An organisation called the World Economic Forum has released a report on how much the world’s countries have closed the “gender gap”. New Zealand ranks fifth behind Iceland and the Nordic countries. Here is an excerpt from their web pages:

New Zealand (5) and Australia (21) continue to perform well in the rankings. Both countries have fully closed the gap on the educational attainment subindex and both perform well on economic participation indicators. Between 2007 and 2008, both countries show gains on economic participation, educational attainment and political empowerment. Sub-Saharan Africa
Lesotho (16) takes over the top spot in the region, holding once again the uppermost spots on health and education, while also showing improvements in economic participation and political empowerment. It is followed by Mozambique (18) as the only other African country in the top 20.

I note that the Radio NZ news item today suggested the report showed many countries were slowing their progress towards reducing the “gender gap”, but what I have seen of other descriptions and releases about the report did not give that impression at all. Our media seem to feed us the propaganda feminists love.

I have yet to obtain the full report and to evaluate the measures and criteria used in this report. However, I draw attention to it and offer the following preliminary comments and questions for those who might also wish to scrutinize this work.

– The quote above states that NZ has “fully closed the gap” on the educational subindex. I understand in fact that NZ females do considerably better educationally than do males, suggesting that the study’s method did not measure new gaps that now find males on the disadvantaged side.

– The quote above talks about health. I assume that the study has ignored the most important health statistic, that of life expectancy, because if it did it would find men disadvantaged in most countries. I assume also that it has not bothered to measure men’s disadvantage in suffering and dying in greater numbers and earlier from most of the leading causes of illness and death in the Western world.

– Feminists often support their claims of ongoing gender disadvantage by referring to the situation in some third world countries, while ignoring the real situation here and in western countries. For example, in NZ women have the same rights as men and in many ways more so, over decisions in their lives, whom to marry or have sex with and so forth. Yet they will maintain a view that they are disadvantaged in their choices relative to men and they will cite the plight of Muslim women under Sharia law. Watch out for such false argument, often used to justify ever more draconian laws abusive or exploitative of men in this country.