PHA-Exchange> March 8: International Women's Day

[Claudio]

From: "Leela McCullough" <leela at healthnet.org>
> March 8: International Women's Day
> ----------------------------------
> 
>Yesterday was is International Women's Day. 
> Sydney Morning Herald
> c2005
> 
> There is not one country where women are truly equal with men,
> reports Cosima Marriner on International Women's Day.
> 
> Women have made great strides in recent years - increasing their
> numbers in parliaments, gaining on men in the pay stakes and be-
> coming more educated. The last big international study of gender
> equality, Progress of the World's Women, issued by the United
> Nations in 2002, found advances around the world, although the
> pace of change was too slow in many regions, especially sub-
> Saharan African countries struggling with poverty, conflict and
> the effects of HIV/AIDS.
> 
> Where are the best - and worst - places for women to live? The
> answer is not as obvious as it may seem. Despite their problems,
> at least 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have higher rates of
> women's parliamentary participation than countries such as
> France, Japan and the United States, the UN notes.
> 
> Few countries shine on many levels and in some categories there
> are surprising standouts, including Rwanda and Kenya. Nordic
> countries such as Sweden, Finland and Norway come closest to fe-
> male nirvana when judged by political representation, wages,
> health and family-friendly policies.
> 
> The worst countries for women to live in - by our standards at
> least - are likely to be poor and war-torn, or unsympathetic to
> women's rights, such as Saudi Arabia. But finding the faultlines
> is not as simple as plotting the borders between East and West.
> 
> The chasm between the haves and have-nots makes the US "shock-
> ing" for many women, says a University of Adelaide academic,
> Barbara Pocock. Low minimum wages (about $A6.50 an hour compared
> with $12.30 an hour in Australia), a welfare system aimed at
> pushing people back into work, expensive health care and the
> dominance of individual bargaining means many women are left on
> the outer.
> 
> In Australia, women are generally well educated and healthy,
> their wages are relatively close to men's and they have their
> rights enshrined in law. But academics warn the gains of the
> 1970s and '80s are starting to erode as women struggle to bal-
> ance work and family.
> 
> "We certainly have more [Australian] women in positions of power
> than we had, we have more women earning higher incomes and they
> are better educated," says the feminist Eva Cox, a senior lec-
> turer in humanities at the University of Technology, Sydney.
> "But we haven't changed our work culture nearly enough. On the
> numbers game we've done a lot better than we have on the power-
> shifting game."
> 
> POWER
> Rwanda is an unlikely bastion of female empowerment. But with
> women occupying 39 of the 80 seats in its national parliament,
> the war-torn nation boasts the highest proportion of female
> politicians anywhere in the world. Rwanda's gender balanced par-
> liament is due to two factors: a 30 per cent quota for women en-
> shrined in its constitution and a proportional representation
> system for elections.
> 
> Quotas and proportional representation are crucial if women are
> to increase their numbers in government, says Marian Sawer, pro-
> fessor of politics at the Australian National University. Quotas
> force parties to stand a certain number of female candidates.
> Proportional representation provides an incentive to put forward
> a balanced ticket to appeal to a range of voters.
> 
> Women in the Nordic countries have benefited from these two
> measures, making up 45 per cent of the Swedish parliament, 37.5
> per cent in Finland and 36 per cent in Norway, according to the
> Interparliamentary Union.
> 
> At the other end of the scale are the Gulf states and some Pa-
> cific nations. The parliaments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain
> and the United Arab Emirates have no female representatives. Nor
> do Tonga, Micronesia, Nauru or the Solomon Islands.
> 
> In recent decades Australian women steadily increased their rep-
> resentation in Federal Parliament, only to suffer a decline in
> last year's election when the proportion of female MPs dipped
> from 25.3 per cent to 24.7 per cent. Sawer attributes this to
> the Coalition's increasing move to the right, its aversion to
> quotas (unlike Labor, which has achieved a 35 per cent quota),
> and the adversarial nature of Westminster politics. Sawer be-
> lieves quotas are important if the sexes are to be equally rep-
> resented.
> 
> "It's important to ensure there are a range of perspectives rep-
> resented in Parliament ... It also raises the status of women in
> society in general," she says.
> 
> MONEY
> Nowhere on Earth can women expect pay equity, but Kenya comes
> closest. Kenyan women earn 10 per cent less than Kenyan men, the
> UN's 2004 Human Development Index says.
> 
> But this is probably due to the relatively small participation
> of women in the formal labour force in Kenya, says Pocock. This
> also explains the small wages gaps in Cambodia (where women earn
> 77 per cent of what men do), Ghana (75 per cent), and Tanzania
> (71 per cent).
> 
> An effective minimum wage is the key to narrowing the gap, says
> Pocock. Sweden has the second best female-to-male wage ratio, at
> 0.83. Australian women have the seventh smallest wages gap in
> the world, earning 71 per cent of the male wage.
> 
> The wages gap is widest where pay rates are unregulated, indi-
> vidual bargaining rights are minimal and immigrants with little
> protection make up a large proportion of workers. This includes
> Saudi Arabia, where women earn just 21 per cent of the male
> wage, Oman (22 per cent), Belize in Central America (24 per
> cent) and Peru (27 per cent).
> 
> How much women earn is partly dictated by their education level.
> Most countries have now achieved gender equality in secondary
> school education, according to the Progress of the World's Women
> report.
> 
> But in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia there are still far
> fewer girls in secondary school than boys. In Niger, Guinea, Mo-
> zambique, Burundi and Chad, fewer than 10 per cent of teenage
> girls are enrolled in high school.
> 
> FAMILY
> Many developed countries - including Australia - score poorly on
> child care, maternity leave and child benefits for women. A 2004
> OECD report found Turkey, Mexico and New Zealand were the only
> countries in the developed world with poorer family-friendly
> provisions than Australia. Scandinavian mothers receive the most
> support.
> 
> Australia, New Zealand and the US are among a handful of govern-
> ments that do not require women to be paid some form of mater-
> nity leave. In countries as diverse as Russia, Colombia, Laos
> and Morocco, the government foots the entire bill for three to
> six months of maternity leave. In other countries, including
> Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, employers must pay maternity
> leave benefits.
> 
> The Howard Government recently introduced lump sum baby care
> payment, which will eventually increase to $5000, but this is
> not genuine maternity leave, because it is paid to all mothers
> regardless of whether they return to work after the birth of
> their child or stay at home.
> 
> The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, blames the lack
> of maternity leave, affordable child care and flexible work-
> places for the slow growth in the number of Australian women in
> full-time work. In 1980, 27 per cent of Australian women were in
> full-time work. Despite a surge in female university graduates,
> that figure has increased only to 31 per cent today.
> 
> "Good child care is essential if you're going to increase the
> participation of women in the workforce," says Goward. "Women
> can't work without feeling confident their children are well
> looked after."
> 
> HEALTH
> So poor is their health that Zambian women can expect to live to
> only 32.5 years, Zimbabwean women to 33.5 and Sierra Leonean
> women to 35.6, according to the 2004 Human Development Index.
> The combined effect of civil wars, HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty
> shorten the lives of many African women and contribute to high
> maternal mortality rates.
> 
> Japanese women are likely to live nearly three times as long as
> African women, on average reaching their 85th birthday. Hong
> Kong women also live long lives (average age 82.7), as do those
> in Sweden (82.5), Australia (82) and Italy (81.9).
> 
> Women in disadvantaged social positions are twice as likely to
> suffer poor health, says a 2004 World Health Organisation re-
> port, because they are likely to be exposed to malnutrition,
> poor water supply and sanitation, unsafe sex, tobacco, drug and
> alcohol use, dangerous work and pollution.
> 
> Health is a key factor in rating women-friendly countries be-
> cause it is linked to education, wealth, employment and gender
> bias, says Dr Angela Taft, from the Public Health Association of
> Australia.
> 
> Under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were not allowed to be
> seen with a man who wasn't a family member. As there were no fe-
> male doctors, this meant they were unable to seek medical treat-
> ment. The suicide rate increased, as did the mortality and mor-
> bidity rate. In China and India, where there is cultural prefer-
> ence for sons, there are high rates of foeticide and infanti-
> cide.
> 
> SAFETY
> Although the UN rates the mistreatment of women as one of the
> three biggest problems hindering development, there is little
> internationally comparable data. Results from a UN survey are
> expected by the end of the year.
> 
> Among developed countries, Australia has a relatively high inci-
> dence of sexual assault. One per cent of women in Australia,
> Finland and Sweden reported having been sexually assaulted, com-
> pared with the 0.6 per cent international average, according to
> the UN's International Crime Victims survey 2000. Women in Ja-
> pan, Ireland, Poland and Portugal were least likely to have been
> sexually assaulted.
> 
> But Australian women were less likely to suffer domestic vio-
> lence than those in other countries. "Women in our country are
> well educated, and the legal system makes physical and sexual
> assault crimes," Taft says, noting the laws also need to be
> properly implemented.
> 
> Eight per cent have been physically assaulted by an intimate
> partner, according to the UN, compared with nearly half the
> Bangladeshi female population, 34 per cent in Egypt and 29 per
> cent in Canada.
> 
> Violence against women is rife in countries involved in civil
> wars. In Rwanda from April 1994 to April 1995, estimates of the
> number of women and girls raped range from 15,700 to more than
> 250,000, the UN says.
> 
> Domestic violence increases in countries at war. Women who live
> in male-oriented societies are also more vulnerable. The first
> sexual experience of many girls is often unwanted and forced.
> 
> Gender mutilation and child marriages are common in some coun-
> tries, and hundreds of thousands of girls are bought and sold
> into prostitution or sexual slavery every year, according to a
> WHO report on violence and health.
> 
> "In countries where women are legislatively and culturally infe-
> rior, the rate of violence against women is much higher," Taft
> says.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>