What is Gender Equality?

Does Gender Equality really mean equal treatment for men and women?

Jan 24, 2025

At 16:53 on 12 January 2010, a severe (magnitude 7.0) earthquake struck Haiti. The centre was just 25 km from the capital, Port-au-Prince. Three million people – a third of the country’s population – were affected. The area around Port-au-Prince was devastated.

Roads were blocked, communications and electric power were down so that little food could be distributed in the first two weeks. By the end of the month, things were desperate. Help was essential, and much hope was placed in the UN’s World Food Program (WFP).

The executive director of the WFP was Josette Sheeran – a committed feminist. Soon after starting at WFP, she issued a new policy on Gender Equality that mandated “focusing on women”. In Haiti, she put that policy into practice, announcing “It is our methodology to distribute only to women to ensure that food gets to women and children in Haiti.” This was only half true – in fact the WFP never did anything to ensure food got to children.

After the fact, the WFP claimed they had hoped that food might trickle down to children and men - but there’s no evidence that was a consideration in the decision making. And it’s clear that no thought was given to widowers, gay or single men many of whom had lost mothers and sisters. In desperation, gay men dressed as women to try to obtain food, some just ending up with a beating from guards. In the end, many vulnerable people were left to fend for themselves amid the devastation.

The WFP actions received only brief press attention (1, 2, 3, 4). Total deaths in Haiti were in the region of 200,000. The number of deaths among children and men caused by the WFP is unknown.

The WFP’s actions were inhumane. At a perilous time, they deliberately withheld food from men in contravention of humanitarian standards. Yet, strikingly, they saw their actions as consistent with the principles of Gender Equality. This raises a fundamental question: what does Gender Equality actually mean if it can justify such outcomes? What kind of “equality” leaves so many excluded, desperate, and invisible?

I’ve followed gender politics for over a quarter century now. In that time I’ve consistently encountered the assertion that feminism is synonymous with Gender Equality. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) So, if we can understand Gender Equality, then it should help us understand feminism as well as the events in Haiti. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done because there’s no consensus definition - surprising given that Gender Equality is so central to feminism.

Some definitions explicitly state that Gender Equality means not treating people equally (e.g. 1, 2) while others conflict with typical Gender Equality initiatives. Overall, the definitions don’t just vary, they contradict each other. We must seek clarity elsewhere.

Better, perhaps, to look at how Gender Equality is measured - there’s nothing so good at dispelling ambiguity as numbers.

Luckily, there is an accepted numeric measure of Gender Equality – the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap. There are similar measures from the UN, OECD and EU but the Global Gender Gap is most prominent. Only it is greeted with such rapture when Australia rises in the league table and such gloom when it falls.

The Global Gender Gap Index is calculated as a weighted average of 14 statistics that deal with familiar feminist issues – female labour force participation, proportion of female professional and technical workers and proportion of female heads of state over the last 50 years. Variables that might reveal the other side of the ledger are excluded – family law outcomes, suicides, workplace deaths, sentencing disparities etc. This index was designed to show women falling short of Gender Equality.

The detailed calculation used for these 14 variables is surprisingly interesting. (Really!)

Let’s look at the treatment of life expectancy and, particularly the results for Norway. Norway ranks second overall in the Global Gender Gap but its score has been reduced because of a poor performance on life expectancy. This is surprising given that Norwegian females enjoy a long life expectancy – in the top 10% globally and better than most other European countries. Nevertheless, the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranks Norway near the bottom - 126^th for life span and 127^th in the overall Health & Survival category out of a total of 146 countries. Surprisingly, Lesotho ranks equal 1^st despite women dying more than 25 years earlier than Norwegian women.

Norway’s problem is that men live too long – not as long as women, but only 1% less. Whereas Lesotho gets a top rank because men’s healthy life span is only 42 years so that they die 9% earlier than women. In the jargon used in the report, Lesotho has “exceeded the parity benchmark”. Another country to share top honours with Lesotho is Ukraine where Russian tanks have helped the Ukraine to also exceed the parity benchmark.

This concern that the early death of men should be scored as a good thing has been raised before, but the WEF remains steadfast. Apparently, they believe that Norwegian women would be better off dying 25 years earlier if only the men in their life died 29 years earlier.

Other indicators are assessed in a similar way. For example, if fewer Australian boys were allowed into high school, this would improve Australia’s score. And if boys were totally excluded this would yield a perfect score. Feminism is often criticised for zero sum thinking and this index strongly supports that criticism.

There are some other notable aspects of the Index that give further clues to the nature of Gender Equality:

The index is designed to ignore disparities that work against men – first, by excluding statistics likely to reveal male disadvantage and then, as a failsafe, to score male disadvantage as perfect “equality”. This ensures that only women can be seen to suffer inequality.
The index only considers women as a group. Individuals are invisible and irrelevant. This point is paramount and I will return to it repeatedly in later essays.
Related to the above, the index looks only at outcomes, not opportunities. Hence it ignores the question of whether people are treated equally.
Underlying it is an assumption that society can be broken down into two competing groups based on a single factor – gender.

The key takeaway is that the Global Gender Gap Index doesn’t deal with equality at all - it measures, even celebrates, discrimination against men. It is about rigging the scoreboard not levelling the playing field.

So, what does it look like when proponents “do” Gender Equality?

If we look at organisations working for Gender Equality (e.g. here and here) we see that most of them include “women” in their name. Men, boys, and even people don’t figure in their names.

If we look at broad objectives, for example of the Gates Foundation, we read that to improve Gender Equality they will “advance women's …”, “increase women's …”, “improve and protect women’s …”. There’s much talk of women’s health but no mention of men though it is men who die earlier.

The UN’s targets for Gender Equality start:

5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation…

There is no mention of men or boys as receiving Gender Equality. Nor is there any concern that men are much more likely to be victims of violence than women.

And the story is the same if we look at specific feminist initiatives:

Reserving highly sought-after jobs for women only and justifying this as Gender Equality.
Covertly excluding men from management roles in the name of Gender Equality.
Free walk-in medical clinics that exclude boys and men despite women’s life expectancy being more than four years greater than men’s.
Systematic discrimination against men by prosecutors and Police.
In the midst of a housing crisis, subsidised housing that excludes men regardless of need.
Large amounts of Government grants that are reserved for women alone.
Free legal services reserved for women despite systemic discrimination against men in family and criminal law.

Perhaps it’s no surprise to learn that Gender Equality is “for women” not men. The result is the same as we saw in the previous section – Gender Equality is about privileging the in-group and discriminating against the out-group. Definitions of true equality vary but I think we can all agree that, unlike Gender Equality, it is not reserved for only one group.

My view of equality is a traditional one – it means treating everyone alike regardless of their group, exactly as Martin Luther King said. Gender Equality seems to be the diametric opposite. Can feminists reconcile what they do with equality? What do they have to say on the subject?

Today, some feminists would explicitly abandon equality as a feminist objective – for example a recent book entitled Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom which the jacket describes as:

A bold argument that “equality” is a racist, patriarchal ideal that perpetuates women’s systemic oppression and limits the possibilities of feminism

Sandra Fredman in Women's Human Rights is of the same opinion but more circumspect:

…it is necessary to move away from a concept of equality that simply demands that women be treated in the same way as men.

Feminist academic Iris Marion Young has gone further and, in Justice and the Politics of Difference, argues that feminists should openly admit to discrimination:

Supporters of affirmative action policies would be less on the defensive, I suggest, if they positively acknowledged that these policies discriminate, instead of trying to argue that they are an extension of or compatible with a principle of nondiscrimination.

And, at least in Australia, media on the left has heeded this call and often openly support discrimination:

overall societal equality is in fact improved by discriminating against some groups

Feminists are increasingly admitting to discrimination. But, for many, outright opposing equality would create too much cognitive dissonance and too much potential criticism. Instead, they pursue discriminatory policies but label them “Gender Equality”.

Most of us support equality between the sexes. Sadly though, when feminists use the term Gender Equality, equality is not at all what they are talking about. We’ve seen that when feminists measure Gender Equality, they actually measure male disadvantage. When feminists create organisations and programs for Gender Equality, they deliver privilege for women and discrimination against males. And, increasingly, when feminists talk about Gender Equality, they concede their objective is discrimination not equality.

If you doubt this, examine feminist programs and policies for yourself. Can you name a single example of feminists advocating for equal treatment of men and women? Neither can I, and I have followed gender politics for decades. Rather, in every feminist initiative I have seen, they oppose it. The contrast between Gender Equality’s lofty rhetoric and its sordid reality is glaring.

In truth, Gender Equality means talking equality while doing discrimination.

My next essay will look at feminist justifications for discrimination. It’s coming together quite well! Please make sure you are subscribed to be informed when it’s published.