The Damned Olde Man

Posted By TDOM on November 2, 2009

Answer: In a novel by George Orwell and in the Global Gen­der Gap Report, 2009

I have just fin­ished read­ing what is per­haps the sin­gle most one-sided, biased, and sex­ist doc­u­ment that I have ever read in my life. It is from the Geneva based World Eco­nomic Forum and is called the Global Gen­der Gap Report, 2009. Its authors, Richard Haus­mann (Har­vard Uni­ver­sity), Laura D. Tyson (Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley), and Saa­dia Zahidi (World Eco­nomic Forum) make no apolo­gies and proudly state that they have cho­sen “a “one-sided” scale that mea­sures how close women are to reach­ing par­ity with men but does not reward or penal­ize coun­tries for hav­ing a gen­der gap in the other direc­tion” (p. 6). They even acknowl­edge that they could have taken a fairer, more neu­tral approach by using “a negative-positive scale cap­tur­ing the size and direc­tion of the gen­der gap” (p. 4, 6). This approach would have “(penal­ized) either men’s advan­tage over women or women’s advan­tage over men and (give) the high­est points to absolute equal­ity” (p.6). Unfor­tu­nately, they chose not to use this fairer and unbi­ased approach.

In order to use this one-sided approach, the authors sim­ply defined “gen­der gap” as any area where men show an advan­tage when com­pared to women. Any area where equal­ity exists or where women show an advan­tage when com­pared to men is defined as equal­ity. Yes, you read that right. Any area where women show an advan­tage com­pared to men is defined as “equal­ity.” George Orwell would be proud.

To do this, they used a scale of 0 to 1 to rate “equal­ity” in each of sev­eral dif­fer­ent areas. 0 is the score assigned to total inequal­ity (where men show an advan­tage) and 1 is “equal­ity.” The one-sided approach dic­tates that any area where women show an advan­tage is scored as 1 (equal­ity). The gen­der gap is the aver­age of each of these scores.

The United States ranks 31st with a score of 0.717. How­ever, in edu­ca­tional attain­ment, the US achieved a score of 1, per­fect equal­ity. Or is it? You see, in 3 of the 4 items used to mea­sure edu­ca­tional attain­ment, women show an advan­tage over men (using the fig­ures shown in the report) and the 4th item is equal. That’s right, women have the advan­tage, but the report claims absolute equality.

To demon­strate how absurd this is, it would be pos­si­ble to use the very same data in the report to “prove” that an anti-male gen­der gap actu­ally exists or that there is no gen­der gap in every coun­try in the world. All one would need to do would be to take the same one-sided approach, but in the oppo­site direc­tion. If we define gen­der gap as any area where the female has the advan­tage over the male and assign a score of 0 and define equal­ity as any area where equal­ity actu­ally exists or where men show advan­tage over women, there would not be a sin­gle coun­try in the world where men and women are not shown to be equal or to have a gen­der gap that favors women. This analy­sis would be equally as valid as the one used by the authors of this report to demon­strate that there is not a sin­gle coun­try that has achieved equal­ity for women. In other words, they would both be total rubbish.

Let’s take this one step fur­ther. Imag­ine a coun­try that is totally dom­i­nated by women. One where men have no rights. Men are con­sid­ered to be the prop­erty of women, are slaves, are not per­mit­ted to work or hold pub­lic office, and receive no health care or edu­ca­tion. Accord­ing to these authors, this coun­try would receive a score of 1 which indi­cates total equal­ity. That’s right, such a coun­try would fit the authors’ def­i­n­i­tion of a per­fect world.

The unfor­tu­nate part of this is that this report is intended to be used to guide policy-making deci­sions in coun­tries around the world. Policy-makers won’t read the details. They will flip to the con­clu­sion and base their deci­sions on the state­ments that show a dis­ad­van­tage to women in every coun­try across the globe and that men are not at a dis­ad­van­tage in any of the items con­tained in the report. This will inevitably result in anti-male dis­crim­i­na­tory pol­icy being adopted even in areas where women already have the advantage.

–TDOM

Categories: Education, Men's Issues, Politics
Tags: Berkeley, Discrimination, Education, Geneva, George Orwell, Global Gender Gap Report, Harvard University, health care, Politics, Sexism, United States, University of California, University of California Berkeley, World Economic Forum