Has the status of women declined or improved over the past thirty years?
One of the problems with generating definitive answers to this question is that many of the organizations which have produced statistical data through this period have done so as a part of a larger mandate to improve the status of women. Thus, there is a certian suspicion of confirmation bias in their measurements, as a result of the tasks they are chartered to serve, as it wouldn’t be sensible for them to produce figures saying their own efforts were not only ineffective, but actually resulting in worsening conditions for women. So, reports and data from organizations like the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women are sometimes seen as self-serving, given their mandate. Further, with respect to UN based initiatives to improve the status of women, there is a political swamping effect that occurs when for larger policy reasons, particular initiatives such as The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Wome
I don’t know if it could be said that women are worse off, but in some aspects things seem to have reached a plateau when it would stand to reason they should continue getting better. For example, the wage disparity between men and women (the study of which, by the way, is by no means an exact science) narrowed in the eighties, but has since leveled off somewhat. Additionally, while women are more frequently holding professional positions (lawyers, for example) they are still much less likely to advance in them (see, e.g. here). You also have things like the right to choose, which in the U.S. has been eroded
I think this kind of question really depends on how you define “status” and how you define “women,” and how you crunch your statistics. For instance, a lot of people point to increasing numbers of women in post-secondary schools as evidence of increasing status/equality. We are all familiar with the claim that education is positively correlated to income. However, Micaela di Leonardo, in Exotic at Home makes the claim that if you break the education vs. income statistics into demographic categories, you find that the correlation is strongest for white men, then white women, then black women, then black men, with, if I remember correctly, white male high school graduates making more (on average) than black males with a university degree. If these statistics are correct, then an increase in women (and black men, for that matter) at the post-secondary level could be interpreted as the combined effect of increased acc
The Nobel prize is a stupid measure, but it actually reveals some interesting things. Between the prizes’ inceptions in 1901 and 1970, 15 prizes were won by women, for a total of 14 women, because Marie Curie won twice. Of those, six were won for literature, three for peace, three for chemistry, two for physics, and one for medicine. Of the science prizes, fully half were won by members of the Curie family. (Marie Curie won twice, and her daughter Irene Joliet-Curie won once.) Since 1970, 19 Nobel prizes have been won by women. So in fact, more prizes have been won by women in the past 40 years than in the prize’s first 70 years. 9 of those prizes have been in peace. 6 have been in medicine. 4 have been in literature, but all of those have been since 1990. No woman won a Nobel prize in literature between 1970 and 1990, which is pretty shocking. Now, it’s not clear to me what this measures. It’s certainly true that a few women won prizes in chemistry and physics in the early 20th centur
I can tell you that in many parts of the Middle East women’s lives are very different than they were 30 years ago. For example, in the 1970s few women on the streets of Cairo wore headscarves and you rarely saw women in full hijab, but now it’s rarer that you see an Egyptian woman totally uncovered. Around the world, often as a pre-emptive strike against the overall impression that Western morality is getting progressively looser and looser, there are many women who are currently facing more behavioral pressure from their respective religions and cultures than they did years ago. (Behavior mostly created by men, of course.) Also, many people say that women’s rights in India were much on a much better path in the 1980s than they are today.
Related Questions
- After the reforms that Morocco has undergone over the past two decades, how do you view the evolution of the status of women in terms of their participation in the workplace, in the economy, in politics, and the family?
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- What did women use in the past instead of pads or tampons?
