Miren Gutierrez* interviews SAADIA ZAHIDI, head of the Women Leaders and Gender Parity Programme at the World Economic Forum (WEF)
ROME, Mar 18 (IPS) – Denying women access to political and economic power is a “strategic waste”, says Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the WEF’s Global Gender Gap (GGG) report in a telephone interview from Geneva.The GGG index ranks countries according to gender equality, and it is designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in individual countries rather than the overall levels of the available resources in those countries. It looks at four factors: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; political empowerment; and health and survival of women. And the results are surprising. Zahidi discusses concrete cases based on the data dug out for the GGG report.IPS: You have participated in the GGG from the beginning, since 2006. Could you highlight an important trend since then?
Saadia Zahidi: If you look at the 115 countries, the majority of them are improving. This is quite a positive feature. Out of the 115 countries covered in 2006, 2007 and 2008, more than 80 percent, including developed and developing countries, have shown an overall improvement. There are few countries, though, 22, that are actually regressing. This is something to worry about.
In a backwards calculation since 2001 for 32 countries, we also see a lot of them that made an immense amount of progress, like Turkey, Japan, which have big gender gaps, but improved 7 to 10 percentage points. This can be interpreted as an actual change on the ground.
IPS: How do you explain the regression in 22 countries?
SZ: I cannot definitely say that there is something in common. The countries that have regressed include Germany (11) and Saudi Arabia (128). Those are vastly different countries.
