Monday, November 19, 2007

Measuring the marigolds

I cannot help but laugh at this illustration from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report.

A brief glance at this graph and you would come away thinking, "Wow, there is a fantastic correlation between Gender Equality and World Competitiveness rankings! Look at that clustering around the median line!"

No kidding. Could this result be due to the fact that both rankings are compiled by the same organization, with one of the major classes of criteria used to determine the World Competitive Report rankings being measures of how effectively states make use of the talents of their female citizens?

The graph is a comparison of apples and apples.

Japan's rank, by the way, on the Gender Equality list is #93. Some folks are flabbergasted.

Maybe the ranking has something to do with this.

1 comment:

Christopher said...

The link to the description of the women's university festival rang a lot of bells. Many of my female university students earnestly state they wish to become air hostesses. Their look of satisfaction at their choice of career path fades a bit when they hear that the monthly salary is 150 000 yen.

On a related note I lazily popped on the TV and chanced across a program where a man, dressed as a woman (perhaps a woman in a man's body?) was giving makeup tips to a passel of high school girls. Her/is name is "Ikko" and s/he is seemingly an authority on makeup to the extent that the girls were scribbling down verbatim notes of his explanation with a rare intensity. The model was transformed from a lovely, fresh typical young woman into an exquisite creature. For example Ikko attached tiny feathers to her eyelids so when she blinked the feathers trembled like butterfly wings. Perhaps there is something where young Japanese women are seeking some kind of transformation?