This is the third in a five-part series of interviews with international women's rights expert and CEDAW advocate Kavita N. Ramdas, President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, the largest grantmaking foundation in the world focused exclusively on supporting international women’s human rights.
Below, Ramdas discusses CEDAW and where the U.S. ranks in gender equity as compared to other nations.
Here in the U.S., we perceive our nation as very forward-thinking in terms of women's rights. As CEDAW shows us, the reality may not be so rosy. What nations have policies in place that guarantee women equal rights, and where does the greatest gender parity exist across government, industry, and society? What countries 'get' women's issues and address them most effectively?
You’re absolutely right about the U.S. not being the forward thinking nation that we think it is in terms of women’s rights and gender parity.
In fact, the World Economic Forum recently released a report on the Global Gender Gap for 2009 measuring gender parity on health, economic, politics and education. The United States didn’t even make the top 10—out of 134 countries, the U.S. ranked number 31.
As expected, the top four countries were the Scandinavian countries (Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden respectively), followed by New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, Ireland, Philippines and Lesotho.
Of course none of those countries achieved complete parity, but many of these countries—like Lesotho and South Africa—made significant jumps from the previous year. Many of the women’s groups in Lesotho attribute the improved gender parity to the commitments the government has made to advancing women’s rights, including signing onto CEDAW and the rights of the child, as well as domestic legislation, such as compulsory education for all boys and girls and legal rights for women to own land.
Overall, the report found that 67% of the countries are improving their gender equality, while 33% are getting worse. One area that has really minimized the gap has been in education, but where major gaps still remain is in political empowerment.
In the United States, we have only 17 percent of women in Congress and 83 percent men, which puts the U.S. at number 70 in terms of women’s political representation. Many African countries and India fare higher because they have policies on women’s political participation, such as quotas.
Furthermore, I think we need to rethink not just gender equality, but the game in general. We may strive for equal rights but oftentimes in a very masculinized society. In the U.S. women’s individual rights are guaranteed, but this is a hyper masculine country where the notion of women’s equality is basically that women get to be just like men, like we get to join the military.
We have to ask ourselves: are we willing to play on the same playing field or are do we need to re-imagine the game entirely?
