Gender EqualityGender equality is a positive societal outcome, allowing more members of a society to benefit from all of the opportunities available, rather than being restricted on the basis of gender. There are many ways in which a society may not offer equal opportunities to members of each gender; they range from the most obvious and draconian, like the Taliban banning female students or mandating male-only jobs, to more covert examples, such as traditional societal views that create an unspoken, self-reinforcing system where access to professions traditionally seen as “male” is restricted. This is a relatively modern construction, as during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries female participation in the workforce was vital to the family and community. This is because a premechanized society relied solely upon physical labour to manufacture products for sale and produce surplus food for market. It was only once these activities were mechanized and moved outside the home, that female involvement in the workforce dropped dramatically, and the more stereotypical gender roles of child-rearing and homemaking began to be labelled as female tasks. These social stereotypes have persisted, even as women began to re-enter the workforce during the twentieth century. This re-entry was necessitated by the impact of both the first and second world wars, and the numbers of women in the workforce grew steadily throughout this period. This was driven in large part by a growing number of married women taking clerical roles and by the advent of information technology, and it was further fuelled by the rising number of girls completing secondary education. From the late 1970s to the early 2000s – the period labelled “the quiet revolution” by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin – there was a relatively small rise in female workforce participation, but arguably more important social changes were occurring. Due in no small part to the introduction of the contraceptive pill, young women began to take control of their futures and expanded their potential horizons to include fulfilling long-term careers that would not be curtailed or halted by childbearing. After 2000, however, there began a decline in female workforce participation, which, although modest, still proceeded at a faster rate than for their male counterparts. Interestingly, this is not mirrored in other OECD countries, and economists believe this is due to discrepancies in the provision of family policies such as paid parental leave, access to childcare and support for early childhood learning. In 2012, the US ranked 33rd out of 36 developed countries in these areas, signposting the issues that are likely to be at the heart of this participatory decline. As discussed previously, the US remains the only developed country not to provide any paid maternal leave – a dismal statistic. Harder to quantify is the impact of ingrained and continuing expectations of women to perform an inequitable amount of the unpaid, traditionally “female” tasks around the home, such as housework and childcare. This is by no means a US-centric issue; compared to other regions globally, North America actually has the smallest gender gap in unpaid care work. In Europe, meanwhile, countries with more “traditional” gender roles, like Italy, seem to be widening the gap that more equitable countries, like Iceland, are narrowing. It should go without saying that the US, as the global superpower, should be aiming to emulate Iceland rather than Italy in this regard. It is not simply the participation rates of females in the workforce, or the responsibility for unpaid labour, that contribute to gender imbalances in the world of work. Gender-related discrepancies in both remuneration and the number of positions in senior management also exacerbate the issue. In the US, the gender wage gap (defined as the difference between the median earnings of women relative to the median earnings of men) is notably larger (at around 17 per cent) than the OECD average (around 12 per cent). Put another way, while it may be positive to have a more equitable split in unpaid care work than in many other regions, if the gender wage gap is larger in the US than in their OECD peers, then gender inequality will remain. If a female is paid on average 82 cents for every dollar of similar work performed by a male counterpart, this is not gender equality. Again, this is not to say that progress has not been made – after all, in 1982 this figure was only 65 cents – but it is simply to state that more progress is needed. There are a variety of reasons why the gender pay gap has narrowed. Some, such as female gains in educational attainment and work experience, are clear and measurable, while others are more anecdotal and it’s harder to assign specific numerical values to them. Examples of the latter include instances of remuneration discrimination, and denial of progression opportunities for mothers who have been deemed to not be fully committed to their work. So, while it may be a positive that the unpaid care-work gap is relatively small in the US, an ongoing issue is the fact that more mothers than fathers continue to believe that they have been passed over for promotions and important assignments. One quantifiable indicator of how much progress is being made in combating these problems is the gender diversity on the boards of top US companies. As of 2022, there were no all-male boards of S&P 500 companies, and 32 per cent of board members were women, a record high. For Fortune 500 companies, the figure is similar (30.4 per cent). Does this tell the whole story? As always, further investigation shows that while progress is undeniable, the actual representation of female board members remains low. Two per cent of S&P 500 boards contain only a single woman, and 37 per cent have three women – the average board size is 10.8 members. Interestingly, traditionally patriarchal OECD countries with strictly defined social gender roles, such as Japan, rank far worse than the US in this area. These broad trends are also seen when we apply the microscope to female representation in politics. The most recent year for which relevant comparisons can be drawn is 2021. The percentage of female parliamentarians in the US in 2021 (27.3 per cent) was significantly below the OECD average (32 per cent), and way behind the leading OECD countries. The Scandinavian nations of Norway, Sweden and Finland rank among the best nations for gender equality in this field, each with more than 44 per cent of their parliamentarians being female in 2021. At ministerial level, we have data from 2023: the US has a similar percentage of female ministers (33.3) to the OECD average (35.7), but this is much less than the likes of Sweden (47.8), Norway (50) and Finland (64.3). A truly gender-equitable world of work and politics is unlikely to occur overnight, given that there are so many different areas to be addressed, but two things are certain. Firstly, the US should not be aiming to be average among OECD peers in this regard or any other. Secondly, it must take coherent policy action toward reaching this goal by emulating the OECD leaders. This action should encourage men and women to explore career or caring opportunities without viewing these spheres in traditionally gendered terms. Finally, when examining questions of gender, it is worth going back to basics. The most fundamental aspect of gender equality is the relative safety of a country’s female population, and this begins within their own homes. Let’s examine this simple question: what percentage of women in the US have suffered physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some time in their life? With a figure of 26 per cent in 2023, the US clearly has a problem – this rate is higher than that of each country in the EU, for example – but some of its OECD peers are not all that far behind. Violence against women may be a lot worse in less developed nations, but the US should not congratulate itself on being better than Saudi Arabia (43 per cent) or Bangladesh (50 per cent); it should focus on swiftly becoming a safer, fairer, more just society for its female citizens. Of course, there are likely to be methodological and societal factors that affect these statistics, including how likely women are to admit to suffering abuse, but this is not sufficient to disregard what the data is showing us. Not only are US women more likely than most of their peers in developed countries to suffer domestic abuse; they are also more likely to believe that this abuse is justified under certain circumstances (13.9 per cent). The final matter in this discussion focuses on one of the starkest areas of gender inequality: control over one’s own reproductive organs. This point is so important in the wider context of the divisions threatening the American Empire that it requires a far more detailed analysis than can be given here. This will be addressed more fully in chapter 4, when we examine the workings of the Supreme Court and the potential ramifications of the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision to restrict rather than enhance the right to abortion marks the US as an outlier internationally, with most countries increasing rather than decreasing abortion access. Rather than lining up with its fellow Western democracies, the US now finds itself in the company of the developing world, where religious and patriarchal cultures continue to set the agenda.
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