Gender Inequality
Gender inequality appears when women are not treated equally as men due to their gender. The discriminatory acts lead to the suffering of women in both their private and public life. The number of women in proportion to men in different fields is not equal. Gender inequality in the economy is mainly found at the workplace where women are not paid equally as men, may be subjected to sexual harassment, and are prone to suffering from distinctive behavior that differentiates them from men. Gender inequality also exists in politics given the deficit political participation of women worldwide. The unequal social involvement of women and men in a number of aspects of the society appears in the unequal distribution of power between them and in the disproportionate ownership of assets.
Women have globally less chances of economic participation than men, limited access to higher education, higher health and safety risks, as well as poor political representation. Unfortunately, women are systematically under-represented in the decision-making processes despite the great influence decision making has on their ability to lead independent lives. Women in the Middle East and South Africa suffer from significantly higher discrimination compared to other global regions. For instance, as of 2018, women represented only 5% of the Lebanese parliament. While this reflects a severely deficient representation of women in the political sector, it also reveals the presence of barriers perhaps cultural, social and even legal that women encounter while living in a rather patriarchal society. Such a patriarchal society fosters the perception that women are less qualified and less competent than men and thus women are more prone to gender inequalities than men. The patterns of gender inequality represent a constraint to the society’s progress as they limit the opportunities of growth for a huge portion of the population, and must therefore be treated with uttermost concern. The establishment of women empowerment movements came into place due to the various challenges faced by women and the struggles they suffer from when intending to equally participate as men in the economy, the political life and the social life.
Furthermore, there are a set of barriers that deprive women from equally engaging in different fields. The women empowerment movements in which women strive to share equal opportunities with men represent a major worldwide issue. It is extremely important to highlight the effect of gender equality on the overall well-being of the economy and on the prosperity of the growth in the country.
Underrepresentation of Females in the Workplace in Lebanon
Meet Zeina, a fresh software engineer graduate from the American University of Beirut. Thrilled and excited to embark onto a new chapter in her life, Zeina started her job-hunting journey.
However !!!
“Your profile and skills match perfectly well the requirements of the job position, but female graduates might not be able to handle the pressure of such a position given that they are sensitive and fragile”
Extremely disappointed and frustrated from what she heard from several different employers, Zeina was then aware of how gender stereotypes infuse into the workplace and lead to gender imbalance in the economic life in her country, Lebanon.
Given the above, Zeina was intrigued to investigate the phenomenon of the underrepresentation of females in the workplace in Lebanon and constructed the below storyline to explain this issue in numbers. The first two visualizations in the storyline show the following:1) The employment gap between both genders in Lebanon since the 1990s
2) One of the reasons behind the gender imbalance in the workplace: The unequal time spent by both genders on domestic and care work
Zeina was also interested in examining whether there has been any recent improvement in relation to women’s status in the Lebanese society, so she constructed a third visual showing:
3) There is a similar behavior between the Women, Business, and the Law index, which is a measure of gender laws and regulations that take into consideration women’s economic and social opportunities, and some female employment indicators, such as ratio of female to male labor force participation rate, proportion of seats held by women in national parliament, and the % of female employed in services.
You can find below Zeina’s storyline entitled “Underrepresentation of Females in the Workplace in Lebanon”
Mom Education for Infants’ Survival – Sub Saharan Africa
“When you carry a life and it’s there, and then gone, a part of your soul dies. Forever”. Casey Wiegano
Yes, I’m a mom, and just thinking about it for a fraction of a second breaks my heart! Unfortunately, Sub-Saharan countries along with some South Asian countries which are highlighted with darker blue in the map whiteness the highest infant mortality rates. In Sub-Saharan countries ,on average, 68 infants die in every 1000 births and this rate is the second highest among the classified regions (second graph)
From the bottom graphs, we can see that there is a high correlation between the average adolescents fertility rates and the female adolescents who are out of school. On the other hand, a correlation exists between the adolescents fertility rate and the mortality rate of infants.The highest rates are also observed in Sub-Saharan countries (darker blue).
Putting these observations into one sentence, we can infer that the more adolescent females that are out of school the more likely they are to give birth to infants that have higher chances of dying.
As such, female students in Sub-Saharan countries should be empowered. They should be encouraged to continue their education aiming to lower their fertility rates and indirectly lower infants mortality rates. With no doubt, many other factors should be considered such as improving healthcare systems for both, moms and children.