APEC Bulletin 26 September 2017

Introducing the 2017 APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard

Almost two decades into the 21st century, half of humanity still has fewer privileges, rights and less access to economic opportunity, according to research conducted by APEC.

APEC knows the human and economic costs of this inequality between men and women. If the consequences of limiting the participation of women in the workforce is measured in dollars and cents alone, the number can go up to an estimated $89 billion yearly in the Asia-Pacific.

The forum has been working formally to promote the economic empowerment of women in its 21 member economies since 2011, when the Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy was created. Much progress has been made but much more is yet to be done before barriers are brought down.

One way to expedite progress is to determine precisely where progress stands. The APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard provides a snapshot of the status of women in the region.

Produced by the APEC Policy Support Unit, it looks into measurable data, such as live-birth statistics or the existence of laws protecting women’s rights, in order to show us how women, in objective and unambiguous terms, are treated.

This report contains 22 information dashboards, one for each of the 21 APEC member economies and another for the APEC region as a whole.

The Good

Some of the findings show that:

  • Property and inheritance rights for women remain high, and are on par with those for men in most economies.
  • More and more women are allowed to work the same jobs as men and hold the same night hours, under the law.
  • Inclusiveness for women continues to improve in terms of their access to potable water sources and sanitation, health services, technology and access to international markets.
  • Men and women have almost equal access to all levels of education.

The Bad

The data also found some gaps to which APEC needs to pay closer attention:

  • The number of economies mandating non-discrimination based on gender during the recruitment process went down.
  • Conditions for career advancement have worsened in some areas, such as having equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value, and the existence of paid or unpaid parental leave.
  • The participation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics remains low in many APEC economies.

The APEC Women and The Economy Dashboard 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY –  KEY FINDINGS  

The information collected for the APEC Women and The Economy Dashboard 2017 shows mixed results regarding the efforts that the APEC region is undertaking to allow a wider participation of women in the economy. Some of the positive findings are as follows:

  • –  Property and inheritance rights for women remain high, and are on par with those for men in most APEC economies.
  • –  Efforts to improve credit information systems could especially benefit SMEs and women, since more than 1/3 of SMEs are owned by women in the APEC region, of which 73% are considered “very small”1.
  • –  Some improvements in allowing women to do the same jobs as men and working the same night hours under the law.
  • –  Inclusiveness for women continues to improve in terms of their access to potable water sources and sanitation, health services, technology and access to international markets.
  • –  Women are still far behind men in terms of their participation at highest levels of political decision-making. However, their participation has been higher in the last three 
 
However, the data also found some gaps where APEC needs to pay closer attention and intensify their policy efforts to allow women to participate in the economy with equal opportunities:
  • –  Despite the improvements in credit information systems, some setbacks have been reported as well, as microfinance institutions no longer provide information to credit bureaus/registries in some economies.
  • –  Discrimination still persists in specific sectors in a number of APEC economies, as women cannot work in the same way as men do.
  • –  In comparison to recent years, fewer economies are mandating non-discrimination based on gender during the recruitment process. Likewise, fewer economies are considering it illegal to ask about family status during a job interview.
  • –  Conditions for career advancement have worsened in some areas such as having equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value, and the existence of paid or unpaid parental leave.
  • –  The participation of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics remains low in many APEC economies.

SCOPE OF THE DASHBOARD

The APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard is an initiative that

seeks to provide a snapshot of the status of women in APEC, by looking at a set of indicators in recent years, which allows measurement of the progress of women’s participation in economic-related activities and women’s inclusion in several aspects of life. The Dashboard is comprised of almost 80

indicators, classified in five areas previously identified as priorities by the APEC Policy Partnership of Women and the Economy (PPWE): 1) access to capital and assets; 2) access to markets; 3) skills, capacity-building and health; 4) leadership, voice and agency; and 5) innovation and technology.

The indicators were selected and endorsed by consensus in 2014 following an extensive study and consultations with data experts and economy representatives at PPWE. The goal was to identify credible, up-to-date metrics aligning with the PPWE priorities, so policymakers can have a clear picture of gaps and opportunities. The Dashboard is also intended to support gender integration across APEC. The indicators are cross-cutting across sectors in order for the Dashboard to be used as a tool by APEC’s technical working groups in integrating gender perspectives into their work. The indicators are drawn from a range of international data sources, including the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the World Economic Forum, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the World Health Organization, among others.

This report provides an update with the most recent annual information available for each of those indicators. However, some of the indicators endorsed in 2014 have been discontinued, as their original sources are no longer collecting the necessary information in recent years (for example, the Economist Intelligence Unit on women’s financial literacy and availability of SME training for women; the International Women’s Media Foundation on the percentage of professional women in media positions; and the World Bank on the percentage of paved roads). Also, some indicators may no longer be relevant (for example, the percentage of mobile phone subscriptions by gender, as the number of mobile phone subscriptions is exceeding the population). It is recommended that APEC economies review the list of indicators for both relevance and data integrity for future updates of this Dashboard.

Some of the indicators in the Dashboard are outcome-oriented, as they measure directly the participation, status or treatment of women in topics related to the five PPWE priority areas. Other indicators assess matters related to the environment that enables women to increase their participation in the economy. This second group does not measure directly issues from a gender perspective, but instead gives a perspective of general conditions that could allow women to enjoy more inclusiveness in the society and to have a greater participation in the economy.

This document contains 22 dashboards, one for each of the 21 APEC member economies and another for the APEC region as a whole. For the sake of brevity, this Executive Summary will focus on the main results obtained by APEC as a whole. In some cases, APEC aggregates were not calculated due to lack of data in several APEC economies.

MAIN RESULTS BY PRIORITY AREAS

  1. Access to Capital and Assets

Property and inheritance rights amongst women remain high in APEC. Such rights are essential to provide women with collateral for loan applications. In 2015, all 21 economies reported that unmarried women and men had equal rights to property. Additionally, the property rights of married women and men were the same in 19 APEC economies. In terms of inheritance rights, the number of economies with equal inheritance rights for sons and daughters, and for female and male surviving spouses remained the same as previous years (18 economies).

There have been efforts to improve credit information systems within APEC. For example, there was an increase in APEC economies whose credit information systems collecting information on bill payments from utility companies, from five in 2013 to nine in 2015. Despite this, there is still room for improvement since only a minority of APEC economies have their credit registries collecting this type of information as well as those regarding loan satisfaction from retailers. In addition, it is unfortunate that some setbacks have appeared in this area, since the number of economies indicating private credit bureau or public credit registry collecting information from microfinance institutions fell from 12 to 8 during the same period.

While there have been mixed results over credit information collected by APEC economies, the availability and access of commercial banks in the APEC region improved slightly, as the number of bank branches per 100,000 adults increased marginally from 14.5 to 15.4 between 2008 and 2015.

In terms of the participation of women in the labor market, the ratio of female to male labor force participation remained constant in 2015 at 77.3%. This is higher than the world average of 67.7%. There is,

however, a large range of values amongst APEC economies, ranging from 56.5% to almost parity at 95.2%

  1. Access to Markets

Implementation of laws in APEC allowing non-pregnant and non-nursing women to have similar labor market access as men have been mixed. Indeed, it is still challenging for women in many APEC economies to have equal access to the labor market as their male counterparts.

On the one hand, most APEC
economies allow non-pregnant and non-nursing
women to work in the
construction sector (17
economies) and factories (19 economies) in the same way as men do. Similarly, women were also allowed to work the same night hours as men in 20 APEC economies, in 2015, an increase from 17 in 2013. Also, the number of economies with laws allowing equal access to jobs for non-pregnant and non-nursing women and men improved from 10 in 2013 to 13 in 2015. Other improvements are observed in the mining industry, where 13 economies allow equal access to women and men in 2015, up from 11 in 2013. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of room for improvement in the last two aforementioned areas, since more than 1/3 of APEC members have not implemented yet any regulations allowing equal access to female workers. It is noticeable that many of the restrictions women are facing are related to activities associated to intense physical work.

On the other hand, there has been a steady decline in economies with laws mandating non- discrimination based on gender in hiring. 12 out of 20 economies reported having such laws in 2009, whereas the number dropped to 11 out of 21 economies in 2015.

For APEC economies, access of domestic companies to international markets (calculated using an index of trade- weighted average tariff rates and non-tariff barriers on a scale of 0-100) has increased over the years. This indicator was equivalent to 83.7 in 2015, which represented an 8.1% improvement from 2008. In contrast, competitive access for entrepreneurs to domestic markets has declined slightly. Surveys collected by the World Economic Forum indicated that the effectiveness

of anti-monopoly policy, and the extent of market fragmentation (in terms of the number of competing firms) both dropped slightly. The intensity of local competition, however, remained the same in the last three years.

With regards to infrastructure, APEC continues to improve access to drinking water sources and sanitation facilities. Access in rural areas improved by about one percentage point each between 2013 and 2015. 90.7% of the rural population in APEC already had access to potable water by 2015, while 66.6% had access to suitable sanitation facilities. Access in urban areas stayed relatively constant in recent years. Nonetheless, urban access to proper drinking water sources and sanitation facilities remained high at 97.8% and 88.8%, respectively.

  1. Skills, Capacity-Building and Health

Women need to have similar access as men to all levels of education and vocational training programs in order to close the existing gaps and enjoy equal opportunities in the labor market. The education attainment index, which measures how close girls/women are to achieving parity with boys/men in literacy; net primary school enrolment; net secondary school enrolment; and gross tertiary enrolment, shows that APEC as a whole scored 98.9 out of a maximum score of 100 in 2015, indicating that women have almost achieved parity with respect to men. Indeed, four economies have achieved a full parity score of 100.

The mean score of girls in both math
and reading on the test administered
by the OECD’s Program for
International Student Assessment
(PISA) reveals that girls in the APEC
region continue to score better in
reading when compared to boys, but
boys do better than girls in math.
Despite the fact that the gap between
boys’ and girls’ scores in math has
slightly reduced, it is important to
find ways to increase girls’
confidence in math, as low
confidence is a factor explaining the
low participation of women in pursuing studies related to science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM).

On a positive note, health and safety for women have improved overall in APEC. Maternal mortality fell from 61.3 per 100,000 live births in 2008 to 42.6 in 2015, the number of hospital beds per 10,000 population increased from 30.6 in 2008 to 38.1 in 2014, and the percentage of attended births by health professionals remained high (more than 90% of live births) in most APEC economies. Additionally, most APEC economies have been implementing measures to address domestic violence cases. By 2015, 19 economies had issued legislation and set specialized courts/procedures to address these issues and provide women with legal protection from domestic violence.

  1. Leadership, Voice and Agency

In many cases, the legal
conditions that women face in
the APEC region could restrict
their opportunities for
promotion. While all 21 APEC
economies have laws penalizing/preventing the dismissal of
pregnant women and most of
them mandate paid or unpaid
maternity leave (19 economies),
only eight economies guarantee
female employees an equivalent
position when they return from
maternity leave, penalizing them
for using their legally entitled
leave. Women with children
may also find it more difficult to
balance family and work as
parental leave is only mandated
in 9 APEC economies. According to the OECD, mandated paternity leave could improve female labor force participation.

Furthermore, 19 APEC member economies do not have legislation preventing employers asking about family status during job interviews. Questions about family matters could put female applicants at a disadvantage at the recruitment stage.

Besides the legal perspective, other restrictions for women to advance in their career are related to the fact that women tend to take a substantial part of routine housework, care for family members and other unpaid family-related errands in comparison to men. According to data from nine economies, women could spend nearly 4 1⁄2 hours a day on average doing unpaid work in 2011.

These restrictions could be important factors in explaining the low participation of women in top managerial positions within the private sector. Data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey conducted in 2015 for five APEC economies showed that no economy had more than 30% of firms with a top female manager.

While APEC economies have made improvements in terms of the status of women relative to men at the highest levels of political decision making, the level still remains low (17.4 on a 0-100 scale in 2016). Indeed, the highest ranked APEC economy only scored 39.0 on the index, indicating that there is still significant room for improvement in this area in the region.

  1. Innovation and Technology

Data related to the participation of women in innovation and technology activities remain scarce in the APEC region and this has prevented the calculation of APEC aggregates on this matter. However, based on the available data, it is clear that women still represent the minority among STEM fields and staff working on research and development. For instance, female graduates in science programs represented less than 50 percent of the graduates in all 12 economies with available data between 2013 and 2015. Likewise, less than half of all graduates in engineering, technology and mathematics were women in the 14 APEC economies with data available. Indeed, the percentage of female graduates from Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction was as low as 15 percent in some APEC economies.

Regarding access to technology, as mentioned in the 2015 APEC Dashboard on Women and the Economy, the figures in the APEC region indicate a general increase in the accessibility and use of modern technology, which make it reasonable to presume women are also benefitting from this trend. Mobile phone subscriptions as percentage of the population has increased steadily, up to 109.2% in 2015. The number of mobile phones has exceeded the population in APEC since 2013, and this trend looks set to continue in the future. Mobile cellular tariffs

are on average low in the APEC region (USD 0.19 per minute) and have remained generally constant from 2013 to 2015. Internet use has also risen in APEC, as the percentage of the population who are internet users increased to 55.0% in 2015, up from 52.1% in 2014.

In terms of “Green” awareness and activity, figures have generally remained stagnant in recent years. As a result, APEC still has much work to do in improving household air quality, exposure to air pollution, wastewater treatment and achieving sustainable fish stocks.

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