Women, Women Everywhere, But Not Enough to Link?

As International Women’s Day has now passed, it’s time to review the failures and successes of women around the world, even though a cursory overview. Around the world, the news is definitely mixed, and while there are improvements in the west, the notion of equal pay and equal representation in the work world has a long way to go.

I’ll skip the atrocious treatment of women in so much of the Middle East, and the increasing trending of archaic tribal policies pushing back against modernity, from the once secular Turkey (moving towards the religious right under the Erdogan regime) to the repressive rules against women from the extreme rigidity under ISIS to the historic second class citizenship of women under the laws of so many Islamic nations. I’ve blogged that enough. And we can wince at the rape controversies in India, where a documentary with harsh reminders of the problem has been banned from the airways, and shudder where, in one Indian state, the penalty for eating beef draws a far longer sentence than for sexual assault. I am even side-stepping horrific practices such as “honor killings” and female genital mutilation (yes it even happens with immigrant families living in Western countries) practiced by various ethnic communities.

China has made huge progress, mostly because under the “one child” policy where parents of daughters have invested ambition in their only choice, although recent “stories” are increasingly suggesting that a “woman’s place is still in the home.” Japan, facing a severe labor shortage as its population contracts, is struggling to change old practices and values to encourage more women to join the workforce. But old prejudices die hard, and women still face a mountain of resistance to achieve anything like equality in the Japanese labor pool.

Germany, where its leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, is a woman, has taken a dramatic step among its largest publicly-traded companies (roughly 100 such entities): “The German parliament passed a new law [March 7^th] requiring the country's biggest companies to appoint women to 30% of the seats on their non-executive boards from 2016. The plan is to increase the quota to 50% from 2018…Thousands more smaller German companies are also required to set binding targets this year for increasing the number of women on their supervisory boards and executive committees.” CNN.com, March 8^th.

The March 9^th FastCompany.com, examines the progress (and its insufficiency) of women in various fields from the 1990s to today. While women earn half of the entire aggregation of the world’s wages and salaries, up from 40% in the 1990s, they still earn between 10% and 30% than men for the same work. In the U.S., while only one woman led a Fortune 500 company in 1998, today that number is 25% of all such Fortune 500 CEOs… but before you start cheering, note that in a survey of 83 countries around the world, women around the world hold only 5% of the CEO companies surveyed.

In 2010, according to FastCompany.com, women were featured in a positive light in 24% of news stories, up from 17% in 1995, but on the negative side, 46% of such stories reinforce gender stereotypes while only 6% actually challenge them. And while the number of women elected to parliamentary-like positions has doubled in the last two decades, they still only hold 22% of such positions today.

Generally speaking, one’s attitudes about the role and status of women are determined early in life, from family actions and values to peer perceptions as we grow older. Women had to earn the right to vote in the United States, slowly since the mid-19^th century until they gained that right federally in 1920. And while the movement to add an equal rights amendment to the Constitution began in 1923, it has still not passed, although Congress and local states have passed a litany of statutes focused on gender equality. It’s a short amendment, but it is nowhere near passage: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Conservative social values – which definitely do not embrace modern feminism – now control the majority of American state gubernatorial and legislative positions as well as both houses of Congress. There has been a forward thrust of gender equality in Western Europe, evidence of progress for women in elected and senior corporate positions, but the nascent neo-conservative movements all over the world represent a push-back against legally enforced gender equality almost everywhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we raise our children, what are the real messages we send them (overt and covert) about the role of women in our society?