The Status of Women: Worldwide Trends

Abstract

The empowerment of women and girls has been at the center of international aid efforts for decades. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current status of women around the world with a particular focus on the 13 countries profiled in the subsequent chapters of this book. Those countries represent six world regions: Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), North America, and sub-Saharan Africa. We review four general indicators of gender (in) equality before detailing the central issues and trends in five specific domains that affect the lives of women and girls internationally. Specifically, we focus on education, employment, political participation, health, and violence against women. The general indicators of gender equality yield various conclusions as each index is calculated using different criteria. A commonality across these indices, however, is that women do not fare better than men in any of the thirteen countries. Education is one area in which women and girls have seen substantial gains in recent years. Conversely, the wage gap in earnings and the gender discrepancy in political participation reveal inequalities that demand continued attention. In addition, the multifaceted consequences of gender-based violence plague approximately a third of the world’s women. We close by briefly describing possible shifts in the status of women as a result of globalization and other ongoing trends.