranks 91st in the overall gender gap index, even though it is the second largest economy in the world with its literary rate, school enrollment in primary and secondary education, and healthy life expectancy ranking first in each category.

In fact, in the parameter for economic participation and opportunity, Japan is placed 97th, with a wider disparity than Mozambique, which ranks first in this category.

Among the few who have given serious thought about the index, a writer from the Financial Express of India did a detailed analysis on India's ranking of 114th.

I admire the author's straight-forwardness as she did not shy away from the fact that India was placed among the bottom 10. India should have been proud of its political empowerment of women as it ranks 21st in that category. The second populous country in the world has 106 women in its parliament and 118 in ministerial positions.

India's overall position was dragged down by the measure of economic participation, especially in wage equality, where the parity between men and women is perhaps most pronounced in India.

China's profile also shows that economic development does not naturally ensure equality between men and women. Despite its overall economic boom, its ranking is 73. The Philippines tops all the Asian countries.

China seems to have done well as far as labor force participation is concerned and even the income disparity between men and women is smaller than that of Japan, the Philippines, the United States and Russia.

But the achievement cannot overshadow the wider gender gap in China in the parameters of political participation, the survival rate of infant girls, the literary rate or even secondary education.

In China there are still more girls who drop out of secondary schools than boys, mostly out of poverty.

The most serious problem China still faces is the disproportionate sex ratio at birth, and many professionals have raised questions about the "missing girls", or "missing women".

What is more disconcerting is that people have somehow grown tired of the outcry for gender equality. As a result, despite various findings and even laws to forbid discrimination against women, the problem of gender inequality in China remains persistent.

Some laws even still contain clauses that maintain the gender gap between men and women. For instance, the regulation on retirement age of State employees stipulates that women retire at the age of 50 while men at the age of 60. Such a disparity has forced a lot more women to retire when they are still in their prime.

The path to women's overall empowerment will remain long and tortuous.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/15/2007 page10)