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Introduction
The World Economic Forum's Global
Gender Gap Index (GGI) is a problem, because people take it seriously.
For example, Bettina Arndt's commendable article on the "Domestic
Violence Industry" takes at face value (at paragraph six) the
GGI's categorisation of the Swedes as "world-leaders in gender
equality". As another example, an article by two Melbourne Acadfemics*
on "How
Feminism Became a Dirty Word in South Korea" also takes at
face value (at paragraph four) the GGI's ranking of South Korea as 115th
out of 149 countries on Gender Equality in 2018. However,
the GGI has no intelligent theoretical basis and careful examination
reveals that it is a scam based on a Feminist lie.
(NOTE: While drafting this
article, I initially created the term Acadfemic/Acadfemia
by mistake, as a typographical error, but I have decided to retain and
deliberately introduce it as a term meaning "a pseudo-academic
Feminist/the pseudo-academic Feminist ecosystem".)
Gender Indices
In my book, Sex, Lies & Feminism,
there is a discussion (in the chapter on the
United Nations) of two previous international gender indices: the
initial GDI (Gender-related Development Index) and the later GEM ( Gender
Empowerment Measure). The GDI was purely an adaptation of an already
extant United Nations index -- the HDI (Human Development Index). The
HDI gives a country a relative development ranking according to the
income, life expectancy, and adult literacy of their citizens, and according
to the numbers of people enrolled in their education system.
The GDI similarly gives countries a ranking according to relative
male and female income, life expectancy, adult literacy, and numbers
enrolled in educational institutions. Of course, "life expectancy" is
the odd man out here, because women have a greater life expectancy than
men, so it would never have appeared in a Feminist index of this sort
in the normal course of events. So the later GEM did away with life
expectancy as a factor. The GEM compares men and women according to
the number of seats held by them in parliament, their proportions in
the administrative/managerial and professional/technical employment
categories, and their relative incomes.
Lack of Transparency in the Global Gender Gap
Index (GGI)
There are three main problems with the Global Gender Gap Index and
they are linked. The first problem is a lack of transparency about its
methodology. The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 ("the 2020 Report"),
for example, has an Appendix B which is about methodology, but it is
a mere 13 pages long, out of a total report length of a whopping 371
pages -- i.e. a mere 3.5% of the total! The closest the 2020 Report
comes to explaining how the indicators are chosen is the following passage:
There are three basic concepts underlying the Global Gender
Gap Index, forming the basis of how indicators were chosen, how the
data is (sic) treated and how the scale can be used. First, the index
focuses on measuring gaps rather than levels. Second, it captures
gaps in outcome variables rather than gaps in input variables. Third,
it ranks countries according to gender equality rather than women's
empowerment (page 45).
This leaves unexplained why the four particular subindexes (Economic
Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival
and Political Empowerment) and their constituent indicators were chosen
and other potential subindexes and indicators were ignored or rejected.
The GGI seems to consist of an approximate merger of the indicators
in the GGI's forerunners -- the GDI and GEM -- which may make the GGI
politically easier for World leaders to accept, but does not constitute
any sort of theoretical justification.
Political Bias
in the Global Gender Gap Index
This lack of transparency was clearly caused by a second problem.
The GGI (following in the footsteps of the GEM) is based on indicators
which have (at best) been chosen arbitrarily, or -- even worse -- have
been chosen for their compatibility with the Feminist agenda of demonstrating
that women (but not men) are disadvantaged. Obviously, there was no
consultation with Men's Rights Activists, who might have suggested subindexes
such as Treatment by the Legal System (with
indicators relating to Family Law, Criminal
Law, and Reproduction Rights) and Protection
from Danger (with indicators relating to Military
Conscription, Workplace Injury/Death
and Police-Inflicted Harm). Men's Rights
Activists would also have made a lot of suggestions about the actual
indicators chosen within the four current subindexes. However, I do
not intend to get into that amount of detail in the present article.
There has clearly been a political process here, which has resulted
in intellectual confusion. Some relatively conservative social scientists
(i.e. economists) at the World Economic Forum have tried to incorporate
Feminist dogma into what is supposed to be an objective, quasi-scientific
framework. In other words, they have tried to fit a square peg into
a round hole. The nature of the personnel involved in creating the GGI
sheds light on this situation. The
Global Gender Gap Report 2006 ("the 2006 Report") published
the original conception of the GGI, which has remained unchanged since
then (according to page 45 of the 2020 Report). In the 2006 Report we
can see the names and agendas of the people involved. Two of the three
authors are women and one of these women, Saadia Zahidi, is described
as the Head of the Women Leaders Programme, which appears to be part
of the World Economic Forum itself. So we can see that there is a strong
Feminist political bias at the heart of the GGI, which has likely resulted
in a push for the GGI to be compatible with the Feminist agenda of demonstrating
that women (but not men) are disadvantaged.
Apparent Intellectual Confusion in the Global
Gender Gap Index
This Feminist political bias has also caused another problem: incoherence.
The GGI is not purely an academic exercise, but is also, in fact, a
guide to action:
The country comparisons are meant to serve a dual purpose: as
a benchmark to identify existing strengths and weaknesses: and as
a useful guide for policy, based on learning from the experiences
of those countries that have had greater success in promoting the
equality of women and men" (2006 Report, page 3).
As I pointed out in relation to the GDI, women generally have a greater
life expectancy than men, so the factor "life expectancy" would never
have appeared in a Feminist index of this sort in the normal course
of events. However, whatever the political process was that led the
World Economic Forum to decide on its subindexes and indicators, the
Feminists have apparently not managed to eliminate it from the GGI.
Here it appears in the form of the indicator, "Healthy life expectancy."
Governments routinely have a Ministry for Women (New Zealand), a Ministry
of Women's Affairs (Afghanistan), or a Federal Ministry of Women Affairs
(Nigeria), and so on, but equivalent ministries that further the rights
or interests of men are rare to nonexistent. So how are countries expected
to develop and implement policy to equalise the healthy life expectancy
of men and women?
Every other indicator in every subindex deals with some issue where
policy is apparently needed to bring women up to the level of men. All
the rhetoric in the 2006 Report and the 2020 Report seems to assume
that all change needs to be for the purpose of raising women's levels.
It is incoherent, in this context, to include the indicator "Healthy
life expectancy."
The Global Gender
Gap Index Scam
However, there is more than mere intellectual confusion in play here.
One should never underestimate the Feminists' deviousness and hypocrisy!
Research has shown that Testosterone
Administration Reduces Lying in Men. Women have less testosterone
than men, so it is likely that women tell more lies than men do. Certainly,
I have found that the activities of Feminists
provide evidence of this. The GGI is just a particularly outrageous
example of this. The following passage appears on page 45 of the 2020
Report:
Our aim is to focus on whether the gap between women and men
in the chosen indicators has declined, rather than whether women are
winning the so-called "battle of the sexes". Hence, the
index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women
equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in
which women are outperforming men in particular indicators in some
countries. Thus, a country that has higher enrolment for girls rather
than boys in secondary school will score equal to a country where
boys' and girls' enrolment is the same.
This is an outrageous scam! A country that has higher enrolment for
girls rather than boys in secondary school obviously does have a gender
gap, but the GGI will actively conceal it, because it is a gender gap
in favour of girls. This is obviously the Feminists' solution to the
problem of the indicator, "Healthy life expectancy." Since
all countries now have a greater life expectancy for women than for
men, no country will show up as having a gender gap for life expectancy
and no government will be guided by the GGI to develop policy to equalise
men's and women's life expectancy!
Thus it is an outright lie for the World
Economic Forum to claim (as quoted above) that the GGI is "a
useful guide for policy, based on learning from the experiences of those
countries that have had greater success in promoting the equality of
women and men". Countries where women are "outperforming"
men in various indicators (e.g. life expectancy and/or enrolment in
secondary school) have obviously not achieved the equality
of women and men with respect to those indicators -- yet the GGI will
treat them as having achieved "equality" in those indicators.
Feminist political pressure, organisation and propaganda being what
it is, we can predict that there will be a future
date, by which females will be outperforming males in most of the GGI's
indicators in some Western countries -- yet the GGI will be concealing
that fact by calling that "equality" and the GGI will still
be being used by Feminists in those countries to call for "equality"
in the remaining minority of indicators.
See also:
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