A new report has found that even in the Commonwealth country with the greatest overall gender parity, New Zealand, women still earn only 72 percent of the male average and are outnumbered two-to-one in parliament
‘Women as agents of change’, the Commonwealth’s theme for 2011, is at once emotive, inspiring and deeply challenging. It is the perfect choice, but not because of what the Commonwealth has – or has not – already achieved in this area. No, this theme is hugely important because it represents a real opportunity for the Commonwealth to prove its worth. If the Commonwealth can demonstrate the value it can add to the gender equality debate and the tangible difference it can make to the lives of women around the world, then it will taste real success.
For our part, we at the Royal Commonwealth Society have been working with the development NGO, Plan, to stimulate debate by asking a very straightforward question: where is it best to be born a girl in the Commonwealth today? The answer, published in our research paper, ‘Because You’re a Girl: Growing Up in the Commonwealth’, is New Zealand, closely followed by Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. And the worst? Well, Tonga, Nigeria and Sierra Leone all score poorly on our ranking.
Offering a unique country-by-country snapshot of the barriers and opportunities faced by girls at each stage of their lives, our data reveals the extent of the challenges which remain in this area across the Commonwealth, as well as some remarkable pockets of progress.
Perhaps most importantly, the research reveals that poverty is not always the determining factor in levels of gender equality. In our rankings we include gross national incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity), enabling us to show how well a country is doing on our ‘gender gap’ rating compared to how relatively well off it is in economic terms. And we’ve found some startling results.
Mozambique, Rwanda and Malawi, for example, all score very highly against our criteria, despite their relative poverty. Indeed, these three countries are positioned on our Report Card more than 30 places higher than their ranking in terms of income. Of the six poorest countries in the Commonwealth in terms of income per capita, only Sierra Leone, still recovering from years of civil war, remains at the bottom. And, as we’ve seen, Barbados and Trinidad, rated 10th and 8th respectively on income per capita, do very well on our report card, placing ahead of much more affluent countries. Indeed, the Commonwealth’s richest member, Brunei Darussalam, only comes in 24th on our chart.
Digging deeper, a number of our indicators suggest that political will and innovative legislation can have a far greater impact on gender inequality than levels of wealth. Rwanda and South Africa top our female political participation table and, in fact, are first and third respectively in the world in this regard. Rwanda’s constitution stipulates that women must hold at least 30 percent of the seats in Parliament and, today, more than 50 percent of MPs are women. This represents a far higher proportion of female politicians than in the UK, where decades of campaigning has failed to deliver comparable results. Similarly, Uganda ranks higher in this table than both Canada and Australia.
Moving from political to sporting participation, by examining the ratio of female to male athletes entering and winning medals at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, we find that while – predictably – Canada and Australia measure well against this indicator, so too does Nigeria, whereas both Pakistan and India perform poorly. Financial investment in sporting resources for women and girls surely plays a part here, but social norms and gender stereotypes must also be taken into consideration. Until more work is done to unravel and understand this complex interplay of factors, sport is one powerful tool for female empowerment which looks set to remain underutilised.
Of all our indicators, however, it is when we turn to gender pay gaps that the evidence of inequality is at its most stark. Even in the best performing countries (which also happen to be some of the Commonwealth’s poorest, including Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi and Rwanda), women only earn around four-fifths of male income on average. Wealthy countries such as Australia have a relatively small pay gap, but the inequality is still marked. In Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, two of the countries where men earn the most in the Commonwealth, women’s wages are around half of their male counterparts.
Indeed, it is perhaps most worrying that, even amongst the top ranked countries, our research reveals a persistent and marked gender disparity. Take, for example, New Zealand – our star performer. There are twice as many men in New Zealand’s Parliament as there are women and, despite getting an ‘A’ in our gender pay gap Report Card, women in New Zealand still earn only 72 percent of the male average. Hardly the ideal.
Notwithstanding a small number of counterintuitive results, when it comes to the lot of those born female in the Commonwealth, our research suggests that much remains to be done. With this in mind, we plan to launch an advocacy campaign which will culminate at the Commonwealth Summit in Perth at the end of the year. There, we will seek a new commitment from leaders to improve the lives of women and girls around the globe. If the Commonwealth can’t make a difference on an issue which goes to the very core of its founding values and principles, the question will have to be asked, what can it do?
