Poverty is Sexist 2016

Poverty is sexist. But where in the world is it toughest to be born a girl? The biggest determinants of a girl’s chances in life include her health, nutrition, education, economic opportunities and participation in decision-making.

In order to best capture a glimpse of how these factors affect girls, ONE looked at a variety of indicators to create an index of the toughest countries in which to be born female. The index takes into account some of the biggest

opportunities and threats a girl may face in her life:

1. the potential economic opportunities for women based on GDP per capita;

2. the number of years girls attend school;

3. the percentage of women who have access to a bank account;

4. the proportion of women who have a paid job relative to men;

5. the prevalence of anaemia amongst women;

6. the likelihood of a woman dying during childbirth;

7. the proportion of parliamentarians who are women.

The index is not meant to be comprehensive and the lack of good data in these areas makes the task challenging.

But this set of indicators can be seen as a reasonable guide to a girl’s chances in life, through her health and nutrition, education, economic opportunities and ability to participate in political life.

Using this approach, we find that the 20 toughest countries to be born a girl are among the poorest on the planet. Eighteen are classified by the United Nations as Least Developed Countries (LDCs), 13 are on the World Bank’s list of ‘Fragile Situations’ and 12 fall into both those categories.

The country that tops our list, Niger, is a place where a girl can expect to have 16 months less schooling than her brother, a one in 20 chance of dying in childbirth and a one in four chance of delivering a baby that is underweight. In Niger only 2.6% of females aged 15 and over have a bank account, fewer than half of women are in paid employment and only 13% of members of the national parliament are women. Niger lies at the heart of Africa’s Sahel region, which is home to a number of other countries on the list. The Sahel has suffered four food security crises in recent years (2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012) and is currently in drought again.

As ONE lays out in this report, being born female and in poverty is a double challenge, and the toughest places on the index seem to bear this out. Clearly, what women and that holds back not only them but men and boys too. But the detail of the index also shows that being in poverty does not have to mean the worst for girls: some very poor countries have beaten the odds.