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Why We Need Gender Equity Now
By Katica Roy
We need gender equity now. Those are words often uttered in social justice circles, and recently, across a number of headlines. What does that mean? More broadly, how is gender equity different than gender equality?
If gender equality is the end, gender equity is the means.
Gender equality "does not mean that women and men will become the same, but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female.”
Gender equity means fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. This may include equal treatment or treatment that is different, but which is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities.
When we talk about opportunity, we are talking about ensuring opportunity is not limited simply on the basis of gender. We are talking about correcting for gender biases so that economic outcomes improve for all.
Why do we need equity?
Let’s start at the beginning. In no country are women in equal. In fact, the World Economic Forum projects it will take 170 years to reach gender equality globally, and 158 years in North America. That means it will take five more generations for us to see gender equality – or my great, great, great, great, grandchildren. That’s not only bad news for our daughters – it’s bad news for our sons because gender equality impacts the economic pie for all.
Many of the measures concerning gender equality interplay with the economy and more specifically, the workforce.
Here’s the current state:
• If there’s only one woman in your candidate pool, there’s statistically no chance she’ll get the job;
• Men are promoted at 30% higher rates than women during their early career stages;
• 90% of women leave the workforce because of other workplace problems (rather than having a child);
• Women are paid 79 cents on the dollar of their male colleagues (that drops drastically to 39 cents for the top 2% of wage earners in the U.S.);
• In a study of 21,980 firms from 91 countries, just over 50% of firms didn’t have any female executives (only 11% of firms had all female executives). (…)
In addition to women attaining 57% of bachelor degrees and above in 2015 (that trajectory is projected to continue), they are also the majority of university students in nearly 100 countries. Women are an educated cohort, particularly in the U.S., but they are not making it up the talent pipeline. Why not? Gender bias is causing a leaky pipeline.
How does equity lead to equality?
If gender equity is about fairness, then what we are talking about here is making up for the gap between gender bias and reality. How can we hack the system to give women an equitable shot?
Overall, gender mainstreaming is a very useful strategy. Why? It overlays the gender lens across any action, policy and more. (…)
From Forbes Woman. SEP 14, 2017. Disponível em:https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2017/09/14/why-we-need-genderequity-now. Adaptado.
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