Why are European countries the most gender equal?

15 comments

1. >Why are European countries the most gender equal countries?

   There’s a pretty strong correlation between not treating women like second class citizens and the percentage of the population who don’t consider themselves religious.

   That means women have access to education, jobs etc.

   Then there’s the whole access to birth control issue

2. Welfare & social services.

   Once women can access decent contraception (without needing a man’s permission), free education, have access to maternity leave and protections at work that stop them getting fired for having a kid or needing to pick one up from school, and have support from the state if their income drops due to being a single parent, they suddenly do way better. They aren’t trapped in shitty relationships for financial reasons, don’t end up stuck in low paying poor treatment jobs, and don’t have kids they don’t want.

3. Welfare

   We have good parental leaves (for both parents), free education until unversity (with an additional government grant every year), most workplaces are quite considerate if you have kids and will adjust your schedules (both parents) if you have to go pick up kids from school or daycare or whatever. This means that women have equal opportunities to get educated and placed in the work force, and they dont have to be the only caregiver for their children. Some people when they visit Denmark for the first time are very surprised when they see fathers out with their kids in a stroller without the mother. If you are a single parent you get government support, so you are not burdened with childcare alone. The international women’s day has it’s origins in New York and Copenhagen, and a lot of acts like same-sex partnerships, transition surgeries have been here for a while. Jente Law is also a cultural aspect which promotes equality in a way.

   And still, there is a gap in wages across genders, unfortunately.

4. Do not fool yourself, there’s still a lot of misogyny. You can’t change culture with laws. But you can make laws to promote gender equality and in Europe we did.

   Laws like free contraception, free abortion, no discrimination in access to education and jobs (still exists but by law it shouldn’t) and even some positive discrimination programs.

5. A healthy dose of secularism. Most of the sexism/sex inequality comes forth from more strict religious parts. For example the SGP (reformed party in The Netherlands) is against abortion, birth control, etc. Same with DENK, the islamic party. There are definitely more moderate Christian parties as well who have left most of that behind (or at least don’t empathise it).

6. 1. Democracy
   There are more women than men, aka even ignoring everything else this makes them a stronger group and more represented than elsewhere. Most of the world is not as democratic as europe.

   2. Most people arent religious, or not even nearly “as much”

   Almost all religions originate from an era where women were 2nd class citizens. Argue as much as u want and defend that the true meaning of any given religion isnt that, but when u look at the results, a hevaily christian, let alone a heavily muslim society is almost always deeply sexist.
   Even those who say they are religious in europe, are often incomperable to the average religious person from for example the middle east. What counts as nornal level of religiousness in other places, might very well be labeled as extreme fanatism here.
   Europe adopted secularism pretty well. Law comes first, which has many guarantees for women, and second: religion.
   At many other parts of the world, religion and law arent even separate concepts, which makes implementing modern equality values extremely slow.

7. War , WW2 riped Europe killing a lot of man , this made woman work more and this ofc force rule maker to account for womans need in laws making , you can see this a lot in post Soviet block, this is actually why I see huge rise of anti-feminizm in my region in young girls , overworked and tired and close to mental brake mom is a thing young girls is not a situation they like to get them self …

8. I’ll add a thing- many universities have started having menstrual products on campus for free. You see them in cafes and restaurants too, as well tables for diaper changing, in men’s rooms. And the presence of gender neutral toilets.

   All of this can contribute to reducing social gender gaps

9. I’m in Sweden and thought that was bullshit until I moved to the UK. There some women were housewives, we don’t have that in Sweden here all women work. The men did almost no domestic work and they didn’t have parental leave. To not share the responsibility for home and kids are strange to me. That the man take zero paternity leave was bewildering. There’s also superficial stuff like the future husband and wife walking together down the aisle here while the father walks the bride down the aisle in the UK.

10. We were never rich enough for it to be the norm that only 1 parent needs to work to support the whole family. Also by the fact that women get the voting rights right after regetting independence I guess we just have a more equal approach.

11. Depends on the country. France for instance is a lot more patriarchal than the USA (actress Catherine Deneuve for example even argued there a few years ago that men should have the right to catcall and harass women and actor Roman Polanski still isn’t in jail there, neither was he extradited to the USA), most European countries didn’t make Martial Rape illegal until 1997, and in some Swiss cantons, women didn’t have the right to vote until the late 1980s. Also witch trials were still happening in Europe into the early 19th century, while they stopped with the Salem Witch Trials in America (and it wasn’t even the US back then), and Femicide is still common in Italy.

    If you asked me which country is the most gender equal in the world, I’d say the USA by a long shot. Europe appears a lot more gender equal at first sight, but it is a lot more rapey and patriarchal continent.

    There is also the disturbing phenomenon that a lot of Europeans support pedophilia and the age of consent is 14 in a lot of European countries (see the politicians Daniel Cohn-Bendit in France and Dagmar Döring in Germany).

12. Well, it’s

    1) making sure pregnancy drags you down as minimally as possible (you get to decide if/when, maternity leave is guaranteed and can’t be a cause for discrimination, making childcare cheaper, etc)

    2) having as many women in the workforce as possible – housework is invisible work and being out and about productive in the public eye does a lot to shift attitudes and guarantees women their own financial stability

    3) moving away from harmful tradition and ortodox religious stances

    4) time – the longer you keep the 3 above points going, the better, every new generation will grow up having stronger understanding of equality as the desired standard. I can see it in my family – even though she worked her entire life (and earned more) my grandma did all the childcare and housework, now my mum does most childcare but gets a lot of help with housework, women of my generation already want a man that will do half housework and as close to half of childcare as possiible.

13. We exported a significant amount of our religious nutjobs to the American frontier. So they didn’t get to influence Europe as much, but took that influence with them across the pond.

14. Why is Europe ahead?

    Because Europe (and especially West/Northern Europe) was the first geographical location with food security for commoners.

    You don’t have the energy to think about the next desires if your belly is rumbling.

    You’ll generally also see countries to enact lots of laws that favours women, before they enact laws that favours minorities. E.g. gay people.

    There’s a bit of a stair way, to process to the next step the current step needs to be fulfilled.

    I lived in the Middle East for a year, I met several LGBT people. One comment just put it all together so nicely; Why would regular folks demand more rights for us, when they can’t eat every day?

    It’s the same for women’s rights, why would a mom have the energy to slam the drum if her kid is starving? She’ll spend all day on getting another bite to eat for her and her family.

15. I think most European countries are quite ‘atheist’ in our politics. Meaning religion and politics will never mix. This will often get rid of conservative/old oppressive opinions to not end up as laws or practices in society as a whole.