“ Nine out of 10 people are biased against women, says ‘alarming’ UN report.” 😨
The Guardian headline conveyed the findings of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI).
How can the world be livable if these many people have a bias against women? Or rather, how do women cope if these many people hold prejudiced views about them?
Granted the world is not an entirely pleasant place for many, it has been more unfair to women than men in many instances, for as long as homo sapiens walked the plains and heights of planet Earth.
All the same, how can these many people have a bias against women – 90 out of 100 people including women being biased against women?
So, what if this ‘alarming UN report’ was true?
It means that if I sat in the same room with former Presidents like Barack Obama, Muhammadu Buhari, and 7 others, I would be among the 9 individuals who have a bias against women.
This means Mr Obama too would be among the gender-biased 9? Because President Buhari is very much not biased against women and girls.🤭
But before Obama and I are labelled as being biased against women, I’d rather take a keener look at the UN figures.
You had better come with me to know for yourself. You could be among the 9 usual suspects of gender bias among the 10 in every room in the world.
The Guardian and the UNDP Report
“Nine out of 10 people of all genders have a bias against women, found the Gender Social Norms Index, a figure unchanged from data collected more than a decade ago,” The Guardian reported.
The UNDP Report had given the same impression: “The index, covering 85 percent of the global population, reveals that close to 9 out of 10 men and women hold biases against women.”
The Report noted that Gender biases continue to be prevalent in both lower and higher Human Development Index (HDI) countries, making it a pressing global issue that transcends regions, income levels, and cultures.
Measuring the extent of prejudices against women based on their roles in politics, education, economy, and physical integrity, the report switches the narrative to say: “Biased gender social norms are widespread worldwide: almost 90 percent of people have at least one bias”
However, the two statements which are used interchangeably in the report do not mean the same thing. And to portray them as the same may mislead people and governments with genuine concerns for the inequities women suffer globally.
The UNDP would mislead if it does not differentiate holding at least one bias against women from actually holding biases against women.
Let’s see what this really means.
If you play the game of dice, you’ll know that the probability of you having 1 if you throw a fair dice is ⅙.
But the probability of you having at least 1 as the minimum value on the dice is the probability of you having 6 or 5 or 4 or 3 or 2 or 1. Since the probability of having each of these 6 outcomes is ⅙, the probability of having at least 1 is ⅙ + ⅙ + ⅙ + ⅙ + ⅙ + ⅙ = 1. So, the probability of having at least one is 1 or 100 per cent.
But remember that the probability of having “1” is actually ⅙, which is 16.7 per cent.
So, when there are 10 women and men in a room, what are we interested in knowing? Is it how many of them have a level of bias against women or how many of them have at least one bias against women?
Usually what we want to know is how many of them have a bias against women. If that is the question, then the UNDP report actually stated that 18 per cent of people have one bias against women.
So, going by the UNDP data, in a room of 100 people, there is a PROBABILITY that:
- 18 persons (18 per cent) have 1 bias against women
- 18 persons (18 per cent) have 2 biases against women
- 16 persons (16.1 per cent) have 3 biases against women
- 16 persons (16.1 per cent) have 4 biases against women
- 14 persons (13.9 per cent) have 5 biases against women
- 6 persons (5.8 per cent) have 6 biases against women
- Only 1 person (0.8 per cent) has all the 7 biases against women
- 11 persons (11.3 per cent) have zero bias against women
What do you expect if we add the probabilities of each of the 7 possible outcomes of bias? Almost ninety among the hundred persons in the room (88.7 per cent), of course!
However, it does not mean that the 18 persons who have 1 bias are different from the 18 who have 2 biases.
It does not mean that the 16 persons who have 3 biases are not among the same 18 persons who have 2 biases.
It does not mean the 6 persons who have 6 biases against women are totally separate from the 14 who have 5 biases, and so on.
You’ll notice that the more the number of biases against women, the fewer the proportion of people likely to show these prejudices.
What this really shows is that, globally, fewer people have more of these biases.
And, if we want to know the proportion of people who are (fully) biased against women, who fully exhibit UNDP’s 7 markers of discrimination against women, they are just 1 in 100 persons (one per cent).
So, from the UNDP data, it’s safe to say at this point that in a room of 10 people, we may not find more than 2 people that have one bias against women.This same 2 persons could also have 2 biases against women. 1 of these 2 people could have 6 biases against women. In the end, those who have 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 biases against women among the 10 in the room could be just 2 or 3, and not 9 as the report purports.