Data Visualization

Blog of the Data Visualization & Communication Course at OSB-AUB

“This is my favorite part about analytics: Taking boring flat data and bringing it to life through visualization” John Tukey

Gender Inequality in India

by | Apr 15, 2022 | Visualization

in 2015, the United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. One of those goals is gender equality (i.e., goal #5).

Gender Inequality has been an imperative social issue in India for centuries. India lags behind when it comes to education for women, and this lag hinders a woman’s role in their society. Some symptoms of the problem are:

  • The role of women living in a traditional Indian society is to look after the home and children which requires no schooling.
  • The Indian society is organized in a way that it is patriarchal i.e., it revolves around the male and the female occupies a negligible role. The sons are considered as assets whereas the daughters are considered as liabilities
  • If the family is living in poverty, then the female child is tasked with household chores and taking care of her siblings. Thus, no time nor money is spent on the female child’s education
  • If a woman is able to earn money after receiving education, then there is a concern that she will hurt the male ego due to her independence.

According to the above bar chart, the literacy rate of Indian women as a percentage of the total population of women in India in the year 1981 was found to be approximately 25.68%. However, India did not remain idle when faced with such a conundrum.  In 2009, they implemented a program called the Saakshar Bharat program that aims to promote and strengthen adult learning, reaching out to those who missed the opportunity to access or complete formal education as well as basic literacy/education. This program involves the government of India acting as a facilitator and resource provider while simultaneously working closely with many local communities in order to design educational programs tailor-made to their specific needs. After the implementation of the program, the literacy rate among Indian women reached 65.78% in 2018.

This result alone proves that the program has been successful in eliciting change for Indian women via education. Therefore, the Indian government should continue offering the program and invest more funds into it to target more local communities within the region.

 

Underrepresentation of Females in the Workplace in Lebanon

Underrepresentation of Females in the Workplace in Lebanon

by | Nov 24, 2021 | Visualization

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”

Women Still Justify Husband’s Beating

Women Still Justify Husband’s Beating

by | May 5, 2021 | Dashboard, Visualization

Women all around the world are constantly fighting for their rights, whether to earn an equal wage, to be educated, or simply to live free from violence and discrimination. But many women and girls are still unaware of their rights and some are even justifying the husband’s beating.