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Gender Equality
What is gender-based discrimination?
Where does it happen?
Why does gender discrimination happen?
Why oppose gender discrimination?
A few facts to ponder
How is Canada helping?
Some things you can do
To learn more about gender equality, visit these sites
Amena Akhter of Narsingdi, Bangladesh, shows off the books she will read at the Kishorikendro reading centre, which offers a reading program for girls once a week.
In China, a passerby spots a small, ragged bundle by the side of a country road. The bundle is crying. The passerby picks up the bundle and unwraps it. It is a newborn baby girl. The passerby isn't surprised by his discovery. In his country, girl babies are often abandoned by their parents because of a culturally based preference for boy babies.
Although they live on opposite sides of the world and their life circumstances are different, the young Haitian girls and the Chinese baby share the same problem. They are victims of gender-based discrimination.
What is gender-based discrimination?
Gender-based discrimination means that girls and women do not have the same opportunities as boys and men for education, meaningful careers, political influence, and economic advancement. Also, when women and men perform the same tasks for pay, women are often paid less and receive fewer benefits from their work than men. Even in industrialized and developed countries like Canada, women earn an average of 77 percent of what men earn. In developing countries, this drops to 73 percent.
The late Charlotte Whitton, first woman mayor of Ottawa, Canada's capital city, perhaps put it best when she said: "Whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good…."
Equity and equality - what's the difference?
"Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men. To ensure fairness, measures must often be available to compensate for historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from otherwise operating on a level playing field. Equity leads to equality."
Reference: Gender-Based Analysis: A guide for policy-making, Status of Women Canada, 1996.
"Gender equity is the process of being fair to women and men. To ensure fairness, measures must often be available to compensate for historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from otherwise operating on a level playing field. Equity leads to equality."
Reference: Gender-Based Analysis: A guide for policy-making, Status of Women Canada, 1996.
Where does it happen?
Gender-based discrimination happens everywhere, even in countries like Canada that have legislation opposing it or which support international agreements in favour of gender equality.Most of the world community supports in principle several agreements that guarantee gender equality:
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10, 1948, states that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights…"
- the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights focused on gender inequality and stated clearly that women's rights are human rights, and
- the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted in 1979, defines discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for action to end such discrimination
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equa l benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. (Reference)
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equa l benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability. (Reference)
Why does gender discrimination happen?
There are probably as many individual reasons for gender-based discrimination as there are individuals who practise it. The root causes can be traced to culture, which is the quality in every society that shapes the way 'things are done' and the understanding of why this should be so. Expectations about attributes and behaviours appropriate to women and men and about the relations between women and men-in other words, gender-are shaped by culture.
In most societies there are clear patterns of "women's work" and "men's work", both in the household and in the wider community, and cultural explanations of why this should be so. The patterns and the explanations differ among societies and change over time.
While gender relations may vary from society to society, the general pattern is that women have less personal autonomy, fewer resources at their disposal, and limited influence over the decision-making processes that shape their societies and their own lives.
In practice, gender equality simply means that both men and women can exercise their rights and realize their full human potential, regardless of their gender.
Why oppose gender discrimination?
Women have a huge influence on the well-being of their families and societies. When a country educates its girls as well as its boys, economic productivity rises, maternal and infant mortality rates fall, fertility rates decline, and the health and educational prospects of the next generation are improved. Refusing or failing to educate females perpetuates the cycle of poverty, a fact recognized in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, a set of targets for improvements in all areas of human development by 2015 that will bring the world closer to the vision of a better life.
Gender equality is among the Millennium Development Goals because all the other goals-achieving universal primary education, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development-depend on it.
A few facts to ponder
Consider the following:
- More than 80 percent of the world's 35 million refugees are women and children;
- More than 110 million of the world's children, two-thirds of them girls, are not in school;
- At least one in every three women is a survivor of some form of gender-based violence, frequently inflicted by a family member;
- Women represent, on average, less than 10 percent of the seats in national parliaments; and
- In sub-Saharan Africa, 58 percent of persons infected with HIV/AIDS are women.
In sub-Saharan Africa, where 58 percent of people infected with HIV/AIDS are women, projects like Zambia's Bauze Community Youth Centre provide HIV/AIDS education and support.
In addition to supporting the Millennium Development Goals, the Government of Canada works through CIDA with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-governmental institutions to fight gender-based discrimination and improve the lives of women and girls around the world.
One notable example is a groundbreaking study on gender bias in the justice system in India that was carried out by Sakshi, an Indian NGO. The study, funded by CIDA, revealed widespread misconceptions on the part of judges about women as victims of violence. It set in motion a reform movement throughout South Asia. Organizations doing similar work are Proshika Kendra in Bangladesh and Women's Voice in Senegal.
In another example, CIDA supports the Grameen Bank in its programs to grant tiny loans of around $50 to the very poor, most of whom are women. These 'microcredit' loans, plus training in basic business techniques, help them start small enterprises. Besides raising their families' living standards, the participants improve their social standing and gain the knowledge and confidence to take on more active roles in social and political activities. It's worth noting that 98 percent of micro-loans are repaid in full.
During the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, CIDA funded the 'hidden schools' that continued to educate girls, though the teachers and families faced severe penalties if they were caught. Now, CIDA and CARE Canada are implementing primary education in over 100 public schools in Afghanistan, as well as providing courses for teachers, school supplies, and construction of classrooms.
Some things you can do
- Learn more. Visit CIDA's gender equality sites. Or read publications like Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals available on the World Bank Web site.
- Talk to your parents, teachers, and friends about how things are different for boys and girls, men and women. Organize a class debate on the issue.
- Talk to your grandmothers and ask them how their lives have changed since they were girls. Or ask them what changes they would have liked to see.
- Express yourself on the issue. Write an article for your school paper or write a letter to the editor of your local daily or weekly newspaper.
- Organize a fundraising drive to help support a local shelter for abused women and their children. Or contribute to one of the organizations supported by Canada that help women overseas.
To learn more about gender equality, visit these sites:
If you have comments or questions on this page prepared by Canadian Partnership Branch - Youth Zone, send an e-mail
Date Modified: 2008-03-31
