Almost 90 percent of men hold some form of bias against women, according to a new global UN report.
Surprisingly, 90% of women do, too.
The Gender Social Norms Index, which measures how social beliefs affect gender equality, was released by the United Nations Development Programme on Thursday.
Despite the progress that has occurred in closing the equality gap, researchers found that people’s beliefs still negatively impact women’s rights and equality.
For instance, the GSNI revealed that nearly half of the world’s population believes that men make better political leaders, and more than 40 percent believe men make better business executives.
It also found that 28 percent of men and women believe that men are justified to beat their wives.
The index was based on data from 75 countries that comprise 80 percent of the world’s population.
“Gender disparities are a persistent form of inequality in every country. Despite remarkable progress in some areas, no country in the world —rich or poor — has achieved gender equality,” the UNDP said in the accompanying report “Tackling Social Norms.”
Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, said the findings reveal how far the world is from closing the gender equality gap.
“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 percent since the year 1990,” Conceição said in a statement.
“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.”
As the majority of the world continues to apply dangerous gender biases towards women, the implications aren’t just lower pay or less jobs.
An earlier study linked gender inequality to more deaths than expected among girls under the age of 5, compared with boys of the same age, especially in lower- and middle-income countries.
Most people alive now won’t live to see gender equality achieved worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report. That milestone is believed to be almost 100 years away.
