Gender biases not improved over past decade, UNDP report

• Inequality has remained stagnant in last decade
• Nearly 90% of men, women hold fundamental biases against women
• Education gap-income link no longer valid

Gender inequality has remained stagnant for a decade, according to research by the United Nations, as cultural biases and pressures continue to hinder women’s empowerment and leave the world unlikely to meet the UN’s goal of gender parity by 2030.
Despite a surge in women’s rights groups and social movements like Time’s Up and MeToo , biased social norms and a broader human-development crisis heightened by COVID-19, when many women lost their income, have stalled progress on inequality.

In its latest report, the United Nations Development Programme tracked the issue through its Gender Social Norms Index— which takes into account political, economic, education and physical integrity metrics and uses data from the international research programme World Values Survey (WVS). The survey draws from data sets spanning 2010-2014 and 2017–2022 from countries and territories covering 85% of the global population.

The index shows “no improvement in biases against women in a decade,” the UNDP said.

Among both men and women, “biased gender social norms are prevalent worldwide: almost 90% of people have at least one bias” among the seven analyzed by the United Nations Development Program.

These prejudices “are widespread among men and women suggesting that these biases are deeply embedded and influences both men and women to similar degrees,” the report says.

For example, 69% of the world’s population still believes that men make better political leaders than women, and only 27% believe that it is essential for democracy that women have the same rights as men.

Nearly half the population (46%) believes that men have more right to a job, and 43% that men make better business leaders.
A quarter of the population also think it justifiable for a man to beat his wife, and 28% believe that university is more important for men.
Prejudices create “hurdles” for women and are “manifested in a dismantling of women’s rights in many parts of the world,” the report said.
“Without tackling biased gender social norms, we will not achieve gender equality or the Sustainable Development Goals,” it said.

The lack of progress on gender biases comes as the U.N. also reports declining human development metrics in general, linked in particular to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Social norms that impair women’s rights are also detrimental to society more broadly, dampening the expansion of human development,” Pedro Conceicao, director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, said in a statement.

“Everyone stands to gain from ensuring freedom and agency for women,” he said.

The report  available  here .