THE STATUS OF WOMEN AT A GLANCE

THE STATUS OF WOMEN AT A GLANCE

"Women have not achieved equality with men in any country.
Of the world's 1.3 billion poor people, it is estimated that nearly 70% are women.
Between 75 and 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are women and children.
Women's life expectancy, educational attainment and income are highest in Sweden, Canada, Norway, USA, and Finland.
The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, resulted in agreement by 189 delegations on a five-year plan to enhance the social, economic and political empowement of women. Over 100 countries have announced new initiatives to further the advancement of women as a result
The 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, often described as a Bill of Rights for Women, has now been ratified by 154 countries.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

The first country to grant women the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893.
Only 24 women have been elected heads of state or government in this century.
In early 1995, Sweden formed the world's first cabinet to have equal numbers of men and women.
Of the 185 highest-ranking diplomats to the United Nations, seven are women.
The percentage of female cabinet ministers worldwide has doubled in the last decade, from 3.4 in 1987 to 6.8% in 1996.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION

Of the world's nearly one billion illiterate adults, two-thirds are women.
Two-thirds of the 130 million children worldwide who are not in school are girls.
During the past two decades the combined primary and secondary enrollment ratio for girls in developing countries increased from 38% to 78%.

WOMEN AND THE ECONOMY

The majority of women earn on average about three-fourths of the pay of males for the same work, outside of the agricultural sector, in both developed and developing countries.
In most countries, women work approximately twice the unpaid time men do; and women make up 31% of the official labour force in developing countries; 46.7% worldwide.
Rural women produce more than 55% of all food grown in developing countries.
The value of women's unpaid housework and community work is estimated at between 10-35 percent of GDP worldwide, amounting to $11 trillion in 1993.
Women hold 35.1% of professional posts in the UN Secretari, 17.9 % in senior management.

WOMEN AND POPULATION

Women outlive men in almost every country; yet there are slightly fewer women than men in the world -- 98.6 women for 100 men.
Out-of-marriage births have increased more than 50 percent in the last 20 years in developed countries and one in every four households in the world is now headed by a woman.
The life expectancy of women has gone up. In 1992, the average woman lived to be 62.9 years in developing countries up from 53.7 years in 1970. In industrialized countries, women's average life expectancy in 1992 was 79.4 years, up from 74.2 in 1970.

Women and Health

An estimated 20 million unsafe abortions are performed worldwide every year, resulting in the deaths of 70,000 women.
Approximately 585,000 women die every year, over 1,600 every day, from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 13 women will die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes, compared to 1 in 3,300 women in the United States.
Globally, 43 % of all women and 51% of pregnant women suffer from iron-deficiency anemia."

SOURCE: Women's International Network News; Autumn98, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p14, 1p

Categories