Gabrielle Martino
February 26th, 6:28 pm
This week in class we have been discussing the gender gap in wages. In this article, new data from 2008 has shown that the Nordic countries are leading the world in closing that gap. They have reached about 80 cents per one dollar (women to mans). This is fairly impressive, considering that in the United States we are averaging about ten cents less than this. This report also took into account how many women were active in their country's government. Sweden was also at the top of the list with a very impressive 47%.
At the bottom of the list included India at number 25 and Pakistan at number 50. These countries have a long history of unequal gender rights, and they are far from reaching equality between the sexes.
I think that it is very impressive that Sweden has been working towards gender equality; the fact that it is almost an even number of men and women in government is extremely impressive. This is probably one of the primary reasons for why the gap is closing in this country. I think that the US really needs to catch up and should be paying close attention to the progress that they have made.
http://newsblaze.com/story/20090217072633iwfs.nb/topstory.html
2 comments:
This is an interesting article. It prompts me to wonder: what are the factors that sociologists have identifed that make a country more or less likely to desire and implement measures toward women's equality? Also, if the US is not high (relative to other states in the global north) on the wage parity ranking chart, what does this mean? Are we as liberal as we think?
I think it is great that the Scandanavian countries are working towards gender equality. In the United States we like to think of ourselves as "the home of liberty", when in actuality, there are many other countries with much more equality and freedom.
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