2008 Global Gender Gap Report: RP still ranked 6th

The Philippines, a developing Asian economy headed by a female president, has retained its ranking as the sixth out of 130 countries in the world in terms of narrowing the gender gap between men and women.
In its 2008 Global Gender Gap Report released yesterday, the World Economic Forum ranked the Philippines next to Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and New Zealand in terms of closing the global gender gap index.
The index examines the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival.
The Philippines, the highest-ranked Asian country, received a score of 0.7568 in 2008, albeit slighly lower than its score of 0.7629 in 2007. This means that the Philippines has closed 75 percent of its gender gaps.
The Philippines and Sri Lanka (at 12th spot) remain distinctive for being the only Asian countries among the top 20, for the third consecutive year.
"The Philippines is one of two countries in Asia to have closed the gender gap on both education and health and is one of only eleven in the world to have done so," the report said.
However, the report noted that the Philippines' score relative to its performance in 2007 fell due to a drop in the perceived wage equality between women and men employed in similar positions and a decrease in the percentage of women ministers.
It said that while the Philippines retained its privileged status in the rankings, the size of its gender gaps on economic participation and on political empowerment widened slightly.
Specifically, there was a perceived drop in wage equality for similar work according to the perceptions of business leaders, leading to a small decrease in the economic
participation subindex.
On the political empowerment subindex, the Philippines has made gains on the percentage of women in parliament and on the number of years of having a female leader in executive office in the last 50 years, with the continued tenure of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
However, these gains are offset by a fall in the percentage of female ministers, leading to an overall decrease in the scores for this subindex.
Norway led the survey in closing the gender gap with a score of 0.8239, followed by two other Nordic countries - Finland and Sweden.
At the bottom of the list was Yemen with a score of 0.4664, followed by Chad and Saudi Arabia.
The three highest-ranking countries have closed a little over 80 percent of their gender gaps, while the lowest-ranking country has closed only a little over 45 percent of its gender gap.
Previously higher-ranking countries such as Germany (11), United Kingdom (13) and Spain (17) slipped down the Index but stayed in the top 20, while the Netherlands (9), Latvia (10), Sri Lanka (12) and France (15) made significant gains.
The United States, at 27th spot, made progress this year and closed gender gaps in estimated earned income and perceived income gaps for similar work. The United States also made strides in political empowerment, driven by increased participation of women in political decision-making positions.
Out of the 128countries covered in both 2007 and 2008, more than two-thirds have posted gains in overall index scores, indicating that the world in general has made progress towards equality between men and women.-abs-cbnNEWS.com