The Women Gap

 

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International Women’s Day (IWD) is observed every March 8 and is, according to the UN, a “time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women” in the quest to achieve gender equality, and women’s empowerment and rights.

Yet, last year the World Economic Forum estimated that economic and social progress is inching along so slowly that the global gender gap would not close for another century until around 2133. The gender gap is measured by looking at disparities between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economics and politics.

 

I have no doubt this glacial pace influenced this year’s IWD theme, Pledge for Parity. Also marking the day is UN Women with their more temporally optimistic theme Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it Up for Gender Equality. The point remains the same. As IWD says, it’s time to move 'from talk to purposeful action'.

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But it would seem we’re still not walking our talk.

 

A hullabaloo broke out when the McKinsey Global Institute produced research claiming that if Country A copied its best neighbouring country (Country B) in terms of what Country B is doing for gender equality, a staggering US$12 trillion could be added to annual global GDP by 2025. And that’s the base case scenario. If women played a fully equal part to men in labour markets that figure could rise to US$28 trillion.

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Representation, Retirement and Violence

 

Peculiar discrepancies remain. It is distressing to realize that in 1997 Vietnam was one of the top 10 countries in the world for women’s political representation and has now fallen to 44th. This prompted the UNDP and the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) to make a short film highlighting the fact that only 24% of elected positions are held by women.

 

To combat this steady two-decade decline in women’s participation in the Vietnamese National Assembly, the government has set a target of 35 percent for women’s representation during this year’s election cycle. The simple truth is that women in government raise issues that directly affect women, and they do it more often than their male counterparts do.

 

Another discrepancy in Vietnam is the age of retirement for women: 55 for women and 60 for men. This continues to have a negative impact on women’s family planning, earning potential and career advancement.

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Some positive impact has been delivered with legal frameworks to tackle violence against women and is enshrined in equality and domestic violence laws. But abuse against women remains a troubling issue. Vietnam mirrors global statistics on the number of women—34 percent or one in three—who will experience gender-based violence (typically at the hands of an intimate partner) in her lifetime.

 

In my conversations with other gender specialists they say the issue is exacerbated by a lack of emergency and residential shelters for women and their children trying to escape abuse. Practitioners agree there are also ongoing legal and cultural challenges to bringing charges against perpetrators.

 

Vietnam has made progress towards economic empowerment for women and in areas such as reproductive health and rights, and access to education. This is to be celebrated. However, there is more work to be done, and now.

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Or as that UNDP film says, “We can’t plan our future with only one brain, a man’s brain.”

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Photo: Woman in red shawl / pixabay.com

 

This article originally appeared in Word Vietnam magazine and has been adapted. To view the magazine’s online version click here.

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