Gender bender

SRI LANKA’S famed capacity for gender equality took a hard hit in the latest rankings, raising serious questions about social attitudes and Government policymaking on empowering women financially.

Sri Lanka’s gender gap increased over the last year and its Gender Equality Ranking declined from 16 in 2010 to 31 this year, a report released by the World Economic Forum showed.

The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2011 showed that Sri Lanka has slipped several places from its privileged position in the top 20 over the last five years. Sri Lanka fell from closing 74.6 per cent of the gender gap in 2010 to 72.1 per cent this year.

The report measures the gap between men and women in four key areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

The report noted that while Sri Lanka shows a higher-than-average performance in health and political empowerment, the gap between women’s and men’s estimated earned income widened and new data on tertiary education showed a large gender gap among those enrolled in tertiary education.

In labour force participation, Sri Lanka ranked at the 119th position out of 135 reviewed countries with only 34.5 per cent women working. This could largely be due to the fact that most women belonging to the low income bracket work in the informal sector, where not only are they paid less than their male counterparts, their earnings also receive less attention.

After a three-decade conflict, the presence of over 150,000 war widows in the north and east means that there are more female-headed households. Playing double roles as caregiver and income earner, these women face massive challenges to earn decent incomes.

The Estimated Earned Income for women was 36 per cent of men’s income, placing the country at 120th position. Even though women are competent even within the professional sphere, the traditional ‘glass ceiling’ has a constraining effect with social expectations also contributing to women taking a back seat.     

The gender gap widened in the category of Women in Parliament, placing Sri Lanka among the Arabic countries at the 122nd position. This is a point that the Government has conveniently ignored with the first ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ promising a quota system and the second phase completely dropping that issue. It is also one reason why Government policy does not adequately address women’s issues since there aren’t enough voices at ministerial and Parliament level.  Even the Minister for Women’s Affairs in Sri Lanka is a man!

Despite the high literacy rate and the almost equal participation in primary and secondary education, enrolment of women in tertiary education in higher education institutes ranked at 120th place, with only half the women receiving tertiary education when compared with the number of men.

This is largely due to the fact that only around 20,000 students gain entrance into public universities.  Of them the Arts Faculty gains a majority of women, with Medicine, Law, Engineering and Management all having more men than women. It would seem from the statistics that most of the women who are left out of Government universities do not pursue alternative tertiary education.

In health and survival, Sri Lanka remained at the top position over the years among the developed nations. However, this is getting increasingly overshadowed by Sri Lanka’s inability to promote basic regulations and attitude changes for empowerment.