Mind the Gap

The World Economic Forum has published the Global Gender Gap report 2006.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 covers all current and candidate European
Union countries, 20 from Latin America and the Caribbean, over 20 from sub-Saharan Africa and 10 from the Arab world. Together, the 115 economies cover over 90% of the world’s population. The index mainly uses publicly available "hard data" indicators drawn from international organizations and some qualitative information from the Forum’s own Executive Opinion Survey. The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 includes an innovative new methodology including detailed profiles of each economy that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women: 1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment 2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education 3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures 4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio.

And now Malta. Where do we stand in all this? A list of 115 countries. Well we are 70th. One step behind France and (luckily for our politicians) 11 above Italy which places a miserable 81st. Other countries above us? Try China, Ghana, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and... hold your breath here... Kazakhstan.

Yes, the home of Borat (women an ploughs yes) is fourty places above us in 30th place. In the 29th there is the US of A... leaving a sweet combination. Obviously the first five places go to Norway, Finland, Iceland, Germany and Sweden. The worst perfomers in the EU were Greece, France, Malta, Italy and Cyprus.

Sadly for Marie Louise Coleiro the item that stands out on the Malta Country Profile is the one entitled Female Genital Mutilation. Guess what the score is?

Yep. That's right 0.

On the other hand we still score lowly in legislation punishing violence on women. 0,67 - where 0 is bad and 1 is good. We also cheat because we claim to have had 13 years out of the last fifty with a female head of state. A white lie of course because on paper Agatha Barabara's presidential years were just so. No need to comment on the influential levels of the Presidential post of course.

On the equality to inequality scale we score 0,652. Which is more than zero but still far from the ideal state of 1.

So what you may say? Well I say (again) that while opposition MP's are busy about laws against vaginal mutilation and government ministers take on the crusade against that windmill called abortion in the constitution we might be spending our time much more usefully thinking how to bridge that gap. The gender one I mean.

I gave up on the intelligence gap ages ago.