NEWS: You\'ve Come a Long Way, Baby. Or Not.

CULTURE: You've Come a Long Way, Baby. Or Not.

Check out the World Economic Forum's new Global Gender Gap Report.

Using categories like "Economic Participation and Opportunity," "Educational attainment," "Political Empowerment," and "Health and Survival"--pretty basic shit, right?--the United States ranks thirty-first. Countries that outrank us include not just Sweden and Norway (duh), but the Phillipines, Moldova, Cuba, Belarus, Columbia, Bulgaria, Lesotha, Costa Rica, Namibia, and Estonia.

We're *fourteenth* in Economic Participation and Opportunity, Seventy-sixth in Educational Attainment, *thirty-sixth* in Health and Survival, and sixty-fucking-ninth in Political Empowerment.

Wonder how much that last one affects the others. Hmmmmm.

And I quote:

Indeed,

Why are we so far behind, oh, say, Lesotha? Because

Let's translate that. Yeah, the U.S. is a rich country. We've got a lot of resources. We do not divide those resources equitably between women and men. (Nor between whites and people of color, the rich and the poor, those who inherent money and those who earn it, etc.)

Not only aren't we fucking keeping up, we've actually dropped in the rankings. As Broadsheet points out,

If you get complacent--hey, women have jobs! Sexism must be over!--you fall behind, Mr. Hare.

Broadsheet takes the opportunity to be skeptical about Hillary Clinton, damn their hides. And while yes, obviously electing Clinton, if it happens, isn't magically going to make women in this country equal, arguing that one woman won't change everything--with the unstated implication that hey, why vote for her then?--is part of the complacency I'm talking about.

No, having a few women "make it" doesn't necessarily change the overall system. And having women at the top doesn't mean that those same women will advocate for such changes--after all, women, just like men, are likely to value the systems that worked for them. And no, not voting for Clinton doesn't mean you're not a feminist, and it doesn't mean that you're not working for equality in other, perhaps better ways. (But not putting women's issues front and center in who you *do* choose to vote for does.)

You gotta have a thick shell and a stubbornly slow but steady approach to keep bashing away at this stuff. But sooner or later, the tortoise is gonna win.

Bitch_PhD suggests that we just have all married men change jobs with their wives, all single men change jobs with their girlfriends, all male politicians step down, and all boys wear their hair long while all girls get signed up for sports. Let's try that for ten years, and see what happens.

Agreed.

...Umm, editor? Hello?

-TM

I'd be glad to trade my job with anyone...anywhere...I am just a damn idiot trying to hold on and provide for my family in a dead end work my ass off job....would trade jobs with my wife, but I love her too much to do that to her...of course I would feel bad putting a cockroach into my position...but I hear they survive ANYTHING....
Now for something relevant...I would love to see everyone treated equally....but it just isn't happening....we just need to figure out the who and why, and just try and fix it....
And meanwhile, I am killing myself at work, working 65+ hours a week...and my wife isn't doing much better working 40 hours a week on overnights....and we are still trying to raise 2 kids.....HELP

ohh!! your politicians suck! mine too

Umm, what's your point? Hello?

Wow, try to point out some typos in the article that got past the editor so they can get fixed, and you find a way to endear yourself to the masses by being a sarcastic little prick. Way to go, champ. You just keep on reaching for that star.

-TM

What about us single guys with no girlfriends, and who DID have long hair for about 10 years... do we get to keep our jobs?

we continue to drink ourselves into oblivion to dull the emotion of loneliness and the fact that we're going to work until we're dead all while not being loved.

That'd be awesome.

As a male with a college education and ten years of resume-quality experience who is currently in a minimum wage job with no benefits and no insurance, I can agree that there's plenty of unfairness to go around. Statistics don't win hearts and minds, though.

Um ... I'm assuming you mean 'Lesotho'?

im not voting for hillary clinton because i dont agree with a lot of her political opinions. i wish the first seriously considered female candidate had been...well, better.

edit: this was only sort of relevant. sorry.

Fuck it. I'll be a stripper and grow my hair out again.

-D

got it. thanks for the heads up. long day

right on! The Mountain Kingdom needs some good press

What about single fathers without girlfriends?

Apart from that, good idea.

What's interesting about the survey is that the two main metrics the US is deficient on have a potentially flawed basis.

The data on most everything is from World Bank or other reputable source (UNESCO), but the data on male/female pay disparity was cited as "World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey 2007", so they constructed their own survey, and distributed it, which depending on how they did it, could introduce major bias.

And as for the political participation, they just did a ratio of female to men at the parliamentary level and ministerial level, and also used the percentage of the last 50 years that had female vs male head of state. This isn't exactly a great measure of how much power women have politically.

Also, look at the data report for the United States:
http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/ggg07_united_states.pdf

They do a weighted average of these metrics, but when something is in favor of women, they don't count it in the statistics, they merely count it as a 1.00 in their average, because if something is biased in favor of women, apparently, it's the same as being equal. This would also lend credence to the possibility that the income survey is flawed in some way

Edit:
Health and Survival becomes 1.00 is you include the real figures, and also, Educational attainment puts males at an apparent educational DISADVANTAGE compared to women

So flawed statistics FTL

"It never hurts to help!"

-TM

YOuYou Know what ...... DAMn Nevem mind..... HULK SMASH

The U.S.A. still managed to horse-whip Japan (91/128)!

"Bitch_PhD suggests that we just have all married men change jobs with their wives, all single men change jobs with their girlfriends, all male politicians step down, and all boys wear their hair long while all girls get signed up for sports. Let's try that for ten years, and see what happens."

Wow. A broad, sweeping generalization? Seriously? This is how we're going to do this? Look, the Gender Gap is real and it's atrocious so let's not cheapen it with stereotypes and cliches. Not every man is living the high-life on the backs of his female chattel. Reform the system, don't punish the individual.

Bitch_PhD, you say folks should put women's issues front and center, which implies they should shove other issues off to the side. Isn't that, in effect, sexism? I realize that feminism is "your bag, baby" but I constantly struggle with how slanted your writing is.

In my mind the "one woman isn't going to change anything, so why vote for her" sort of logic is fine. Why vote for her just because she's a woman? Wouldn't it be just as insulting to have a woman president just because she's a woman as it would be if people refused to vote for her because she's a woman? Either way it's a judgment based purely on what's between her legs rather than what's between her ears.

Ouch.

You know, when I inquired about a promotion at my employer (a Fortune 500 company) and brought up the cost of living here as a selling point, the managing director asked me what my husband did for a living.

It's ok though because later when they needed to promote me, I nailed them to the wall when negotiating the raise. Articles like this alleviate any pangs of guilt I may have had.