A discourse on world politics around gender

Global politics, also known as world politics, names both the

discipline that studies the political and economic patterns of the world
and the field that is being studied. At the centre of that field are the
different processes of political globalization in relation to questions of
social power.
The discipline studies the relationships between cities, nation-states,
shell-states, multinational corporations, non-governmental
organizations and international organizations. Current areas of
discussion include national and ethnic conflict regulation, democracy
and the politics of national self-determination, globalization and its
relationship to democracy, conflict and peace studies, comparative
politics, political economy, and the international political economy of
the environment. One important area of global politics is contestation
in the global political sphere over legitimacy.
A topic like gender has been there in the political realm for quite
some time. Majority of the politics around gender has been on gender
pay gap. Gender pay gap report 2021 gives us a clear idea about the
situation.
-> Gender pay gap report
Region Wise Rank: South Asia incidentally is one of the worst
performing regions, followed only by the Middle East and northern
Africa.
Largest Gender Gap in Political Empowerment: The gender gap in
political empowerment remains the largest: women represent only
26.1% of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6% of over 3,400
ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman
head of state, as of 15th January, 2021. Bangladesh is the only
country where more women have held head-of-state positions than
men in the past 50 years.
Economic Participation: The countries with the largest gender gaps in
economic participation include Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen,
Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Timeframe to Close the Gap: It will take South Asia 195.4 years to
close the gender gap, while Western Europe will take 52.1 years.1
Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson who, broadly speaking, argue that
equality of opportunity has been de-railed by ‘social justice warriors’
in favour of equal outcomes, which is fundamentally unfair.
That brings us to the topic of equality of opportunity.

-> Equality of opportunity = Equality of outcome?

Peter Westen, a renowned philosopher shows that an opportunity is a
ternary relationship between a person, some obstacles, and the desired
goal; however, a person only has an opportunity if he has a
probability to achieve that goal.
For instance, one cannot have an opportunity to become the president
of India if he is not a natural-born citizen. Many people in the world,
whether male or female, therefore, have no opportunity to become
President of India. Only a natural-born Indian citizen has the
opportunity to become president, but he/she faces serious obstacles.

1
World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report, 2021
And these obstacles are basically of 2 types
Alterable and Unalterable
1. Alterable obstacles
Alterable obstacles or sociological obstacles are racism, sexism,
casteism etcetera. These are the types of obstacles that can be
minimized and that will bring us quite close to achieving equality of
opportunity.
Gender socialization occurs through four main agents in socialization:
family, education, peers, and media. Each agent reinforces gender
roles by creating and maintaining normative expectations for gender-
specific behavior.
Family is the first agent of socialization. There is considerable
evidence that parents socialize sons and daughters differently.
Differential socialization typically results in greater privileges
afforded to sons. For instance, boys are allowed more autonomy and
independence at an earlier age than daughters. They may be given
fewer restrictions on appropriate clothing or dating habits. Sons are
also often free from performing domestic duties such as cleaning or
cooking and other household tasks that are considered feminine.
Daughters are limited by their expectation to be passive and nurturing,
generally obedient, and to assume many of the domestic
responsibilities.
The strengthening of gender roles and stereotypes will continue till
the child has reached school age. Until recently, schools made an
explicit effort to stratify boys and girls. The girls were encouraged to
take courses in home economics or the humanities. Studies suggest
that gender socialization in schools is still happening today, possibly
in a less overt way. When children do not conform to the appropriate
gender role, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized
or marginalized by their peers. Though many of these sanctions are
informal, they can be quite severe.
Mass media serves as another significant agent of gender
socialization. In television and films, women tend to play a less
important role and are often portrayed as wives or mothers. When
women are given a lead role, it often falls at one of the two extremes:
a healthy and holy figure or a malicious hypersexual figure. The same
inequality is widespread in children's films.2
2. Unalterable obstacles
Unalterable obstacle is biology. Biology cannot be altered and it is a
major factor which doesn’t make equality of opportunity equal to
equality of outcome.
To support the same, i’d like to cite a study.

-> Study
In countries with stark gender inequality, the women are thought to
lag behind in almost all walks of life. However, there appears to be
one rather unexpected area where they might in fact have closed the
gap. A study has found that almost the same number of women as
men study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) in these countries. On the other, in countries with greater
gender equality, fewer women study STEM subjects.
The results are only surprising to people who think that gender
equality will automatically lead to men and women making more
similar choices as the gap in science education between the genders is
biggest in the most developed nations of the world. This is the gender-
equality paradox of STEM education. For example, Finland is among
the most gender-equal countries in the world, and female students in
its high-schools outperform their male counterparts in STEM subjects.
However, fewer than 25% of its science college graduates are women.
The situation is similar in the other Scandinavian countries.

2
An Introduction to Equality of Opportunity, Stanford, https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/equality-
opportunity-introduction
The authors of the study hypothesised that students tend to decide
whether to pursue STEM education based on two things: their idea of
what subjects they are strong in and opportunities available after
college. (In high-school and college, students pick subjects they
believe they’re strong in – a rationale supported by their mentors and
teachers.)
They then analysed the academic achievements of about 475,000
young adults aged 15-16 years in over 70 countries. The data came
from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
survey of 2015, conducted every three years worldwide. It included
questions about interest in science, ‘enjoyment’ of science and
learning.
The duo found that in 97% of countries, the male students scored
higher in science subjects while the female students scored higher in
reading. But this doesn’t mean the girls fared worse in science.
Further analysis revealed that girls generally scored the same as or
more than boys in science – but they were even better at reading. So
they rated reading as their greatest individual strength, whereas the
boys did the same with science and math. And this difference in
individual strengths between genders is greater in countries that are
more gender-equal.
Within this framework, the authors think the paradox becomes less
baffling. For example, Algeria, United Arab Emirates and Qatar are
among the least gender-equal places in the world, and 35-40% of their
STEM graduates were women (comparable to India). The
Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, are more gender-equal but
fewer than 25% of its women are STEM graduates. In other words,
women ‘leaked out’ of the STEM education system between high-
school and college, with the greatest losses in those countries that are
more gender-equal.3

3
Lakshmi Supriya, Women Won't Study STEM Just Because They Live in a More Gender-Equal Country, The
Wire, 8 Jan 2019, https://thewire.in/women/women-wont-study-stem-just-because-they-live-in-a-more-
gender-equal-country
The findings thus, put a shade on the gender pay gap report by
indirectly stating that only sociological factors do not contribute to the
current gender pay gap but there are biological factors too which alter
womens’ choice to pick a profession. One can debate if the same
result came in India that sociological factors are not allowing women
to take STEM subjects but not in the countries where sociological
factors are minimal.

Ayush Thakur

References

1) Global Politics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_politics.

2) World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report, 2021,

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2021.pdf.

3) An Introduction to Equality of Opportunity, Stanford,

https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/equality-opportunity-introduction.

4) https://up-pdf.com/epub-the-madness-of-crowds-by-douglas-murray-9781472959959-rup.

5) Lakshmi Supriya, Women Won't Study STEM Just Because They Live in a More Gender-Equal
Country, The Wire, 8 Jan 2019, https://thewire.in/women/women-wont-study-stem-just-because-
they-live-in-a-more-gender-equal-country.

6) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-
women-in-stem/553592/.
Plagiarism Report