Global Perspective-(1129)- Individual Report

Candidate Name: Anushka Bahorey

Candidate Number: 0003
Center name: Singapore International School, Mumbai
Center Number: IN605
Topic: Employment

Sub topic: ‘Lack of Rights: Gender inequality’

Research Questions:”Does gender inequality affect career opportunities?”

Introduction:

Gender inequality refers to when people aren't treated equally due to their gender.
”In one voice the world declared human rights as women’s rights and women’s rights are
human’s rights…”-Hillary Clinton 1995
Approximately ¾th of the world faces gender inequality. 2.4 billion women are not offered the
same job opportunities as men with the same qualifications. This is a common phenomenon
occurring in more than 95 countries where women are not paid the same salary as the men with
the same jobs.(The World Bank 2022)
This research is an opportunity for me to learn more about the disparity in career opportunities
among young adults

Causes and Consequences:

Gender inequality occurs due to the mindset that men are more superior than women and they are
the ones who can bring a stable income to the family. Thus they are given more privilege and the
girl child is taken for granted.
People in countries such as Finland and Belgium stereotype jobs such as household chores to the
women and jobs in STEM companies to the men. Companies such Mclaren have 66 race team
members out of which only 5 are women.(ESPN 2021)

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81% of women are sexually assaulted and most of them are scared and afraid to go out in public
because they think it can easily happen again, thus never working again. (National Center for
Transgender Equality) Additionally , they often fear the inevitable rejection and judgment of the
society where more often than not , it is somehow believed to be the fault of the victim.

Global Perspective:

Countries have started to take initiatives to help reduce gender inequality, however each country
has its own view on the issue.
In Sweden 82% of the people are in favor of increasing the gender equality status, imposingly,
29% of Hungarians believe so (Pew Research Center 2019). The Swedish company ‘IKEA’ has
implemented a 50:50 gender ratio. (IKEA Promoting Gender Equity)
Germany scored 68.6 points out of 100 for the gender inequality index of 2021, which shows
improvement in the gender gap but it's still not enough. There are 8% of female employees in
key positions whereas there are 91% of male employees.(EIGE)
You can imagine, if the ratio for two countries is so high, then what would it have been
worldwide?

National Perspective:
Indian people call women ‘laxmi’ to whom they pray to for good wealth but outside home they
are not even given opportunities to work. Most people in India believe that girls have no future
whereas the boys do and that's why they are sent to school. Women further experience this in the
workplace: where most men are the leaders and the women aren’t.
Girls in India face many problems and threats and are at a higher risk of child marriage, sexual
abuse and violence than boys are. Estimates suggest that 20% of the women in the age group of
20-24 were married before the age of 18.( The Economic Times 2022)
Bobby, an Assamese woman, talked about her struggle of being transgender in India. Moving to
Delhi made her acknowledge who she really was. There she started a group for people like her
who aren’t accepted by their families. People in most home-towns have strong beliefs that only
two genders exist. Even though Bobby was accepted by her family she couldn't live with them

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since the neighborhood outcast-ed her. Powering through this, she now has a respectful job and
practically almost being accepted in society. (YCL Cube 2020)
With India being my home country, I would like to see them respecting women as citizens.

Source Evaluation:
I mostly used secondary sources for my information, one of which being UNICEF, a world-
renowned organization. This website provided reliable information since the information was
cited along with their sources which had more facts rather than opinions. International Labour
Organization included data charts and graphs which when analyzed, helped get more accurate
and specific information. These graphs contained data from multiple years which when
compared helped me to get accurate information.
However, some of the websites I found gave biased and invalid information and thus I couldn’t
use them.
Overall, the information that I got was reliable and accurate to the topic.

Course of Action:

Countries have started to realize that gender inequality is a great issue and thus have taken many
initiatives to help improve this situation and have equality in their country.
In 2018 Iceland added a new law, stating that the wages of both men and women should be fair
wherever they worked, however people disobeying this law would be fined daily.(ACLU 2018)
More than 70 countries in the world now have a woman serving as a president or a prime
minister. (Pew Research Center 2023)
eg:United Kingdom, India and Argentina.
Programmes such as ‘Working Women Hostel’ has been set up by the Indian Government to
ensure the safety of working women so they feel more safe..(Press Information Bureau 2021)
Personally, in the future to help this situation I would like to conduct seminars to inform other
people about this issue.

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Personal Perspective & Conclusion:
The similarity between national and global perspective is, all the countries mentioned face severe
gender inequality issues on an average.

Before researching, I wasn’t quite aware that the situation of inequality was so dreadful and so
out of control. This report changed my whole perspective on this topic. During my research I
realized that the majority of the world employees men rather than women, there is a 25%
difference between them. (ILO 2017)
Personally, I believe that the more girls that get educated the more of them get employed which
would help reduce the percentage gap between the two genders.
Increasing participation in such programs that promote girl child education will help reduce
gender inequality in the future.This inequality isn’t only faced in LEDCs countries but also in
MEDCs which should make us humans realize that something has to be done to solve this issue.

Word Count:990(with in-text citations)

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Bibliography:

● ACLU. “12 Things Other Countries Have Done to Promote Gender Equity | News &
Commentary.” American Civil Liberties Union, 13 Aug. 2018,
www.aclu.org/news/womens-rights/12-things-other-countries-have-done-promote-
gender-equity. -Accessed 7 November 2022
● Albekov, Karim. “IKEA Promoting Gender Equity.” AIM2Flourish,
aim2flourish.com/innovations/ikea-promoting-gender-equity#:~:text=This%20was
%20clearly%20not%20in. -Accessed 10 November 2022
● Chauhan, Tuba. “Global Gender Gap Report 2022: India Ranks 135 out of 146, Slips
Drastically in Health and Survival.” Feminism in India, 28 July 2022,
feminisminindia.com/2022/07/29/global-gender-gap-report-2022-india-ranks-135-out-of-
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● Clancy, Laura, and Sarah Austin. “Fewer than a Third of UN Member States Have Ever
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tank/2023/03/28/women-leaders-around-the-world/. -Accessed 16 January 2023
● Clinton, Hillary Rodham. “Read Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Women’s Rights” Speech
from 1995.” The Atlantic, 1 Sept. 2020,
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rights-speech/615733/. -Accessed 4 January 2023
● EIGE. “Germany.” European Institute for Gender Equality,
eige.europa.eu/countries/germany. -Accessed 4 January 2023
● ESPN. “The Women Who Power F1: Engineers, Mechanics and Directors on Their Role
in Changing a Man’s World.” ESPN, 11 Mar. 2021,
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mechanics-directors-their-role-changing-man-world. -Accessed 7 November 2022
● ILO. “The Gender Gap in Employment: What’s Holding Women Back?” Www.ilo.org,
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2017, www.ilo.org/infostories/en-GB/Stories/Employment/barriers-women#global-gap.
-Accessed 7 February 2023

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● Kulshreshtha, Yash. “Transgender Studies: An India Case Study.” YLCube, 26 July 2020,
ylcube.com/l/blog-posts/blogs-collection-0/2020/07/26/transgender-studies-india-case-
study/. -Accessed 12 November 2022
● Nation center for Transgender Equality. “Employment.” National Center for
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%20violations. -Accessed 19 February 2023
● Poushter, Jacob, and Janell Fetterolf. “2. How People around the World View Gender
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equality-in-their-countries/.-Accessed 21 February 2023
● Press Information Bureau. “Initiatives by Government for Reducing Gender Gap in All
Aspects of Social, Economic and Political Life.” Pib.gov.in, 25 Mar. 2021,
pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1707475. -Accessed 16 March 2023
● The Economic Times. “Child Marriage: 20% of Women in 20-24 Age Group Married
before the Age of 18, Report Finds.” The Economic Times, 22 Dec. 2022,
economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/child-marriage-20-of-women-in-20-24-age-
group-married-before-the-age-of-18-report-finds/articleshow/96416424.cms.
-Accessed 14 March 2023
● UNICEF. “Gender Equality.” Www.unicef.org,
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%20of%20gender. -Accessed 27 January 2023
● World Bank. “Nearly 2.4 Billion Women Globally Don’t Have Same Economic Rights as
Men.” World Bank, 1 Mar. 2022,
www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/03/01/nearly-2-4-billion-women-
globally-don-t-have-same-economic-rights-as-men. -Accessed 7 January 2023

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