Bangladesh ahead of India, Pakistan

Bangladesh is ahead of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan in terms of gender equity in South Asia, according to the Gender Equity Index (GEI) 2012 report.

The GEI 2012 was released by Social Watch, a Manila-based civil society network, ahead of the International Women’s Day.

According to the ranking of the index, Bangladesh has got 55 points while India 37, Pakistan 29, and Afghanistan 15.

The GEI prepared annually measures the gap between women and men in education, economic and political empowerment. It is an average of inequalities in the three fields.

In literacy, it examines the gender gap in enrolment at all levels. Economic participation computes the gaps in income and employment; empowerment measures the gaps in highly qualified jobs, parliament and senior executive positions.

Bangladesh’s 55 points rank it on the top among those countries with very low GEI, although 16 points above the South Asian average of 39, while the Maldives’s got 63 and Sri Lanka 62 points.

The five levels according to which the index measures the gender gap are: critical, very low, low, medium and acceptable.

Bangladesh got 81 points for reaching a medium value in education, 18 points for critical value in empowerment and 65 in economic participation.

At a world level, the countries that have achieved a better score are Norway with 89 points, Finland 88 points, and Iceland 87, which places them as countries with a medium in GEI.

Of the 154 nations measured, five in the worst global situation are Congo 29, Niger 26, Chad 25, Yemen 24 and Afghanistan 15.

Social Watch measures the gap between women and men, not their wellbeing. Thus, a country in which young men and women have equal access to the university receives a value of 100 on this particular indicator.

In the same manner, a country in which boys and girls are equally barred from completing primary education would also be awarded a value of 100.

Source: Daily Star