The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Social Gender Norms Index 2023 report finds that after a decade of stagnation, gender bias is still entrenched around the world. This index includes four dimensions: political integrity, educational integrity, economic integrity and physical integrity.
Thus, even today, 90% of the world population surveyed harbor prejudices against women, nearly 50% believe that men make better political leaders and more than 40% believe that men make better business leaders. than women.
The report also highlights the dichotomy between women’s progress in education and their economic empowerment: “Women are more skilled and educated than ever, but, including in the 59 countries where women are now more educated than men, The average gender income gap reaches startling levels reaching 39% in favor of men. »
While UNDP recognizes that in many parts of the world movements against gender equality are gaining momentum, it also finds that the proportion of people who hold no prejudices has also increased, regardless of the indicator concerned. .
So much for the global portrait, but what about Canada?
According to the UNDP survey, 41.14% of Canadians have sexist prejudices, more than in New Zealand (27.91%), Sweden (27.91%), the United Kingdom (29.6% ), the Netherlands (30.64%), Australia (34.83%), Germany (37.45%) and Norway (40.93%). It is therefore possible to do better. In addition to establishing laws and policies that recognize women’s rights in all spheres of life and greater representation of women in decision-making, which Canada is already doing, the UNDP recommends tackling social norms directly through education to change opinions.
It is interesting to note, comparing data on gender bias around the world with the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map, that the countries with the least gender bias are those with secular values (i.e. indicating a largely reduced to organized religion) and which emphasize a great deal of individual autonomy.
On the other hand, countries in which more than 95% of the citizens have sexist prejudices are found among those which grant greater importance to religious doctrines in their society and where parental obligations in the organization of life are more present, at the expense of self-expression values. This category includes countries with a high Muslim proportion, such as Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mali, Pakistan and Palestine, but also countries of Christian allegiance such as Haiti, the Philippines and Rwanda.
This portrait seems to indicate that fundamentalist religious values and gender biases that impede women’s equality rights are strongly linked. However, there is hope. According to the artisans of the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map, the latter evolves: “As people become more prosperous, more educated, live longer and bear fewer children, their descendants become more secular and express more their moral values […]. Thus, despite lingering cultural differences, humanity as a whole finds itself in the midst of an emancipatory moral progression. »