This document summarizes a lecture on gender equity and citizenship given by Dr. Carolina Matos. It discusses topics like gender inequality based on UN and World Bank data, developments in closing gender gaps in areas like education, persistent patterns of inequality, challenges to achieving equality, definitions of discrimination, criticisms of universal citizenship, the role of women in politics worldwide, and rankings of countries on gender equality. It provides facts, figures, and analyses issues through discussions and quotes from various scholars and reports.

1. Dr. Carolina Matos
Lecturer in Sociology
Department of Sociology
City University London
Gender equity and citizenship

2. Core issues
 Gender inequality in the 21st
century: facts and figures
 World Development Report 2012 (The World Bank): developments
and persistent patterns of inequality
 Challenges to gender equality
 The gender and equality debate in the UN
 UN Conventions on gender equality and elimination of all forms of
discrimination
 Defining discrimination
 Criticisms to a universal definition of citizenship
 Gender politics and the rise of female leaders
 Seminar questions and conclusions

3. Gender inequality in the 21st
century
 UN Women 2014 priority is the implementation of the Millennium
Development Goals, including access and participation of women and
girls to education, training, science and technology, including
women’s full employment.
 * According to Womenkind Worldwide, women make up just 17% of
parliamentarians (Unicef, the State of the World’s Children, 2007)
 * Violence against women and girls is still a serious problem: at least
1 in 3 women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or
abused
 * The 2014 PwC’s second Women in Work Index underlined that the
UK lags behind most European countries on gender pay equality,
occupying the 18th
position out of 27 OECD countries for female
participation and pay.

4. Developments in closing gender gaps -World
Development Report 2012 – The World Bank
 What have been some of the achievements of the last decades?:
 Gender gaps in primary education have closed in most countries of the
world. In secondary education, these have been reversed in many
countries, including Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia
 Girls now outperform boys in secondary schools in 45 countries, and
there are more women going to universities than men in 60 countries
 Since the 1980’s, women are living longer than men in all parts of the
world
 Over half a billion women have joined the world’s labour force over
the last 30 years due to the rise in women’s participation in paid work
in most of the developing world
 Others include increasing growth of women leaders in politics and
government, businesses and in the other traditional male areas (i.e.
media)

5. Persistent patterns of gender inequality*
 Gender disparities have persisted throughout the world, and include:
 1) Unequal access to economic opportunities – Women are more likely than
men to work as unpaid family labourers and in the informal sector, also work in
smaller firms as entrepreneurs
 2) Disparities in girl’s schooling – The lower enrolment for girls in primary
and secondary education is a still a problem in Sub-Saharan countries and parts
of South Asia.
 3) Excess deaths of girls and women – Females are more likely to die in many
low and middle-income countries than in the richer countries
 4) Differences in voice in households and society – In many countries women
have less say over decisions and less control over resources. They also
participate less in formal politics and are underrepresented in the upper ranks
of all sectors of society, including in business, academic, and governments.
 * in World Development Report, 2012

6. Challenges to gender equality: understanding progress
and barriers
 Gender equality matters. Why?:
 Because it enhances productivity and improves development outcomes
for the next generation
 It can also make institutions more representative of a range of voices
(World Development Report, 2012)
 Despite being a worldwide problem, gender inequality manifests itself
more persistently in poor societies with strong anti-female bias (Sen,
1999, 194-195).
 Sen (1999) sees a correlation between high levels of education for
women and employment with the reduction of fertility rates, decreasing
mortality rates of children.
 I.e. Countries with basic gender inequality – India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, China, Iran, West Asia and North Africa – often have
higher female mortality of infants and children (Sen, 1999).

7. Equality and democracy: why does it matter?*
 Historical perspectives:
 Political equality started to emerge in the 17th
century as a challenge to
hereditary monarchs
 The 19th
century saw battles for universal suffrage and against the
property qualifications of citizenship
 Democracies hold a thin promise of political equality and popular
participation, but, as many scholars note, no country in the world has
managed to live up fully to its ideals (i.e. Blaug and Schwarzmantel,
2000)
 I.e. Similarly to the struggles of the African-American civil rights
movements in the US in the 1960’s, voting rights were only conceded
to women with a lot of reluctance in the first half of the 20th
century,
and some as late as 1960
 * Philips (1999)

8. Equality and democracy: why does it matter?*
 From J. S. Mill to Habermas:
 Relationship between democracy, equality, and social inclusion:
 The quality of democratic decision-making depends on sustained
conditions of dialogue, deliberation and talk
 There has also been a rejection of an understanding of political equality
as merely the right to vote
 Notable, the underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities
threatens the democratic vitality of democratic decision-making.
 Thus democratic struggle is above all about expanding the space for
the inclusion of a wider citizen body, avoiding exclusions based on
property, gender, race or ethnicity
 * Philips (1999) and Matos (2012)

9. Women’s rights and the relationship between
economic and political equality
 Philips (1999, 16) sees an important relationship between political and
economic equality
 The author views the pursuit of economic equality as having been
abandoned, whilst there has been a growth in concerns with political
and civil rights and of egalitarianism
 Here political equality is understood not only as the right to participate
in politics, but includes a deeper notion of equal intrinsic worth;
whereas economic equality is understood as the equality in income,
wealth and life-chances.
 Thus political equality is understood in a broader sense, as
encompassing social or cultural equality.
 However, it can be argued that the pursuit of wider economic equality
has returned to global agenda

10. The gender and equity debate in the UN:
historical perspectives
 The United Nations has been instrumental in the recognition of the
importance of women’s rights and gender equality
 Late 1960’s and 1970’s – The UN’s Commission on the Status of
Women (CSW) produced two important documents, the Declaration
on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (DEDAW,
1967) and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW, 1979)
 Documents set new standards with which to measure progress in how
governments engaged with women and gave them a template to follow.
 CEDAW – spelled out for the first time what discrimination against
women meant
 In the 1970s, there was a shift to the UN conferences, with four UN
conferences on women creating new energy for an emerging second
wave of the women’s movement (in Jain, 2005)

11. Setting the stage for the gender equality
internationally: the UN debates
 “Women at the UN were able to have a significant impact on the
founding principles of the world body in its early years because of their
decades of experience as activists in freedom struggles, peace
movements, political forums and trade unions.”
 Latin American women had an important role in shaping the language
of women’s rights in the UN’s founding documents due to their
experience with the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW)
 In the League of Nations, women from Latin America had asked the
body to draft an equal rights treaty and place it on the agenda of the
assembly.
 The IACW was the first intergovernmental body devoted to women’s
issues, established in 1928 at the Sixth International Conference of
American States in Cuba (Jain, 2005, 13-15)

12. UN Women: Gender equality champions
 “Men and boys have to see women not as competitors, but as partners.
Society is like being in space. It is about being part of a crew. All are
equally important.” (http://www.unwomen.org/en)

13. The UN and women’s rights*
 The UN inscribed equality between men and women into its founding
texts, creating a separate human rights body exclusively for women
 After being founded in 1945, the UN advocated that women be given
full political suffrage worldwide.
 In 1952, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on Political
Rights for Women, in order to implement the principle of equality of
rights contained in the Charter of the United Nations.
 A View from the South - From 1956 to 1963, the new member states
admitted to the UN were developing countries. Women who
represented the developing countries also struggled against the colonial
rule.
 Equality for women became transposed into the debates on
development. * (Jain, 2005)

14. Advancing women’s rights and recognition of
gender discrimination worldwide*
 In 1950, the CSW began working with other agencies to collect data
about employed women and to strategize about how to improve work
opportunities and create policies that would result in equal pay
 The commission’s research over two decades outlined the problems,
mainly that women around the world faced inequality and
discrimination in education and employment.
 In 1967, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the
Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (DEDAW).
 Discrimination was perceived to be based on “difference”, as is the
case of religious or ethnic minorities, stigmatized groups or those for
reasons of class differentiation are deprived of opportunities for
advancement.
 Discrimination was seen as the key barrier to enhancing women’s
status. *(Jain, 2005)

15. Gender discrimination
 There were later concerns on issues such as family laws, bias against
single women and heads of households, many ideas which were picked
up and entered the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women in 1979.
 Reeves and Baden (2000, 7), from the Institute of Development
Studies, have defined discrimination as being “the systematic,
unfavourable treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender,
which denies them rights, opportunities or resources.”
 Some analysts see equality and non-discrimination as formulations
of the same principle. Achievement of equality thus meant the removal
of discriminatory treatment of women vis-à-vis men
 As Reeves and Baden (2007) further note, women’s lack of
representation and voice in decision making bodies in the community
perpetuates discrimination, in terms of access to public services, among
others

16. Gender discrimination worldwide: facts and
figures
 Facts and figures adapted from Oxfam (Institute of Development
Studies):
 * Women work 67% of the world’s working hours
 * Two out of three of the world’s illiterate people are women
 * Globally women make up just 10% of representatives in national
governments
 Gender discrimination in social institutions occurs in both developed as
well as developing countries
 The Atlas of Gender and Development – How Social Norms Affect
Gender Equality in non-OECD countries (2010) provides some
differences between regions, with very high gender discrimination as in
South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, and lower levels
in East Asia and Pacific and Latin America.

17. Gender discrimination and rigid gender roles: the
roots of inequality
 What stands in the way of women being equal to men? BBC News
(March 26th
, 2014)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayj9EVc2ZLI)

18. But, after all, are we all equal?: criticisms to the
universal view of citizenship
 Criticisms to universal definitions of citizenship:
 According to scholars like Philips (2010) and Young (1990) , the
problem with looking for a core humanity behind all the differences of
class, gender and so forth leads to equating equality with sameness,
leaving untouched inequalities in power.
 Iris Marion Young in Justice and Difference has argued for the need to
“acknowledge our differences but also to highlight our similarities as
human beings who behave justly to members of all races.” (in Matos,
2012, 147)
 Defence of affirmative action to correct past historical injustices and
discrimination, or equal opportunities policies
 The possibility of producing a de-colonized, post-colonial knowledge
in development studies became the subject of much debate during the
1990s

19. Gender politics and electoral systems: women in politics
worldwide (in Norris, 1993; Matos, 2012)
 As Lovenduski (in Norris, 1993) argues, during the 1960s and 1970s
many second wave feminists were cynical about political institutions
and electoral politics
 During the 1980s, support for getting more women into politics grew.
Feminists started to become active members of political parties.
 Rise of female leadership in Latin America with the re-
democratization phase:
 Panama elected a woman president in 2003, Mireya Moscoso (1999-
2004), and soon afterwards Chile and Argentina followed by electing
the former president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010) and Cristina
Kirchner (2007), wife of previous president Nestor Kirchner (2003-
2007) and Dilma Rousseff.

20. Gender politics and electoral systems: women in
politics worldwide (in Norris, 1993; Matos, 2012)
 As Norris et al (1993) note, women have made demands on political
parties since the issue of female suffrage was first raised.
 Women’s issues were brought to the political agenda, and these have
included demands for policies to secure sex equality in employment,
equality in childcare, reproductive rights and family policies.
 One of their main aims has been to secure changes in attitudes
 As the authors note, demands for women’s representation have ben
quite successful in Scandinavia.
 In Norway, the challenge to attitudes was particularly successful, who
were pioneers in advocating the integration of women into the existing
party structure.
 I.e. At least 40% of the members of every Norwegian
Government since 1986 have been women.

21. Gender politics and electoral systems: women in
politics worldwide (in Norris, 1993; Matos, 2012)
 The gains made during the 1970s and 80s were a result of a large
mobilization of women
 I.e. Feminists who entered the Italian parties, such as the Democratic
Left, were active in forcing the implementation of party initiatives
favouring women’s concerns. This happened also with British Labour
Party and the German Social Democratic party during the 1980s.
 What were some of the demands?:
 Parties were put under pressure to promote policies to attract women
voters, to recruit women members, to promote women into key
positions in the party organization and to nominate women candidates.
 Party programmes have expanded to include policies on equal
opportunities and reproductive rights
 Positive action and mandatory quotas

22. Forbes 2014 Power Women list
Final rank Category Last name First Name
1st
Politics Merkel Angela
4th
Politics Rousseff Dilma
6th
Entertainment Clinton Hillary
8th
Politics Obama Michelle
19th
Politics Kirchner Cristina
25th
Politics Bachelet Michelle
35th
Politics Queen Elizabeth
50th
Entertainment Jolie Angelina
52nd
Media Huffington Arianna

23. The countries where gender equality has advanced -
Gender equality Index: World Economic Forum
 The Global Gender Gap Index 2012
 According to the report, out of the 111 countries covered in 2006-2012,
88% have improved in their performance, while 12% have widening
gaps.
 In some countries, progress is occurring slow, regardless of whether
they are starting out near the top or the bottom of the rankings, and
independent of their income.
 Countries such as Iceland, Bolivia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia,
Lesotho, Yemen and others have made much progress relative to their
own situation in 2006
 Latin America has also made some progress: surveys have shown that
women’s economic participation increased significantly in the 1990s,
as did political participation, but women still face higher levels of
unemployment than men.

24. The Global Gender Gap Index 2012
Iceland 1
Finland 2
Norway 3
Sweden 4
Ireland 5
New Zealand 6
Denmark 7
Phillipines 8
Nicaragua 9
Switzerland 10
Netherlands 11
Belgium 12
Germany 13

25. How to achieve wider gender equality*
 The need to tackle persistent patterns of inequalities and
discrimination:
 * Income growth by itself does not deliver greater gender equality by
itself. Where gender gaps have closed, it is because of how markets
and have functioned and evolved (i.e. opening new employment
opportunities for women)
 * Gender gaps persist where girls and women face other disadvantages,
such as in poorer countries. These disparities are larger when poverty
combines with other forms of exclusion, such as ethnicity and class
 * Markets, institutions and households can combine to limit progress.
Gender gaps in productivity are driven by deep-seated gender
differences in time use, in rights of ownership, etc.
 * Globalization can help, connecting women to markets and economic
opportunities (* World Development Report 2012 – The World Bank)

26. Conclusions and questions for thought
 Women have come a long way since gaining political rights and the
vote, but various forms of discrimination and traditional attitudes
persist worldwide
 What are the barriers still for wider gender inequality?
 What can we learn from the experiences of the countries that have been
successful?
 How can we help the countries that have been less?
 How can women change social institutions and attitudes?
 Gender quotas in political parties have helped women advance, but
there are limits
 Female bosses does not directly translate either in more opportunities
for women in the workplace

27. Seminar questions
 I. Choose one of the questions and discuss it briefly with your
neighbour. Prepare yourself to answer these in the end of the next
session.
 1. Examine the relationship between gender discrimination and
equality. What are the links and why does equality matter?
 2. What have been some of the successes that we have in the world
today? How far have we come? Think of examples
 3. What are the challenges still to gender equality and citizenship?
Think of a particular country to focus on and discuss what it has
achieved in the last decades and what are the roadblocks that exist now
that prevent further gender advancement in the future?

28. Selected bibliography
 Jain, D. (2005) Women, development and the UN – a 60 year quest for
equality and justice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
 Lovenduski, J. and Norris, P. (1993) Gender and party politics,
London: Sage Publications
 Matos, C. (2012) Media and politics in Latin America: globalization,
democracy and identity, London: I.B. Tauris
 Philips, A. (1999) Which equalities matter?, London: Polity Press
 Sen, A. (1999, 2001) Development as Freedom, Oxford Paperbacks
 Young, I. (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton Press
 Reports
 The Atlas of Gender and Development – How Social Norms Affect
Gender Equality in non-OECD countries (2010)
 The Global Gender Gap Index and World Development Report 2012 –
The World Bank