GLOBAL GENDER GAP REPORT l: INEQUALITY= EQUALITY !!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: mensnewsdaily
Sunday, November 1, 2009
By Robert Franklin, Esq.

To read the Global Gender Gap Report for 2009 is to enter a truly Orwellian world (WEForum, 2009). (And please note that I don't like the word "Orwellian" because it's overused. But the GGG Report is Orwellian as I will soon make clear.)

The Global Gender Gap Report is a publication of the World Economic Forum which is based in Geneva. However neutral its title, the Report's authors have no intention of impartially informing us about relative gender disparities around the world. As Canadian journalist Barbara Kay has said in another context, "when [they] say 'gender' they mean 'women's interests.' Just so.

Indeed, read the Global Gender Gap Report from cover to cover and, apart from being terminally bored, one would never guess that men or boys suffer unequal treatment or outcomes anywhere on earth. And that's because, in the Report, anti-male inequality is simply defined out of existence.

Here's how they do it. The Report uses four categories to determine the relative gender "equality" score for particular countries or regions - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. Each of those categories is then broken down into subcategories and each subcategory is weighted. For example, the education category has subcategories for percentage of males and females in primary school, secondary school and tertiary school, and literacy among males and females.

Each category is scored on a 0 - 1 basis with '0' signifying total inequality and '1' signifying complete equality of the sexes in that category. Categories are then combined to give an overall score for each country. The closer to 1 then, the better, at least according to the authors.

But there's a slight problem with that (actually there are several). Any score under 1 signifies not simply gender inequality, but specifically anti-female inequality. So obviously, any score over 1 signifies anti-male inequality, right? Wrong. There are no scores over 1. You see, according to the Global Gender Gap Report, any time a nation favors men, it's called gender inequality, which is bad, and any time a nation favors women it's called "equality" which "from a values and social justice perspective... is long overdue."

In short, anti-male inequality is specifically defined as equality. In the world in which the authors live, there's anti-female inequality, equality and nothing else. That's why I used the word 'Orwellian.'

Here's an example. Turn to page 184 which is where the figures for the United States are to be found. Under "Educational Attainment," we see the four subcategories I mentioned previously. Men and women are equal in the literacy subcategory, but in each of the other three - primary, secondary and tertiary education - there is a higher percentage of girls and women than boys and men. So clearly, according to the criteria laid down by the Report, girls and women do better than boys and men in education in the United States. Ergo, the country's score in this category is 1 which signifies "equality." Inequality equals equality. See how it works?

According to that scoring methodology, if a nation sent only girls to school and denied boys any form of education at all, male and female education would be considered equal. That nation would receive the coveted score of 1.

Now, I know I don't have to point out the obvious, but I will anyway: scoring the way the Report does totally misrepresents the relative equality or inequality of the sexes. It's like a basketball game between a girl's team and a boy's team in which each basket scored by a girl counts two points and each by a boy counts zero. The final score won't tell you much about which is the better team.

When anti-female bias counts for something and anti-male bias counts for nothing, don't be surprised when not a single nation is found to be gender equal. And that of course is precisely what the Global Gender Gap Report finds. How could it be otherwise?

I'll do more on the Global Gender Gap Report soon.

Thanks to Greg for the heads-up.