UAE leads Arab World in gender equality: WEF

The UAE, which turns 40 next month, has improved on its own gender equality performance of last year and continues to lead the Arab world on the Global Gender Gap Index, a new report by the World Economic Forum said.

“The United Arab Emirates (103) continues to hold 1st position among the Arab countries and improves its performance relative to its own score of 2010,” the WEF Gender Gap Report 2011 said.

In fact the UAE, along with some other regional countries, boasts of more women than men enrolling for tertiary education, according to the report. “The highest-ranking economies of the region have invested many resources in increasing women’s education levels – in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan, the tertiary education enrolment rates of women are higher than those of men,” it said.

“However, these countries have had varying degrees of success at integrating women into the economy in order to reap the benefits of this investment,” the report pointed out. “Kuwait (105), Tunisia (108) and Bahrain (110) follow in the rankings, supported by higher-than-average performances on education attainment and health and survival. While Kuwait is the second-highest-ranking country in the region, it is one of only 9 countries out of 135 that show a worsening gap in the literacy rate indicator,” the report said.

With just 59 per cent of the gender gap closed, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region occupies last place on overall average score compared with the other five regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and North America).

The Mena region lags behind the other regions on the economic participation and opportunity and the political empowerment sub-indexes. It is in 5th position on educational attainment (ahead of sub-Saharan Africa) and 4th position on health and survival (ahead of both sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the Pacific).

“Tunisia falls one place in the rankings this year. In the absence of new political data, the political empowerment data have been repeated from last year in order to continue to observe other changes in score. Bahrain’s ranking does not change despite a small overall gain in the score, as other countries move ahead faster,” it said.

They are followed on the Gender Gap Index by Qatar (111), Mauritania (114), Jordan (117) and Lebanon (118).

“Qatar’s strength lies in education, especially secondary and tertiary education, although reductions in wage gaps over the last year have boosted Qatar’s overall ranking by six places. Jordan gains three places, most notably through an increase the percentage of women in parliamentary positions (from 6 to 11 per cent).

The next places in the region are occupied by Algeria (121), Egypt (123) and Syria (124). GCC compatriots Oman and Saudi Arabia, along with Morocco and Yemen, bring out the bottom of the regional rankings. “Oman (127), Morocco (129), Saudi Arabia (131) and Yemen (135) remain the lowest-ranking MENA countries in the Index,” the report states.

“Oman drops down, losing five places. This is partly the result of a wider gap in tertiary enrolment. Morocco and Saudi Arabia each slip two spots, although Saudi Arabia’s performance over the last six years puts it among the highest climbers of the 114 countries that have been included in the report since 2006. Finally, Yemen continues to occupy the last place in the region as well as in the overall rankings of 135 countries. While showing an absolute increase in the score, it remains the only country in the world to have closed less than 50 per cent of its gender gap.”

Over the last six years, while 85 per cent of countries are improving their gender equality ratios, for the rest of the world the situation is declining, most notably in several African and South American countries. The sixth annual World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2011 shows a slight decline over the last year in gender equality rankings for New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom this year, while gains are made in Brazil, Ethiopia, Qatar, Tanzania and Turkey.

Overall, European countries continue to dominate the Gender Gap Index, with the Iceland (which has managed to close 85.3 per cent of the gender gap), Norway (84 per cent), Finland (83.8 per cent) and Sweden (80.4 per cent) retaining the top four slots, followed by Ireland (78.3 per cent).

Yemen (48.7 per cnet), Chad (53.3 per cent), Pakistan (55.8 per cent), Mali (57.52 per cent) and Saudi Arabia (57.53 per cent) bring up the bottom five globally.

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