Study in Equality

According to the Gender Gap Report, released by the World Economic Forum, Germany successfully narrowed its gender gap from a year ago. But because other countries made even greater progress, Germany's overall ranking dropped, from fifth place to seventh.

The WEF study measures international gender equality by looking at four key areas: women's economic participation in society; their levels of health and education; and their political empowerment. Economist Saadia Zahidi, one of the authors of the report, noted that while Germany's lowest rating was in the area of economic participation, "its scores make it a high-ranking country compared to others, particularly in Europe."

As in 2006, the top-most ranks were swept by a brace of Scandinavian nations. But Germany "is actually doing much better in comparison to other countries, especially countries like Italy, France or Malta," which fell much lower down in the rankings overall, Zahidi said.

DW-WORLD.DE spoke with Zahidi about the purpose, and potential pitfalls, of carrying out a sweeping gender study.

DW-WORLD.DE: The concept of a gender gap report is a fairly new one. Can you explain its purpose?

Saadia Zahidi: The Global Gender Gap Index tries to examine the gap between women and men in various areas. It is looking at gaps, rather than levels.

For example having an index that tells a country like Bangladesh that it has lower levels of education than Sweden is not very useful, they already know that. They're a poor country. What this index tries to answer is, for example, whether Bangladesh has a bigger gap on education than a comparable country such as Pakistan.

Everything we do is rewarding parity. It is not rewarding women's supremacy over men, or men's supremacy over women. It is rewarding countries that aim to distribute their resources equally between women and men.

So how does one measure parity?

A key feature of the index is that it has a fixed scale, with "zero" being inequality, and "one" being equality. A score of 0.75 can be approximately interpreted as meaning, 75 percent of the gap in that country has been closed. It is all relative to a benchmark, which is the number "one." It allows us to track the changes over time.

Statistical data is notoriously slippery. Do you think your report gives an accurate picture of the state of gender equality in the world?

The report is actually based on 14 different variables, 13 of which come from hard data sources, like the United Nations Development Program, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization. This is all hard statistics, which simply look at things such as labor force participation rates, or the number of women ministers, or literacy rates.

All we have done is provide a framework that allows us to look at these hard facts in such a way that gives you an idea of where this country stands in terms of gap, compared to other countries in the world. So yes, I think it does provide an accurate picture.

Why gather this information? Who uses it?

We've tried to make it something that is going to be useful for general awareness, and we believe the rankings will help do that. But because we've provided a lot of details, it is also a reference tool for international organizations and national governments.

It has also become a catalyst for academic research. Quite a lot of academics contact us for details from the index, wondering about the connections between certain policies and their outcomes.

Germany ranked seventh overall this year, and scored relatively well in terms of economic participation. But newspapers here are full of articles about glass ceilings, a stubborn wage gap, and social education practices that make it hard for mothers to re-enter the work force. How does that add up?

In our study we look at the overall workplace participation rate. In the global statistics, it appears Germany is doing well in terms of labor force participation of women, whereas Italy and France are not doing as well.

How many women actually go back into the workplace after having children isn't something we include in the index. But we do provide information on the length of paid maternity leave, which is 14 weeks in Germany, and the maternity benefits, which is that the wages are 100 percent paid, partly by social security up to a certain level, and the rest by the employer.

How meaningful is this kind of measurement? The Philippines, where women's situation is not usually thought of as being very good, was ranked sixth -- right above Germany.

That goes back to what I said earlier: The index looks at gaps, not levels. So we're not worried about what is the overall level of resources in the Philippines compared to that in the United Kingdom. What we do show is that relatively speaking, those resources are being divided more equitably in the Philippines as compared to in the UK. … As to whether this is meaningful, it may not be -- except to be a striking example of how this could be a priority for all countries, whether rich or poor.

Are the relative wealth or poverty of the 128 countries you include reflected in the study?

What we have done is divide rankings by income groups; low income compared to low income countries, high income to high income. … We find that within each of these income groups there are countries that perform very well, and others that perform poorly.

In the high income group, for example, Sweden does extremely well, but Saudi Arabia does very poorly. Or in the lower and lower-middle group, there are countries like Philippines and Tanzania that do very well, but also countries like Pakistan and Yemen that do badly.

It all goes a long way toward showing that gender equality is not a luxury good, and that it is something all countries can aspire towards.

Do most countries see gender equality as an ideal to be strived for?

That is one of the key messages we are trying to spread with this report. Clearly this is a human rights challenge, but it is also an economic challenge. Countries that are not capitalizing on half of their resource pool will be undermining their competitive potential in the long run. This is definitely one of the key messages we highlight in this report.