Philippines closes gender gap in health, education

By Patricia Lourdes Viray (philstar.com), October 26, 2016

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines’ gender gap on the subindex of health and survival remains fully closed while it has re-closed the educational attainment subindex, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2016 published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday.

The country has fully closed its gender gap on health and survival since 2006 while it re-closed its educational attainment gap which re-opened slightly last year.

The Philippines remains the highest performer in the East Asia and Pacific region with an overall rank of 7 (0.786) out of 144 countries.

“The Philippines and New Zealand maintain their overall Index top ten rankings on the back of strong scores on closing the Political Empowerment gender gap and despite the Philippines’ small decline on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex,” the report said.

Manila ranked 21st in the economic participation and opportunity subindex with a score of 0.780 due to fewer female legislators, senior officials and managers.

Meanwhile, the Philippines ranked 17th in political empowerment with a score of 0.386.

“Existing data benchmarking women’s economic leadership roles is uneven in coverage and more should be done to fill existing gaps in knowledge,” the report read.

According to the report, average female representation on boards is 14 percent. Only five countries have broken the 30 percent participation threshold — Iceland, Norway, France, Latvia and Finland.

“Notable performers include the Philippines, China, Nicaragua, Bahamas, Botswana, Sweden and Brazil,” the report said.

The report said that the closing of the economic gender gap ranges from 47 to 1,951 years with “current rates of change across world regions.”

Western Europe has the fastest-closing economic gender gap predicted at 47 years. Eastern Europe and Central Asia, however, have slower rates of change predicted at 93 years.

As for East Asia and the Pacific, the WEF predicts a closing of the economic gender gap at 111 years.

The top ten countries in the global index are: Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, Ireland, the Philippines, Slovenia, New Zealand and Nicaragua.

The rankings in the Global Gender Index are designed to create global awareness of the challenges posed by gender gap and the opportunities created by reducing them.

“The Index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, education, health and political criteria, and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups,” the World Economic Forum said.