I came across this article about equality between men and women on the BBC website; It is about a new survey that classifies rates of sexual equality around the world and compares them on a country wide basis.

Progress around the world in terms of equality, is one of the most important ways of getting more talent to participate in resolving the issues that we need to deal with as a society.

I think statistical information is one of the keys to informed debate, so I invite you to visit the original report that can be accessed on line.  This is obviously more in-depth than the BBC article and it contains information by country, and divides equality into 4 areas of considerations. As talent knows no gender distinctions and we would all benefit, both women and men, from more equality, that way the most talented people would be able to make a greater contribution to our societies.

Spain and the UK: how do they compare?

In the report a score of 1.000 represents equality for women; less than 1 inequality against women. The two countries I am most linked to are Spain, where I have been living for the past 20 years and the UK where I was born. Overall Spain comes out 30th in the world, out of the 136 countries under consideration, with an equality ratio of 0.727 and the UK 18th with an equality ratio of 0.774

1. Economic Participation and Opportunity;  Spain comes out 76th with a disappointing equality ratio of just 0.652;  UK 35 th with an again disappointing equality ratio of 0.732
2. Educational Attainment; Spain comes out 40th with a respectable equality ratio of  0.997;  UK 31st, and also with almost exact equality 0.999
3. Health and Survival; Spain comes out with a perhaps surprising position of 75th with an equality ratio of  0.973; UK 92nd, with a similar equality ratio of 0.970
4. Political Empowerment; Spain comes out 27th with a disappointing equality ratio of just 0.284; UK 29th, also with a disappointing equality ratio of 0.275

Comparing countries versus comparing against inequality

To me it is clear that it less important a countries position, with respect to other countries and more important the absolute levels of equality. Perhaps the league tables are more journalistic, as we all like to compare our countries with others. However, to be higher up the country comparison chart could be argued to be a negative thing in some extreme cases. Perhaps if it means that there is inequality against men in order to achieve it. For example, Iceland which tops the survey with an equality ratio of 0.873 has the following results in one area;

1. Educational Attainment; Joint 1st with a equality ratio of  1.ooo , although I don’t understand this figure because for all sub areas the score is 1 or more, in one area the inequality is as much as 1.79. that is the ratio of women to men in terciary education (ie universities) Is it positive for a society to have 1.79 times more women at university than men? What do you think?

Political Empowerment and Economic Participation and Opportunity the two areas with biggest opportunities

However, this only occurs in a few countries in two areas; health and Survival (where 23 countries share the top score of 0.9796 )and Educational attainment (where 26 countries have the same 1.000 score). The bigger picture is that all countries of the world can improve in the other two areas, where Iceland is number 1 for Political Empowerment with a score of 0.754 ; and Norway number 1 for Economic Participation and Opportunity with a score of 0.837.

The report also compares the results with previous results from other years, this is interesting in Spain’s and the UK’s cases. Spain has dropped from it’s position of 10th in the world, with a score of 0.7444 in 2007 and the UK has dropped from 9th in the world with a score of 0.7365 in 2006. Has been Spain and the UK being going backwards in terms of equality?

Well I invite you all to have a look at the data and please feel free to leave a comment below,

Duncan