Russian Women Are Politically Alienated, Gender Gap Report Shows

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – November 2, 2017)

Russia has closed the gender divide between men and women across health and life expectancy for the first time in over a decade, but women remain alienated from politics, according to a new report on global gender inequality.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2017 Global Gender Gap Report analyzes gender parity based economic opportunity, educational achievement, health and survival and political participation.

Since last year’s report, Russia climbed four spots in the ranking to 71, buoyed by a higher representation of women in government. Around 16 percent of Russian deputies and senators are women, and there are three female ministers in Russia’s 31-member Cabinet.

For the first time since 2006, Russian women and men also have the same health expectancy and Russia is also in the top-50 in terms of economic and education ratings.

Still, the report says that Russia remains one of the two dozen worst-performing countries for women in terms of political empowerment. The category measures the gap between men and women at the political top, including the ratio of women to men in terms of years in executive office for the last 50 years.

The WEF report estimates that the world’s overall global gender gap could be fully closed in 100 years if current trends continue. It would take more than 200 years to close the economic gender gap.