Bangladesh has been on top in terms of gender equity in South Asia, according to the Gender Equity Index 2012 report.
The Gender Equity Index 2012 was released by Social Watch, a Manila-based civil society network, ahead of International Women’s Day.
Bangladesh gained 55 points to be on the top among those countries with very low in GEI, although 16 points above the South Asian average, which stands at 39 while the Maldives’s passion is 63 and Sri Lanka 62.
The countries in the worst condition are: India (37 points), Pakistan (29), and Afghanistan (15), which is also the country in the worst situation among the 154 computed by the GEI. The South Asian gender gap is the lowest among regions.
The index prepared annually by Social Watch measures the gap between women and men in education, the economy and political empowerment. The index is an average of the inequalities in the three dimensions. In literacy, it examines the gender gap in enrolment at all levels; economic participation computes the gaps in income and employment; empowerment measures the gaps in highly qualified jobs, parliament and senior executive positions.
Social Watch measures the gap between women and men, not their wellbeing. Thus, a country in which young men and women have equal access to the university receives a value of 100 on this particular indicator.
In the same fashion, a country in which boys and girls are equally barred from completing primary education would also be awarded a value of 100. This does not mean that the quality of education in both cases is the same. It just establishes that in both cases girls are not less educated than boys.
The five levels according to which the index measures the gender gap are: critical, very low, low, medium and acceptable. It should be noted that no country has reached 90 points or more, meaning that no country has yet reached the acceptable level.
Bangladesh reaches a medium value in education (81), critical in empowerment (18) and low in economic participation (65).
At a world level, the countries that have achieved a better score are Norway (89), Finland (88), and Iceland (87), which places them as countries with a medium in GEI.
Out of the 154 countries computed by the 2012 GEI those five in the worst global situation are Congo Republic (29), Niger (26), Chad (25), Yemen (24) and Afghanistan (15).