March 5^th – What’s the extent of the glass ceiling that limits and keeps women from getting ahead from a given moment, and how thick is it exactly? A new study suggests that this ceiling encompasses all aspects of women’s lives – including in the family household – and what is it made of? Not glass, after all, but all-out stereotypes and prejudices against women, kept alive and replicated by men and women all around the world.

These were the findings of the new Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI), made public today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The index measures how convictions and social norms hamper gender equality in fields like politics, work and education, and includes data from 75 countries, which cover more than 80% of the world population.

The new study finds that, in spite of decades of progress in the quest for equality between men and women, about 90% of men and women on this planet still carry some kind of prejudice against women, and it gives new leads to better understand the invisible barriers women have to cope with to reach equality and to find ways that might allow them to shatter this glass ceiling.

According to the index, about half of all men and women in the world feel men are better political leaders than women, and more than 40% think men are better business executives and men are more entitled to a job when jobs are scarce. 28% find there might be a justification if a man beats his wife.

There are also hints about the ways prejudices are changing in about 30 countries. It shows that, whereas things got better in some countries, in others attitudes seem to have degraded over the last years, which proves that progress cannot be taken for granted.

"We have come a long way over the last decades to assure that women have the same access to basic needs as men. We reached parity in primary education and reduced maternal mortality 45% since 1990. Nonetheless gender differences are obvious in other areas, in particular those which challenge power relations and really influence the extent of true equality. Nowadays the struggle for gender equality is all about prejudice”, said Pedro Conceição, Director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office.

Power inequality

This new survey explains why there are still huge “power inequalities” between men and women in our economies, political systems and enterprises, in spite of all the progress that reduces gender inequalities in basic areas of development, such as education and healthcare, and concerning the elimination of legal barriers to the participation of women in politics and economy.

For example, men and women vote in similar proportions, but only 24% of parliamentary seats all around the world are occupied by women and only 10 of 193 heads of government or state are women.

On the labour market, women are paid less than men and have a much lower probability of taking up management and senior posts: less than 6% of the CEOs of the companies on the S&P 500 index are women. And although women work more hours than men, they are more likely not to be paid for this extra workload.

“The work which has been so effective in bringing about the end of inequalities in healthcare or education now has to evolve towards tackling something far more challenging: a deeply entrenched prejudice – as much in men as in women – against true equality. Current policies, albeit well-intentioned, are of limited reach,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.

This year of 2020 we celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (Beijing + 25), the most visionary programme of women’s empowerment to this date.

UNDP is calling on governments and institutions to use a new generation of policies to change these convictions, prejudices and discriminatory practices through education and by raising awareness. For example by resorting to tax benefits in order to incentive equal sharing of childcare responsibilities or by encouraging women and girls to go into sectors traditionally dominated by men, like the armed forces and information technologies.

“The women’s rights demonstrations we’re seeing across the world today, energized by young feminists, are signalling that new alternatives for a different world are needed”, said Raquel Lagunas, UNDP Gender Team Acting Director. " We must act now to break through the barrier of bias and prejudices if we want to see progress at the speed and scale needed to achieve gender equality and the vision laid out in the Beijing Declaration over two decades ago and the Sustainable Development Goals."

UNDP and Gender

The UNDP gender strategy focuses on eliminating structural barriers to the economic empowerment of women; on prevention of and response to gender based violence; on promoting the participation and leadership of women in all forms of decision making; and on strengthening strategies which help women and men in prevention, preparation of and recovery from crises, including climate change.

● In 2019, UNDP established 74 new partnerships for tackling social norms that entail gender-based discrimination.

● UNDP has worked in 97 countries to promote women’s leadership concerning the management of natural resources, in 74 countries to integrate gender into environmental and climatic policies, plans and structures.

● 48% of all voters registered in 39 countries where UNDP is providing electoral assistance are women.

● With the support of UNDP, 23.4 million women had access to basic services, financial services and non-financial assets in 2019.

● In 2019, the UNDP was working in 26 countries to allow 1.7 million women in crisis or post-crisis situations to benefit from jobs and better means of subsistence.

● The UNDP is one of the partners at the core of the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative, a global multi-annual programme to step up efforts to end violence against women and girls, which targets 50 million direct beneficiaries in five regions and more than 25 countries.

Progress made since 1995, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action:

● Today there are more girls at school than at any other point in history; more countries have reached gender parity in terms of school enrolment; and global literacy rates have improved, especially among the young.

● the global rate of maternal mortality went down 38% from 2000 to 2017.

● In the last decade, the proportion of childbirths assisted by qualified healthcare personnel went up 12 percentage points.

● In global terms, the proportion of women in parliament has doubled since 1995.

● Over the last two decades there has been a constant progress in passing legislation to combat violence against women. Today more than three quarters of countries have in place legislation against domestic violence.

For information, access the document concerning the Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI).