Introduction
Gender equality occurs when people from all genders have equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities. Everyone is affected by gender equality, starting from families, children, transgender people, men, and women (Kurzman). In this article, “Women Assessments of Gender Equality,” Kurzman juxtaposes various approaches comprising subjective-equality and gender equality and uses six cross-national surveys and seven global indices (Kurzman). The authors find inconsistency between how ladies report on their experiences and ideas (subjective equality) and how various nations rank on universal gender equality indicators (index-equality).
Summary of the Article
This article explains how women’s assessment of gender equality does not continually match with the worldwide indices of gender inequality. In various surveys examining about 150 nations, this article reveals that women in the society have rated gender-unequal according to international metrics such as political representation, participation in labor-free force, and education (Kurzman). However, this does not evaluate their lives as less gratifying than men. Women in high index-quality societies have a higher probability of saying that their rights are almost equal to men. Their gender issue attitudes do not mirror the same dormant construct existing in low index-equal culture, although they might have started to unite recently (Kurzman). Therefore, these findings reveal the existing old concern between the importance of understanding the subjective priorities of women and the general criteria for gender equality.
The research discussed an essential topic that social analysts have been experiencing differences for a long time. Gender equality is defined by approaches of universalities through relevant indicators to all cultures, such as differences in gender involvement in various sectors like health, academic, political, and paid manual labor (Kurzman). Index-equality interventions have been used by various countries worldwide by various indices that rank countries using this criterion (Kurzman). In contrast, subjective interventions major on the experiences and priorities of women even though some of them strike-through outsiders as nonegalitarian (Kurzman). These interventions are referred to as subjective equality and are normally adopted in cross-national surveys.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The analysis used in this article finds out that gender equality varies from the perception response of surveys performed on women to the perception of global indices. This analysis help readers realize that the female gender across the globe does not share the idea of gender equality that Universalist indices promote and measure (Kurzman). Also, the study is evocative rather than normative because it avoids explaining the findings or advocate for either approach of subjective or Universalists (Kurzman). Instead, the study documents the existing nervousness between these interventions, raising issues for research in the future. Additionally, this article has summarized four empirical aspects gender inequality issue. This article has also compared seven international indices of gender inequality and responses of women to six cross-national surveys for the past two decades (Kurzman). The article reveals that index-inequality is not consistently related to the experience that women have in controlling their lives or life contentment relative to men’s experiences (Kurzman).
Weaknesses
Various weaknesses are associated with this study such as the research did not address the normative implication, which the authors leave to be studied in the future. Alternatively, the results of the research are descriptive documentation of tensions existing between two visions of gender equality. Another weakness is that the sets of data used limited authors in the cross-sectional analysis. This is because the data in exploring change in women towards gender equality had been collected in many regions for the longest span of time.
Works Cited
Kurzman, Charles, et al. “Women’s Assessments of Gender Equality.” Socius 5 (2019): 2378023119872387.