What’s the difference? Try our International Women’s Day quiz and find out!

And inequalities exist even when they are in the labour force. In OECD countries men earn on average 16% more than women in similar full-time jobs. At the top of the pay scale, the gender gap is even higher, 21%, suggesting the continued presence of a glass ceiling. The average pay gap between men and women widens to 22% in families with one or more children. For couples without children, the gap is 7%. Overall the wage penalty for having children is on average 14%, with Japan and Korea showing the greatest gap, while Italy and Spain have almost none.

The impact of pay inequality is dramatic over a woman’s lifetime. Having worked less in formal employment, but having carried out much more unpaid work at home, many women will retire on lower pensions and see out their final years in poverty. Living an average of nearly 6 years longer than men, women over 65 are today more than one and a half times more likely to live in poverty than men in the same age bracket.

Yes, and on hearing Griffith-Jones’ question, the rest of the prosecution team started quoting Lawrence, or at least they were heard muttering “Oh f*ck”. Anyway, it turned out that the jury would let their wives, servants and anybody else read it, and the book was published shortly afterwards.

Since then, though it may not be related, girls outperform boys nearly everywhere in PISA’s reading tests, and between 2000 and 2012 the gender gap in reading performance in favour of girls widened in 11 countries. If you’d like to find out whether you’re smarter than a 15 year-old, try the PISA test.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, wrote the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine, Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, around 1843. The Ada programming language is named in honour of her. Today however, only 20% of students in computer science courses are women and only 14% of patents are filed by women.

On the educationtoday blog, Marilyn Achiron looks at women’s absence from STEM occupations.

That’s right, although that said, this argument or something similar probably was used, but we couldn’t find any documentary evidence. What we did find though, looking at OECD’s Women in Government data, is that in 2012, women accounted for only 26.8% of parliamentarians and 24.9% of ministers in OECD countries.

Helen Grant’s statement, reported here, is at odds with the conclusions of a WHO report on Girls’ participation in physical activities and sport that “rather than focusing on ‘girl-friendly’ sports, we should be looking for ways to make sports and other physical activities more ‘child-friendly’ and ‘youth-friendly’.

Lack of physical activity is one of the causes of obesity, but OECD Fit not Fat study of the subject found that in most countries, boys have higher rates of overweight and obesity than girls. Girls tend to have higher rates in Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark), as well as in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia.

As this BBC report explains, Arunachalam Muruganantham invented a simple machine rural women can use to make cheap sanitary pads. Poor menstrual hygiene is the cause of 70% of all reproductive diseases in India, and 23% of girls drop out of education once they start menstruating. The machine also provides jobs for rural women.

International Working Women’s Day was proposed in Copenhagen in 1910  by Clara Zetkin at the first international women’s conference organised by the Socialist International. The first National Woman’s Day was observed in the United States on 28 February 1909. The Socialist Party of America designated this day in honour of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions. The United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March 1975, during International Women’s Year.

The date is linked to the history of the day. International Women’s Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded women’s rights to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job. In 1913-1914, as part of the peace movement, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists. In 1917, women in Russia again chose to protest and strike for ‘Bread and Peace’ on the last Sunday in February (which fell on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar).

Boys in all the Arabic-speaking countries tested reported “feeling helpless when doing a maths problem” more than girls maths, but they’re not alone  – that’s the case in a quarter of the countries surveyed. However, boys in general ouperform girls in maths by the equivalent of three months in school. That doesn’t mean girls can’t do well:  girls in Shanghai outperform boys in every other school system in the PISA at maths. You can find out more here.

One of the most surprising results is that countries with a good reputation on women’s issues come out worst in the survey.  In Denmark 52% of women report suffering physical or sexual violence, with Finland (47%), and Sweden (46%) coming second and third. However, the report’s authors suggest five explanations for observed differences between countries which require further exploration:
1) The extent to which it is culturally acceptable to talk to other people about experiences of violence against women, including to survey interviewers.
2) Higher levels of gender equality could lead to higher levels of disclosure about violence against women, as incidents of violence against women are more likely to be openly addressed and challenged in societies with greater equality.
3) Women’s exposure to risk factors for violence can be examined at the Member State level with respect to factors that might increase exposure to violence, such as patterns in employment (working outside the home) as well as socialisation and lifestyle patterns (going out or dating).
4) Differences between countries in overall levels of violent crime, which need to be examined alongside findings on violence against women. For example, a greater degree of urbanisation in a country is generally related to higher crime rates.
5) As there is evidence, including in this survey, of a relationship between perpetrators’ drinking habits and women’s experiences of domestic violence, different drinking patterns in Member States may help to explain certain aspects of violence against women.

Italian men spend almost half the day (11 hours and 37 minutes) looking after themselves according to OECD data on time spent on personal care. And in a dramatic announcement when the results became known, the OECD also revealed that overall, women spend more time than men on unpaid work like shopping or housework. Turkish women spend the most time doing unpaid work at 377 minutes a day, while Korean men are either astonishingly efficient or something else, since they only spend45 minutes.

Only eight respondents agreed that the need to address the financial literacy of women and girls was an important policy issue, while twelve disagreed and four did not know. The OECD gives developing countries advice on “policy coherence“. Maybe it’s time to broaden the scope.

Globally, cardiovascular disease, often thought to be a “male” problem, is the number one killer of women. Breast cancer is the leading cancer killer among women aged 20–59 years worldwide.

Ischaemic heart disease kills 96 women per 100,000 population (the same as strokes), and hypertensive heart disease another 17.

As you’d expect, there are big differences depending on income level. In low-income countries for example major killers are often absent from the top ten causes of female deaths in other places. The main causes of death in the poorest countries are lower respiratory infections (96 per 100,000 population), followed by HIV/AIDS (74) and diarrheal diseases (71). If added together, the biggest killer would be conditions linked to pregnancy and childbirth, with preterm birth complications accounting for a death rate of 49 per 100,000), maternal conditions 26, and birth asphyxia and birth trauma 25.

There doesn’t seem to be much difference. The OECD carried out a survey using a scale called the Cantril ladder which asks people to rate their general satisfaction with life on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the most satisfied. Although there is large variation across countries – with the gap between countries with the highest satisfaction and those with the lowest being approximately 3 points on the scale – gender doesn’t seem to play a major role in shaping people’s subjective evaluation of their own lives. Significant differences by gender are found only for employment and health status, which are stronger drivers of life satisfaction for women than they are for men. And in more news, it turns out that people who are rich and healthy are more satisfied than those who are poor and sick. Read all about it here.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, people in sunny South Africa are the most miserable, while those in gloomy Norway are the most cheerful.

Yemen comes last of the 136 countries ranked by the World Economic Forum according to “gender gaps on economic, political, education and health criteria”. Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden occupy the first four places, and OECD countries take eight out of the top ten, with the Philippines coming in at number 5 and Nicaragua at 10.

The spoof magazine cover is one of three produced by Catapult, a US-based crowdfunding site for International Women’s Day. If you click on the image, you’ll see the full story in The Guardian. Among the statistics quoted are these:

14m girls — some as young as eight years old — will be married against their will in 2014.
An estimated 1.2m children are trafficked into slavery each year; 80% are girls.
In New York City, the average age at which a girl first becomes a victim of commercial sexual exploitation is 13.

South Africa’s Sexual Violence Research Initiative has produced a briefing paper on Modifying Gender Role Stereotypes in Children. It says that: “Parents convey expectations of gender role conformity starting in infancy , with one study finding that parents hold gender-typed expectations of their sons and daughters in the first 24 hours following birth. Another found that children show an awareness of their parents’ communication about gender roles from two to two-and-a-half years of age, with the early provision of gender-differentiated toy selection typically reflecting parental stereotypes”