Muslim women as in Islamic countries today

Rankings of Muslim countries in the WEF Global Gender Gap 2020 report 

Let it be reiterated that Islam empowered women since the seventh century and that Muslim women took an active part in building what is today called Islamic civilisation. 

And let it also be reiterated that this Qur’anic empowerment of women bears too little resemblance to the real condition of  women  in  many  contemporary  Muslim societies. 

Muslim women are mainly marginalised and severely suffering from the consequences of political upheavals, poverty, injustice, corruption and other social ills prevalent in their societies (Elmira Akhmetova (2015).

The fact that Muslim women have been deprived or denied several components of their empowerment can be seen from the rankings of Muslim countries in the WEF Global Gender Gap 2020 report. 

For year 2020, for example, all the rankings of Muslim majority countries are low down from 143 to the last 153^rd positions (Table 1).

The only Muslim countries that rank below 100^th position are Indonesia (80) and Brunei Darussalam (95). Even the apparently progressive Malaysia is ranked at the 104^th place. The rest of the Muslim majority countries are ranked from 120^th place (UAE) to 138^th place (Jordan).

This means that of the total 50 Muslim majority countries in the world today, one (Yemen) has the least score of less than half (0.494) of the index value in terms of women empowerment as achieved by the top ten country scorers, 5 countries were under 0.6 index, and 14 countries were under 0.7 index. Only one country, Indonesia, managed to score 0.7 index to be ranked 85^th in the 153 country list (Table 1).

In other words, Muslim women are still not adequately empowered with respect to :

• economic participation and opportunity (as indicated by their labour force participation, wage equality for similar work, estimated earned income, and positions as  professional and technical workers and as legislators, senior officials and managers); 
• educational attainment (as indicated by their literacy rate, enrolment in primary education, enrolment in secondary education, and enrolment in tertiary education;
• health and survival (as indicated by their sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy); and 
• political participation and representation in decision making bodies (as indicated by the number of women in their parliament, in ministerial positions, and years with female head of state).

REFERENCES:

Amriah Buang (2020), Gender Equality vs Gender Equity: Islamic Worldview, Paper presented to the IIUM-ISTAQ Roundtable Discussion on 3^rd March 2020, Ibn Khaldun Hall, ISTAQ, Kuala Lumpur

Elmira Akhmetova (2015), Women’s Rights: The Quranic Ideals and Contemporary Realities, Islam and Civilisational Renewal, ICR Journal, Vol 6, No 1.Jamal Badawi, 2014

World Economic Forum (WEF) (2020), Global Gender Gap Report 2020, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf

GLOSSARY:

empowerment : The process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.

gender : either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

Gender equality : the state in which access to rights or opportunities is unaffected by gender.

Gender gap : The difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.

Gender Gap Index : An index designed to measure gender equality. It is arrived at by compiling scores in four components, namely, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment :

Compilation components
1. Economic participation and opportunity	1.000
2. Educational attainment	1.000
3. Health and survival	0.980*
4. Political empowerment	1.000
sum	3.980

Gender Gap Index: 3.98 / 4 = 0.9949

* In this case it is assumed that  there are fewer female  births than male (944 female for every 1,000 males)

The Global Gender Gap Report : The Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006 by the World Economic Forum. The 2020 report (published in 2019) covers 153 countries.

Women empowerment :  The process of making  women become stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights in social, educational, economic, political and psychological aspects.