Context: A new UN report “2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI)” revealed no improvement in the level of prejudice shown against women over the past decade.

About 2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI)

• GSNI captures how social beliefs can obstruct gender equality in multiple dimensions— political, educational, economic, and physical integrity.

• It is constructed based on responses to seven questions from the World Values Survey, which are used to create seven indicators using data from 80 countries and territories, covering 85% of the global population.

• The report presents an update of the GSNI since it was first calculated in 2019 (with data up to 2010-2014).

• It includes the most recent data for the period 2017-2022.

• It was published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

• It is reflecting the latest data from the World Values Survey.

Key Highlights

• 9 out of 10 men and women worldwide still hold against women.

• Half of the people worldwide still believe men make better political leaders than women.

• More than 40 per cent believe men make better business executives than women.

• 25 per cent of people believe it is justified for a man to beat his wife.

• The report argues that these biases drive hurdles faced by women, manifested in a dismantling of women’s rights in many parts of the world with movements against gender equality gaining traction and, in some countries, a surge of human rights violations.

• Biases are also reflected in the severe underrepresentation of women in leadership.

• On average, the share of women as heads of state or heads of government has remained around 10 percent since 1995.

• In the labour market women occupy less than a third of managerial positions.

• The report also sheds light on a broken link between women’s progress in education and economic empowerment.

• Women are more skilled and educated than ever before, yet even in the 59 countries where women are now more educated than men, the average gender income gap remains a staggering 39 per cent in favour of men.

Government’s role

• The report emphasized that governments have a crucial role in shifting gender social norms.

• The role varies from adopting parental leave policies, that have changed perceptions around care work responsibilities, to labour market reforms that have led to a change in beliefs around women in the workforce.

• Recognizing the economic value of unpaid care work is an important place to start with.

Recommendations

• An increase in the share of people with no bias in any indicator was evident in 27 of the 38 countries surveyed.

• To drive change towards greater gender equality, the focus needs to be on expanding human development through investment, insurance, and innovation.

This includes

• Investing in laws and policy measures that promote women’s equality in political participation.

• Scaling up insurance mechanisms, such as strengthening social protection and care systems.

• Encouraging innovative interventions that could be particularly effective in challenging harmful social norms, patriarchal attitudes, and gender stereotypes.

• It recommended directly addressing social norms through education to change people’s views, policies and legal changes that recognize the rights of women in all spheres of life, and more representation in decision-making and political processes.