2023-10-15 06:02:25
There are repeated topics that we cannot avoid, such as the gender gap and how long it will take until it disappears. Although what interests us most is what and how to do to close it or accelerate its elimination. On Sunday, in the Ideas section, in politics of the newspaper PERFIL, the note “The world is 132 years away from closing the gender gap” drew attention, written by a man who adds attention. It is very clear and highlights a finding that is repeated year following year and that seems to quickly fall into oblivion. The note indicates that the 2022 Global Gender Gap Report of the World Economic Forum – WEF – was published. This study, which has been published annually since 2006, refers to the situation in 142 countries in the world, around 75% of the countries recognized by the United Nations. Analyzes and compares the situation in relation to four variables: economic opportunity and participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. This year the delay in closing or disappearing the gender gap decreased by four years. In 2022, the gap is 68.1% and we will need 132 years to close it. The greatest progress was in health and survival, where the gap is 95.8% despite the pandemic. Education follows closely with 94.4%, while economic participation falls to 60.3% and political empowerment reaches just 22%. As these are averages, this hides the large differences; However, it clearly shows that where it is even more difficult to move towards equality is in political participation, where women continue to face significant difficulties.
It is interesting to consider how the country is in this framework. Despite what we might assume, we are not so bad: we achieved 75.6%, and what is striking is that in the “educational achievement” component it is in which we seem to have closed the gap and in “political empowerment” we achieved 41.3%. Economically we are not doing well since the gap is 44%. As we said before, these are average values that barely measure the differences and these are the ones that interest us since they denote the variations within a country, which in our case are very large. The vast majority of us are not reassured by this 100% in education, firstly because, in general, women complete more years of study than men. But in what areas or branches? If we consider university graduates, women are overrepresented in low-productivity professions and with lower salaries than men, who are more present in high-productivity ones. The much lower presence of women in engineering and mathematics and technology careers, that is, in STEM, is where our difference lies. That is why parity, without this analysis of what areas and topics and with what individual and collective productive capacity, does not have great value. But also, now the decline and deterioration of primary and secondary education that extends to university education is something that should concern us and gives us indications that this current parity may be maintained, but it will not really improve; we need not only years of schooling but also quality of schooling. This is what should concern us the most and what we do not see is given the importance it should have to work on improvement. And in this it is not only the gender gap that should concern us but also the geographical and socioeconomic gap. The difference between the quality of education received by girls and boys from the upper sectors in relation to the lower ones on the economic scale is very wide and leaves a gap in the educational achievement of a few in relation to the vast majority. This is serious because of what it implies at an individual level, but also at a social level. We will be an impoverished country due to the low capacity of our people.
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