The Civil Engineering Contractor March 2019 | Page 3

COMMENT Report says SA women have it better than men Eamonn Ryan - editor [email protected] G ender inequality is one of the conventional wisdoms of the world, where victimhood is pushed remorselessly. Issues of race or gender are highly politicised and emotional. They are also replete with instances of cherry-picking statistics or skewing how one assesses the issue. A narrow interpretation of statistics, aimed at proving disadvantage, will always deliver the desired result. For instance, researchers will look at the construction or mining industries to prove women are disadvantaged — and purposely exclude the nursing, modelling, or media professions. They will also carefully ignore issues where women surpass, such as in longer life expectancy and health, when assessing quality of life. This has been a limitation of traditional attempts to rank gender equality. Now a global academic study has overturned a few assumptions regarding gender, by suggesting women might have it easier than commonly believed — findings www.civilsonline.co.za achieved by including usually omitted factors. It shows that in 91 countries in the world — including South Africa, the US, Russia, and most European countries — it is men who are actually more disadvantaged than women, while women were more disadvantaged than men in 43 countries (mostly in Africa). To demonstrate how wrong conventional wisdom can be, the country that came out top in terms of gender equality was an Arab-Muslim country, Bahrain. Rather than conduct a simplistic headcount of women and men in all aspects of life, this study looks at three factors which it identified as being the minimal ingredients of a good life — quality of educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy, and overall life satisfaction — and converts this into a numerical value, the Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI). The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Missouri in the US and the University of Essex in the UK. The survey covered 134 nations, representing 6.8-billion people. The research found that life expectancies between men and women are roughly equal, while men fall slightly behind in terms of basic education and life satisfaction. Even in countries where men have it better than women (where Israel ranked the most skewed), the difference is small. South Africa differs from most African and developing countries in that women have it better, according to the study. This is particularly evident in education, where men fall considerably behind women. “In this regard, South Africa deviates much from many other sub-Saharan nations (where often, girls fall behind). Further, men have a shorter healthy life expectancy (48 years for men and 51 years for women in the 2012–2016 period),” says the study. “It is important to realise that gender equality is not a zero-sum game. Instead, improving the position of one gender will likely positively influence the other gender as well. “For example, improving educational opportunities for girls in Africa will benefit the families they will later form. Improving men’s health benefits the families in which they live. Ultimately, we all win by increasing gender equality. “Men’s disadvantages are particularly related to health factors, especially in the developed world. Investment in prevention programmes and a more coherent approach to male health is key to improving this situation. For example, there are various national and international strategies for women’s health, but few for men’s health. Creating a national and international strategy for men’s health is a first step to reduce gender inequality in this area.” The study indicates that women’s disadvantages are particularly strong in Africa, particularly when it comes to access to education and maternal death during life birth. The study can be found at https://bigi.genderequality.info/. CEC March 2019 | 1