Philippines ranks sixth in bridging gender gap

OSLO, Norway – The Philippines ranked sixth and joined Nordic countries in besting 130 states in bridging the gap between men and women, the World Economic Forum’s said in its Global Gender Gap Report 2008 released Wednesday. Norway ranked No. 1, followed by Finland, Sweden, and Iceland in the Report’s Gender Gap Index. Denmark, another Nordic country, took the seventh place while New Zealand placed fifth. Previously higher ranking countries such as Germany (11), United Kingdom (13) and Spain (17) slipped down the Index but stayed in the top 20, while Netherlands (9), Latvia (10), Sri Lanka (12) and France (15) made significant gains in both economic participation and political empowerment. Switzerland’s (14) advancement up the rankings was based on large increases in the percentage of women in parliament and those in ministerial-level positions. The report is based on the innovative new methodology introduced in 2006 and included detailed profiles that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap in each country. It measured the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. “Greater representation of women in senior leadership positions within governments and financial institutions is vital not only to find solutions to the current economic turmoil, but to stave off such crises in future. At the World Economic Forum, we put strong emphasis on addressing this challenge with a multi-stakeholder approach through our global and regional Gender Parity Groups," said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. “These communities of highly influential leaders from business, politics, academia, media and civil society – 50% women and 50% men – seek to share best practices and identify the most effective strategies to optimize the use of talent," he added. According to Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University, “The Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities." “Our work shows a strong correlation between competitiveness and the gender gap scores. While this does not imply causality, the possible theoretical underpinnings of this link are clear: countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women, in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right," added Laura Tyson, professor of business administration and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. “The Report reveals that progress is not only possible, but possible in a relatively short space of time: calculating the Index as far back as data would allow, we found that countries such as Chile, Spain, Turkey and Finland have closed between 5 and 10 percentage points of their respective gender gaps over just the past eight years. When we interpret these percentage changes at the societal level, we see that hundreds of thousands of lives are impacted, and at the economic level, we see enormous potential competitiveness gains," said Saadia Zahidi, Head of Constituents at the World Economic Forum. Featuring a total of 130 countries, this year’s Report provided an insight into the gaps between women and men in over 92% of the world’s population. Coverage has been expanded this year to include Barbados and Brunei Darussalam, all current and candidate European Union countries, 23 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 from sub-Saharan Africa, over 20 from Asia and 15 from the Middle East and North Africa. Based on the report, 13 out of the 14 variables used to create the Index are from publicly available “hard data" indicators from international organizations, such as the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Development Program and the World Health Organization. - GMANews.TV