A recent UN study suggests that 90% of people are biased against women.
As per the Gender Norms Index, released by UNDP a few days back, it was revealed that almost all the population (regardless of gender) holds a bias against women, despite decades of trying to achieve equality.
The study which contains data from 75 countries, showed that while the condition for women is improving in some, there are some countries where the situation is worsening.
According to Pedro Conceicao, Head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, “We have come a long way in recent decades to ensure that women have the same access to life’s basic needs as men. We have reached parity in primary school enrollment and reduced maternal mortality by 45% since the year 1990. But, gender gaps are still all too obvious in other areas, particularly those that challenge power relations and are most influential in actually achieving true equality. Today. the fight about gender equality is a story of bias and prejudices.”
Further exploring the report, the BBC stated that the study concluded that there is no country where there is gender equality. What’s more shocking is that one-third of men believe there’s no problem in hitting their partners. It also named Zimbabwe as having the highest gender bias with only 0.27% being impartial and Andorra has the lowest with 72% had no bias against a gender.
It’s fairly demotivating to see that despite the rising awareness of gender equality, we still don’t subscribe to the idea. This shows that the seeds of inequality have been sowed into our minds for centuries and it’s will take a long time for us to become sensitised on the issue.