Are you good at evidence-based thinking? Take the Equity in Education Quiz challenge!
The graph below (created using StatPlanet) shows that the world still has long way to go in achieving gender equality. The y-axis shows the percentage of parliament seats held by women, the x-axis shows the ratio of estimated female to male earned income, and the bubble size indicates GDP per capita (PPP). Read more.
1. Not a single country comes close to achieving gender equality in income
In most countries, women earn only 25-75 percent as much as men. The countries that come closest to the gender equalizing figure of 1 are Sweden (=0.84) and Kenya (=0.82). The lowest are the Palestinian Territories (0.12), Saudi Arabia (0.17) and Oman (0.2), where women are estimated to earn less than a quarter of what men are earning.
2. Women outnumber men in parliament in only one country in the world - Rwanda
See also the BBC article women to rule Rwanda parliament.
3. Wealthier countries do not necessarily have higher gender equality
This is indicated by the fact that the larger bubbles (= richer countries) are all over the graph. For example, the United States (in the middle of the graph) is far behind Rwanda and Angola when it comes to gender equality in parliament.
4. A country may do well on one gender indicator, but very poorly on another
Kenya and Papua New Guinea, shown in the bottom right of the graph, are examples of this. When it comes to earned income, women are quite well off in comparison to other countries. However, both countries fare poorly if we look at the percentage of seats in parliament held by women, which is only 9.8 % for Kenya and a miniscule 0.9 % for Papua New Guinea.
The indicators from the graph above are shown seperately as thematic maps below: Ratio of estimated female to male earned income, and percentage of parliament seats held by women (also made with StatPlanet).