For me as a Singaporean i had thought that we had quite good equality amongst sexes but apparently according to a lastest list by World Economic Forum published in Times Magazine, we are ranked at number 77. The rankings are based on four factors, namely educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment and health and survival.
For someone living in this island state, the first, second and fourth should be something we score high in and maybe not the third. True that there some parts of of laws which is not entirely promoting gender equality but in Singapore women do get protected much better.
Well bu according to the Swiss based forum early we are lacking even behind countries like Israel(36), Vietnam(42), Thailand(52), Mongolia(62) and even China(73). Clearly we are far far behind though there are countries much much further down.
The full profile of Singapore gives us a score of 0.661. We score high (close to 1) in Health and Education, so-so on economy(0.6) and close to 0 on politics which is sort of reflective i guess seeing how male dominated our cabinet is.
Well it would seem that AWARE has plenty of stuff to do to level out the playing field for women in Singapore! For me i think that they are doing a good job and should keep it up!
-wonght
Thanks to all the readers for my readership to peak yesterday to 113.
One, we cannot compare ourselves to Israel, because they had Golda Meir (Israel’s first PM, the 3rd female PM in the world) and women have always played a strong part in the political foray. Currently Tzipora “Tzipi” Livni (Israel’s current Foreign Minister and co-PM) illustrates that.
Beyond that, the countries listed as above Singapore really deserve their spot. China has a female VPremier, and have many female entrepreneurs, so that count as economic equality on some grounds.
And to be fair, women did get the right to vote in 1947.
What I did find to be quite the loophole was how human rights violator like Uzbekistan could rank at number 42.
If you look at Vietnam carefully, you’ll see that their ratios for both males and females for a lot of the indices were pretty low. So the WEF’s report is not inerrant.
Cheers.
By: kieranwar on November 16, 2007
at 4:32 pm
And a huge factor to take into light is the fact that most of them depend of percentages, not whole figures as we know it. That’s why on page 19, Cambodia comes in at number 5 on the list, which shocked me, until I read Cambodia’s profile.
Basically if for every 10 women who die, there are 10 or 9 men who die, then it will be equal or near equal with a ratio of 90%, men to women.
And that seems to be a strong factor in determining the whole figures ranking game.
Like Sweden (bizarrely) has a 102% women enrolled in tertiary education.
Maybe I just don’t get it, but could someone explain that to me?
Cheers.
By: kieranwar on November 16, 2007
at 4:39 pm
nope i am not saying it is inaccurate i’m saying is that though we scored higher in other components, one critical one of political involveness is low so low that i think no other country can be lower. For the other factors used in the report i believe we outrank some of those country. As for the 102% it is 102% of the number of guys like fro every 100 guys there are 102 gals in tertiary education.
By: wonght12 on November 18, 2007
at 3:30 am
Why use 100 when there’re 102 girls for every 100 guys? It breaks the whole issue. They could have just taken 98 guys for every 100 girls.
One big part is really the whole idea that having not political representation doesn’t mean that people don’t get any sort of rights. We never had a very strong number of women in our parliament, yes, but women got the right to vote in 1947, way ahead of some EU countries at that.
Even Malaysia fell short — it gave women the right to vote in 1957.
All I’m saying is that not having as many representation doesn’t mean that women are denied rights.
People sans me and you, like to believe that if there is no representation, then there is little rights. Or that number of representatives is proportionate to the equality scale — the higher, the more equal.
Some countries don’t have gay MPs but they have anti-discrimination laws that protect people based on their sexual orientation.
The WEF should make it clear, that although some indices are indicative of a larger social problem, sometimes, the figures doesn’t translate into issues as they would want it to.
Politics is heavily dominated by males, blame it on a culture of sexism in the workplace.
But women too are gaining prominence in governments and parliaments worldwide.
The score is theoretical at best, with the reality reflective of a culture that is not hostile to the prominence of females in the government and parliament.
By: kieranwar on November 18, 2007
at 10:09 am
True true. I believe that equality has been enshrined in our law as for the 98 man to 100 woman it’s cos the entire report is based on using women as the base rate thus you can’t switch the values about something about percetnages and all. As for true equality well i have no idea whether it is so in practice. I’ve yet to complete the book though. However there’s been some experiment which should the inherent predeposition(partially bred into us by society) against females, details can be found in Blink!
By: wonght12 on November 20, 2007
at 1:35 pm
“partially bred into us by society”??
Nurture versus nature — can there ever be a rational outcome?
By: kieranwar on November 20, 2007
at 4:34 pm
middle ground would be the best? though i believe it varies fom things to things esp if that’s something not necessary for survival
By: wonght12 on November 21, 2007
at 1:22 pm
But equating something as being nature-caused and another as being nurture-caused, seemed rather much like cherry-picking, isn’t it?
It’s like saying criminal behaviour is nurtured and then say that some criminals are biologically inclined to commit crimes.
Mostly, if you support nature or nurture for something, then there is an inclination to support the same theory that nature or nurture causes something else, or most things as well.
It’s rather hard to say something is caused by nature and then others are caused by nurture, isn’t it?
By: kieranwar on November 22, 2007
at 6:27 am
i believe the effects from trait to trait can change. Well is it free will or determinism?
By: wonght12 on November 22, 2007
at 12:57 pm
[...] it is predominantly our genetic make up so which’s which. In an earlier post’s comments (Equality of sexes in Singapore), I had touch a little on this [...]
By: What makes us us. « ~Notes from a Not So Young Mind~ on June 21, 2008
at 3:58 pm