The Importance Of Gender Equality For Women

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My hypothesis was that higher gender equality would correlate with higher levels of reproductive rights for women. Looking at the statistics, Chile has better overall political empowerment for women (using the GGR rankings Chile ranks 34th compared to Uruguay’s 112th position) and it scores better in every single criterion that make up the category. According to my hypothesis, this higher political empowerment of women should have translated into higher levels of reproductive rights, but that is not the case. Uruguay has much more liberal abortion laws then Chile even though, by the GEI and GGP rankings the country does not have as high a level of political empowerment. One explanation for this disparity can be explained by Asal et al. He points …show more content…

Unequal gender equality in this sphere perpetuate negative gender stereotypes that do not allow women to participate in other areas of society. Gendered social institutions, formal and informal laws, social norms and practices play a large role in maintaining the stereotypical norms within society because they “guide human behaviour and shape human interactions” (Bransia, Klasen, and Ziegler, 2013). For example, when a universal social norm in a country values male education over female girls are less likely to go to school when families have to chose between sending a son or a daughter. Therefore, female literacy rates will be lower in that country because girls have not been allowed the opportunity to go to school. These lower levels of literacy make it so that they are unable to gain meaningful employment in the economic sector, and up the the macro level cannot participate in the political sector by running for elected office because they do not have the same resources as males in their society. When gender inequality exists in social institutions a negative cycle is perpetuate, which expands to all areas of women’s participation in society. The negative outcome exists not only for women, but also for the whole society (Bransia et al, 2013). As discussed previously, women’s roles in economic and political areas benefits not just them, but society as a whole, and the same circumstance exists in social institutions. Improvements to economic and human development are positives aspects associated with gender equality in social institutions (Ferrant and Nowacke, 2015). Therefore, high gender equality in social institutions are associated with development outcomes, like the development of women’s rights in society. Since social institutions play a large role in guiding human behaviour and shaping human actions, when they support gender equality and

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