Almost 90% Of People Are Biased Against Women

A new report by the UN has found that almost 90% of people hold some sort of bias against women. Taking data from 75 countries and over 80% of the world’s population, the index measures how social beliefs obstruct gender equality across areas like work, politics, education, violence and reproductive rights.

Published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) today, the gender social norm index found that as well as 90% of people holding at least one prejudice towards women, almost half feel men are better political leaders while 40% think men make better business executives and have more right to a job when they are scarce.

Even more harrowing is the fact that 28% of people think it’s justified for a man to beat his wife. According to the data, where some countries have made improvements on gender bias, attitudes appear to have worsened in recent years in others. In the UK in particular, more than half of people hold at least one bias.

'We all know we live in a male-dominated world, but with this report we are able to put some numbers behind these biases,' said Pedro Conceição, director of the UNDP’s human development report office. 'And the numbers, I consider them shocking.

'What our report shows is a pattern that repeats itself again and again,' he continued. 'Big progress in more basic areas of participation and empowerment. But when we get to more empowering areas, we seem to be hitting a wall.'

Of all 75 countries studied, only six had a majority of people that held no bias towards women (Andorra, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden) – but even among those progress was not on the rise in all areas. Sweden, for example, had at least one bias increase over the nine years the data covered.

‘We have come a long way in recent decades to ensure that women have the same access to life’s basic needs as men,’ Conceição stated. ‘We have reached parity in primary school enrolment and reduced maternal mortality by 45 percent since the year 1990. 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.'

The analysis shed light on power gaps in employment in particular, with only 24% of parliamentary seats held by women worldwide. Of 193 possible heads of government, only 10 are women and, generally, women in the labour market are much less likely to be in senior positions. ‘While women work more hours than men, this work is more likely to be unpaid care work,’ the report read.

‘The work that has been so effective in ensuring an end to gaps in health or education must now evolve to address something far more challenging: a deeply ingrained bias – among both men and women - against genuine equality,’ said Achim Steiner, Administrator of UNDP. ‘Current policies, while well intentioned, can only take us so far.’

The UN is therefore calling on governments and institutions to change discriminatory beliefs and practices through education, awareness and incentives, ‘for instance, by using taxes to incentivize fairly sharing child-care responsibilities, or by encouraging women and girls to enter traditionally male-dominated sectors such as the armed forces and information technology'.

Read the full report here.

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