Men Are Lagging Behind Women Across Europe. Lawmakers Need to Include Men in All Gender Equality Programs.

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Contact: Mike Buchanan

Telephone: +44 7967 026163

Men Are Lagging Behind Women Across Europe. Lawmakers Need to Include Men in All Gender Equality Programs.

April 17, 2023 – Proponents of the Istanbul Convention argue that the treaty is needed to remedy the inequality of women and girls across the continent. To support their claim, activists cite measures such as the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). But the World Bank has criticized the GGGI, explaining that the Index “neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular indicators in some countries.” (1)

The GGGI measures women’s economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, sex-ratio at birth and survival, and political attainment. Obviously, any indicator of gender equality needs to be unbiased and fair to both men and women.

To overcome these biases, researchers at the University of Essex in the U.K. have developed the Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) (2). The BIGI measures the ratio of women to men on three dimensions:

1) Educational Opportunities in Childhood

2) Healthy Life Expectancy

3) Overall Life Satisfaction, based on the Gallup World Poll (3)

Researchers evaluated 38 European countries using the BIGI criteria (4). Overall, men are underperforming in all 38 countries except for Italy and Macedonia. Specifically:

Healthy Life Span: In all 38 countries, men are trailing behind women.
Basic Education: In 18 countries, men are lagging behind women.
Overall Life Satisfaction: In 17 countries, men are less likely than women to express satisfaction with life.

In addition, European men are known to be disadvantaged in other areas such as job-related accidents. Eurostat reports that “Men were considerably more likely than women to have an accident at work. In 2020, more than two out of every three (66.5 %) non-fatal accidents at work in the EU involved men.” (5)

Likewise, domestic violence victimization rates in 19 European countries show that 15.2% of males, compared to 14.8% of females, report being abuse victims in the past year (6).

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights emphasizes that “Equality between women and men must be ensured in all areas” (Article 23) (7). The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance urges lawmakers to expressly include men in all programs seeking to achieve gender equality.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance – DAVIA — consists of 82 member organizations from 32 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. DAVIA seeks to ensure that domestic violence and abuse polices are science-based, family-affirming, and sex-inclusive. https://endtodv.org/davia/

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