Gender study finds 90% of people are biased against women

A new UN report has found at least 90% of men and women hold some sort of bias against females. The “Gender Social Norms” index analyzed biases in areas such as politics and education in 75 countries. There are no countries in the world with gender equality, the study found.

Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office said: “We have come a long way in recent decades to ensure that women have the same access to life’s basic needs as men. But gender gaps are still all too obvious in other areas, particularly those that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality. Today. the fight about gender equality is a story of bias and prejudices.”

  • Globally, close to 50% of men said they had more right to a job than women. Almost a third of respondents thought it was acceptable for men to hit their partners.
  • Zimbabwe had the highest amount of bias with only 0.27% of people reporting no gender bias at all. At the other end of the scale was Andorra where 72% of people reported no bias.
  • In Zimbabwe, 96% of people expressed a bias against women’s physical integrity – a measure covering support for violence against women and opposition to reproductive rights. In the Philippines, 91% of people held views that were detrimental to women’s physical integrity.
  • According to the report, about half of the world’s men and women feel that men make better political leaders.
  • In China, 55% of people thought men were better suited to be political leaders.
  • Around 39% of people in the US, which is yet to have a female president, thought men made better leaders. Globally, 40% of people thought men made better business executives. In the UK, 25% of people thought men should have more right to a job than women and said men made better business executives than women did. In India, that figure was 69%.

Share of seats in parliament held by women

Region Percentage
Arab States 18.3
East Asia & Pacific 20.3
Europe & Central Asia 21.2
Latin America & the Caribbean 31
South Asia 17.1
Sub-Saharan Africa 23.5
Source: United Nations Development Programme

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