The Issue in Africa

How it Afects Human Development

Gender inequality translates into a huge drag on socio-economic development. For instance, when a society leaves half of its population behind in terms of opportunities and recognition, an important part of its potential for new ideas and motion vanishes with it. Let's take a look at the Gender Inequality Index at the topthat the United Nations publishes across countries. It measures gender inequalities in 3 important aspects of human development:

Reproductive health, measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates.Empowerment, measured by the proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females, and the proportion of adult females and males with at least some secondary education.Economic status, measured by the rate of participation labor force of female and male populations.

The top performers in the world are Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany with values of gender inequality below 0.05. In the SSA region, we can easily highlight Rwanda, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Burundi as the most gender-equal countries in SSA, with scores below 0.5. On the other hand, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Liberia and Sierra Leone are the most-gender unequal with scores above 0.65.

As we have mentioned before, when a society systematically sets aside a large fraction of its own population, it ends up missing a lot of opportunities to build upon these lost minds and ideas. So, it's not surprising that the top-10 countries with the lowest gender inequality index in SSA score well above the average in terms of entrepreneurship and development, according to the , whereas the 10 countries with the highest gender inequality scores significantly lower.

Fighting gender inequality is not fair both for moral reasons and for socioeconomic development. It's a must in order to stop destroying potential ideas. The problem needs to be tackled from its origins at the education system to its latter stages in the working place.