Gender and World Politics

How do we measure the status of women in any given

country?
Does women’s status reflect the socio-
political situation of any given country?
Two good measures:
Gender –Related Development Index (GDI)
And
Gender empowerment measure (GEM)
Both look at the how women fare in 146 countries
(ostensibly, not always data available)

GDI: composite indicator made up of 4 other indicators:

1. Female life expectancy at birth compared to male
2. Female adult literacy compared to male
3. Female school enrollment compared to male
4. Female estimated earned income compared to male
GEM: also a composite indicator that measures gender
inequality in terms of:

1. women’s and men’s percentage shares of seats in legislature

2. Female legislators, senior officials and managers as a % of
total
3. Female professional and technical workers as a % of total
4. Women’s and men’s estimated earned income
Level of gender equality not always dependent on national
income
Ex: Poland ranks 39th in the GEM
Japan ranks 54th
Despite the fact that income per person in Poland
($13,847) is less than half of that in Japan’s ($31,267)

EX: U.K. ($33,238 ) and Finland ($32,153 ) have

similar income per person, but Finland ranks 3rd in the
GEM, while the U.K. ranks 14th
GEM:
1. Norway 57. China
2. Sweden 87. Iran
15. U.S. 92. Saudi Arabia
16.Singapore
17. Argentina
34.Czech Republic
44. Tanzania
56. Venezuela
What aspects of modernity lend themselves to women’s
rights?
But:

Gender Development Ranking (and human development

ranking) fall as some countries enter the global economy
(modernize)
1995 2001 2005
Guatemala 87 98 103
Nicaragua 73 95 98
El Salvador 76 87 91
Women’s rights change with regimes:
Before the Taliban, Afghan women could vote and were the
majority of the country’s teachers
In the former Soviet Union, women earned 70% of male
wages
Currently in Russia, women earn 40% of male wages

In Nicaragua, women activists say the

election of the first woman president,
Violeta Chamorro, actually hurt women’s
status
One of the last bastions of traditionalism in West has to do
with gender roles
Most obvious sources of backlash against women’s rights can
be found in countries where modernity is seen as threatening
Ex: Afghanistan under the Taliban (again).
Iran and the Khomeini revolution
“Rail as they will about
'discrimination,' women are
simply not endowed by nature
with the same measures of single-
minded ambition and the will to
succeed in the fiercely
competitive world of Western
capitalism." My buddy Pat

"The real liberators of American women were not the

feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the
supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the
washer-dryer, the freezer."
“Feminism is doomed to failure because it is
based on an attempt to repeal and restructure
human nature.”
“Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem
for virtuous women.”
“When will American men learn how to stand
up to the nagging by the intolerant, uncivil
feminists whose sport is to humiliate men?”
-- Phyllis Schlafly
"Back in the prelapsarian fifties, women worked if they
happened to fall into the .01 percent of the population who are
able to have interesting jobs or they retired in their twenties to
raise children and, incidentally, do what all serious people
would like to do anyway -- be a dilettante in many subjects.
As far as I'm concerned this was a division of labor nothing
short of perfect. Men worked and women didn't. So when our
benefactors come under attack as "patriarchs" and
"oppressors," I realize, someone has to put in a kind word for
the oppressors. For cocktails alone, I figure I owe the male
population several thousand dollars. So I will be the one to
step forward and say: To the extent one gender is oppressing
the other, it's not women who should be complaining."
--Ann Coulter
Is there a place for changing gender politics in other
countries as well as our own?

Would the practices that hurt women change if more

women were in power?
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, first
elected female head of state,
1960, Sri Lanka. She held
office for three terms. Her
daughter would later also
become Prime Minister
Muslim State Leaders

Khaleda Zia, C. Sheikh Hasina

Benazir Bhutto,
Prime Minister of Wajed, Prime
Prime Minister of
Bangladesh from Minister of
Pakistan from 1988
1991 to 1996. Bangladesh,
to 1990, and again
1996-2002.
from 19 Oct 1993 to
5 Nov 1996. Megawati
Setiawati
Tansu Çiller, Sukarnoputri,
Prime Minister of President of
Turkey from 1993 Indonesia from
to 1996. 2001 to 2004.
 Current Women Leaders around the World

1997- President Mary

McAleese, Ireland, 2000-President Tarja Halonen,
Finland, moderate left
centrist
2001 -President
Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo, Philippines,
centrist (no defined
ideology, accused of
1999-Prime Minister Helen Clark, corruption)
New Zealand, center-left
 2004-Prime Minister Luísa Días
Diogo, Moçambique, center-right

2005-Federal Chancellor Angela

Merkel, Germany, moderate right

2006-Executive President Ellen

Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia,
centrist

2006-President Michelle Bachelet Jeria, Chile,

moderate left
Newest Members of the “club”:

2007- Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko,

Ukraine, centrist

2007- President Pratibha Patil, India,

moderate left

2007- Executive President Cristina E.

Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina,
moderate left
 2008- Prime Minister Zinaida Grecianii,
Moldova, communist (in name at least)

2008- Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis,

Haiti, moderate left