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OECD – Invisible Women: Making Women Count

“As part of the Wikiprogress on Gender Equality series, this progblog article is bought to you by Angela Hariche and Karen Barnes Robinson.

  • First, women are not being recognised. They are undervalued. In 2009, the European Commission launched a campaign to address the fact that on average, women earn 17.4% less than men. In the US, research has shown that one year after college, women earn only 80% of what their male colleagues earn. Why aren’t enough women being represented on boards or in politics? Can any of our current measures for economic performance address this issue? There are indicators that measure the percentage of women in senior positions over time but if a country’s success was based on it, you can bet leaders would work a little harder to appoint women in top positions. If this indicator was important and recognised, imagine what might change. Second, women are not being counted. They are invisible. Women are 50 percent of the population yet up until now, a lot of the work they do isn’t being considered in current measures of economic resources…Third, women are not able to access the same opportunities as men. They are marginalised. Globalisation and development processes have transformed men and women’s roles and relations, but this has not necessarily translated into more access to resources and greater empowerment for women or more gender equality…”
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