Gender gap

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gender gap (according to Duden gender gap, gender gap ; Anglicism of English gender “social sex” and gap “gap, distance, gap ”), gender gap or gender gap describes the differences in equality between women and men in sociology and social politics . In economics, the income gap between the sexes is referred to as the gender pay gap , in old-age provision the pension gap as the gender pension gap and in gender data collection the data gap as the gender data gap .

The World Economic Forum calculates the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) annually for gaps in equality in around 150 countries around the world: The index is calculated from 14  social indicators in the four areas of business, education, health and political participation (empowerment) . According to the 2020 report (published December 2019), the GGGI stands at 0.686 and corresponds to a gap of 31.4% - at the current rate of development, it will still take 99.5 years until equality is achieved (1,000 = 0% gap). The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also determines two indices on equality annually in the UN member states (last published in December 2019): The Gender Development Index (GDI) measures the differences in the " human development " of women and men in the three areas of life expectancy , length of school attendance and per capita income ; The GDI stands at 0.941 worldwide for 2018 and corresponds to a gap of 5.86%. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) measures “gender-specific inequality” on the basis of maternal mortality , maternity of minors , women’s parliamentary seats and the female employment rate and stands at 0.439 (43.9% gap). Both indexes are part of the 17  UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030 - SDG number 5 is gender equality: "Gender equality".

" Gender equality " is the 5th of the 17  UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - UNDP annually calculates the Gender Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for all UN member states to which meaningful data are available (2019: 166 or 162 )

economy

Areas

In business , the gender gap is used to describe differences between men and women in the following areas:

Activity rate

Differences in the participation of men and women in the labor force, the participation rate , can be determined with regard to the male and female participation rate . In 2014, 69.3% of women aged 15 to 65 in Germany were gainfully employed, and 77.8% of men. The employment rates have converged in recent years.

working hours

Paid and unpaid work are included here. On the basis of data from the long-term SOEP study , the German Institute for Economic Research came to the conclusion in 2016:

"Even if you look at paid work, housework and childcare together, women are on average more stressed than men: Although they work a good two and a half hours less on weekdays, they take care of the household and children a good four and a half hours more."

- Elke Holst , DIW Research Director for Gender Studies

In 2014, 98% of employed women in dual-income households did housework on weekdays, but only 65% ​​of employed men took part in it. This percentage had risen by six points in ten years. But the workload of just over an hour on a working day did not change over time and was still well below that of women (around two hours per day). If there were children up to and including six years of age in the household, almost all employed women and men took part in childcare in 2014. The amount of time, however, differed considerably: while employed women looked after their children for almost six and a half hours on a working day, men only did this for two and a half hours - hardly more than in 2004. “The relief of women in childcare by almost one and a half hours is less back on the men, but is more likely to be due to the expansion of day-care centers since 2010, ”says Elke Holst, DIW Research Director for Gender Studies .

Choice of occupation and type of employment

Differences in career choices manifest themselves particularly clearly in the form of male and female domains in gainful employment (compare the proportion of women in the private sector ).

leading position

Management positions according to the international standard classification of occupations (ISCO) include board members and managing directors as well as managers in trade, production and services. Women are still underrepresented here: in 2014, 29% of management positions in Germany were held by women; there were hardly any changes compared to the two previous years. This placed the Federal Republic in the bottom third of all member states of the European Union: On average in the EU, around every third person on management levels was a woman (33%). Latvia led the EU states with a share of women in management positions of 44%, while Hungary (40%), Poland and Lithuania (both 39%) also had relatively high proportions of women. At the bottom of the table was Cyprus with only 17%. The lowest proportion of women in management positions was found in the construction industry at 13%, and the highest in education and training (62%), which roughly corresponds to the respective proportions of women in the respective industries (13% and 70%).

The phenomenon that the proportion of women declines over the course of their careers is known as the “leaky pipeline”.

Wage gap

The differences in terms of remuneration per unit of time for comparable work ( gender pay gap ) are still considerable. If the average earnings of all employees in the Federal Republic of Germany are compared in general terms, women with an average gross hourly earnings of 15.83 euros earned 22% less than men (unadjusted gender pay gap) in the years 2009 to 2014. In 2015, this unadjusted difference in earnings between women and men was only one percentage point lower than in previous years: 21%. There are still clear differences between the former federal territory and the new federal states: In 2015 the unadjusted gender pay gap in the new federal states was 8%, while it was 23% in the former federal territory.

If only comparable jobs and corresponding qualifications are compared, women workers still earned an average of 7% less per hour than men in 2010 (adjusted gender pay gap).

Economic importance of equality

The cost of the gender gap (Heleen Mees, 2007)

In a 2007 Project Syndicate article entitled The Cost of the Gender Gap, the publicist Heleen Mees emphasized that the wage gap is holding back economic growth, and she emphasized the low number of women in top positions in Western Europe compared with some Asian countries: On the In the Philippines , 89% of companies have women in high-level management positions. China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Singapore are just behind in terms of women in top positions. Even in India, where more than half of women and girls are illiterate, there are more women in top management positions than in countries like Germany and the Netherlands.

McKinsey study "The Power of Parity" (2015)

In its 2015 study The Power of Parity, the consulting firm McKinsey came to the conclusion that there are “solid economic reasons” for equating men and women in the world of work. The world economy will suffer if the economic potential of women is not exploited. The analysis also shows that there is a connection between the situation in society and the world of work.

Approach and procedure of the study:

The 95 states examined were divided into regions by the experts. Inequality between the sexes was measured using 15 indicators , such as access to education or opportunities to have a say in politics. It was then calculated by how much the gross domestic product could increase by 2025 if all states in a region promoted equality as quickly as the front runner in this region. In this case, global economic output will grow by $ 11.8 trillion by 2025. If women were to play the same role in economic life as men worldwide, this increase would more than double, to $ 28 trillion. This corresponds to the sum of the economic output of the USA and China (as of 2015).

Barriers to economic equality:

McKinsey identified the greatest problems worldwide as the high maternal mortality rate , the unequal conditions in the world of work, the low political say, as well as the legal disadvantage and violence against women . In all the countries examined, the low proportion of women in paid employment is in stark contrast to their relatively high proportion in unpaid work. The unpaid care of family members is particularly important, 75% of which is provided by women in all the countries examined.

Results for individual states:

McKinsey found very high levels of inequality in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia . The eight Western European countries examined do very well in terms of social factors, but show a “high to very high” inequality between the sexes in the world of work. If all areas are taken into account, the Federal Republic ranks fifth behind Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and France, but only seventh and penultimate place of the Western European countries examined in terms of filling management positions . If the Federal Republic were to reach the level of Norway here - among other things by increasing the female employment rate and the number of hours worked by women - the gross domestic product could increase by 390 billion euros by 2025. The analysis found further weaknesses in the Federal Republic of Germany in the wage differences despite equal work and unpaid care work.

Study "Is Gender Diversity Profitable?" (2016)

In 2014, the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics examined Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey (“Is gender equality economically beneficial? Findings from a global survey”) nearly 22,000 publicly traded companies in 91 countries to obtain conclusions about the relationship between gender equality in a company and its economic success.

Results

The same trend was evident in all countries: the more women a company was able to attract to middle and upper management levels, the more income it could generate. In contrast, it did not matter whether the company was headed by a woman or a man. Rather, it was crucial that the successful firms had a large group of female employees who were suitable for higher levels. However, there is often a shortage of these because women often postpone their careers when starting a family. The number of women at management level is particularly high in countries that offer fathers high incentives to participate in parenting work, such as the Scandinavian countries, Kenya or Bulgaria .

Consequences

The researchers suggested an orientation towards these successful models. They suspected that bosses are subconsciously of the opinion that investing in women as future managers would not be worthwhile because they often leave or take a long break when they start a family. However, if participation in upbringing were balanced, this fear would apply to both sexes and companies would promote talented people regardless of gender.

Current situation in Germany

An analysis by the newspaper Die Welt was unable to confirm the study results in an analysis of DAX and mDAX companies in 2020 . It was found that “there is no positive correlation between the success in market capitalization and stock exchange turnover - the criteria for inclusion in the Dax and M-Dax - and a high proportion of women on the executive board.” Investors obviously preferred corporations with particularly few women on the executive boards . In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, 22 companies with the most women on the executive board lost an average of around 17% in value and thus performed 27% worse than the top 22 companies without any women on the executive board. Experts would blame industry connections for this development, but see no connection between female quotas and stock market performance. The stock market development would not confirm that various supervisory boards or executive boards would necessarily be better for performance.

education

Educational differences between men and women and between boys and girls (English Gender Education Gap ) are available in numerous countries in the field of literacy observed ( see: Literacy and Development ).

The gender-specific educational difference has now reversed in favor of women, particularly in industrialized countries, but also in several other countries.

health

The gender health gap describes differences in health or health care between men and women. Differences in the proportion of the population of men and women result from gender-specific differences in life expectancy , also with regard to infant mortality and child mortality in combination with differences in birth rates , the latter being influenced in many ways by prenatal selection ( e.g. prenatal diagnosis and gender-related selective abortion , which means that significantly more girls are aborted in Asia).

art

Women as artists are clearly underrepresented in museums , important galleries and art magazines and are therefore perceived and received to a lesser extent. An example: The Städtische Galerie in Lenbachhaus in Munich owns 28,000 works of art (as of 2016). Of those that were created up to 1900, only 1% came from women. If you take into account all works up to the end of the Second World War, you get a share of 6%, from 1946 to 2015 it only increased to 11%. There are also too few female teaching staff at art universities.

See also

literature

  • Caroline Criado-Perez : Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Abrams, London 2019, ISBN 978-1-78470-628-9 (English; received the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2019; German: Invisible Women: How a man-made world ignores half the population ).

Web links

Commons : Gender Gap  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gendergap, Gender-Gap, the (1.) In: Duden online . Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  2. ↑ Federal Statistical Office: Statistisches Jahrbuch 2015. , www.destatis.de, Chapter 13, Table 13.2.5 Employed persons and employment rates , p. 11, accessed on March 12, 2016.
  3. ↑ Alexander Hagelüken: More stress, but less money. Working women in Germany look after children and the household longer than their husbands. And wages differ more than elsewhere in Europe. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 52, March 3, 2016, p. 21.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g DIW press release , www.diw.de, March 2, 2016, accessed on March 12, 2016.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Proportion of women in management levels unchanged at 29%. Press release No. 075. In: destatis.de. Federal Statistical Office , March 7, 2016, accessed on September 1, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Vienna University of Technology : Leaky Pipeline: Executive Summary. Without date ( PDF: 340 kB, 9 pages on tuwien.ac.at ).
  7. ↑ Claudia Goldin : Gender Gap. In: Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Accessed August 10, 2020 (English).
  8. ↑ a b Federal Statistical Office (Destatis): The difference in earnings between women and men in Germany continues to be 22%. ( Memento of March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Press release No. 099 of March 16, 2015, accessed on September 22, 2019.
  9. ↑ a b Federal Statistical Office (Destatis): difference in earnings between women and men in Germany at 21%. Press release No. 097 of March 16, 2016, accessed on September 22, 2019.
  10. ↑ Heleen Mees: The Costs of the Gender Gap. In: project-syndicate.org. August 29, 2007, accessed May 23, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l ETD: Promotion of women: According to the study, equal rights ensure growth. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 225, September 30, 2015, p. 25.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Sarah Bachmann: More women in the labor market: Global growth potential of 12 trillion US dollars. McKinsey & Company press release. In: presseportal.de . September 24, 2015, accessed on July 27, 2020 : "McKinsey study: Economies lose a lot of economic potential through discrimination against women - Germany in 5th place in Western Europe in terms of equality: too few women in management positions and too large wage differentials"
  13. ↑ Marcus Noland, Tyler Moran, Barbara Kotschwar: New Peterson Institute Research on over 21,000 Companies Globally Finds Women in Corporate Leadership Can Significantly Increase Profitability. In: piie.com. February 8, 2016, accessed on July 1, 2020 (English, press release).
  14. ↑ a b Claus Hulverscheidt: Female profit zones: The more women have management positions, the higher the profit. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 33, February 10, 2016, p. 1 ( online behind a paywall ).
  15. ↑ Nando Sommerfeldt, Holger Zschäpitz: Occupation of the executive floor: the women's quota fails on the stock exchange. In: The world . June 30, 2020, accessed August 18, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Ina Ganguli, Ricardo Hausmann, Martina Viarengo: The Closing of the Gender Gap in Education: Does it Foretell the Closing of the Employment, Marriage, and Motherhood Gaps? , HKS Working Paper No. RWP11-021, March 30, 2011 ( summary , PDF ), accessed February 18, 2012
  17. ↑ a b c Figures according to information from the Munich Department of Culture, quoted by Heiner Effern: Münchner Gunstgeschichte: The municipal museums mainly buy works by male artists, but a CSU city council now wants to change that. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 62, March 15, 2016, p. R1.
  18. ↑ Message: Book about gender gap wins prestigious science award. In: ORF.at . September 24, 2019, accessed January 19, 2020.