Equality Still Eludes Women Around World

Women have made some progress in economic, educational and political fields in the last 40 years but still have not achieved equality with men anywhere in the world, a new worldwide survey said today.

“Women around the world have one thing in common--inequality with men,” said Ruth Leger Sivard, author of a report on the survey documenting women’s gains and losses over the last four decades.

The survey was made by World Priorities, a research organization, and was funded by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Modest Gains

The report said women around the world have not made significant progress since the end of World War II, even though they have gained ground in the work force, in elementary education and in achieving political rights. It called the changes in status “extremely uneven and on the whole modest.”

The report said the influx of women into the paid labor force “has not significantly narrowed the gap between men’s and women’s pay; nor has it stemmed the rising tide of poverty among women. Despite the key role that women have in Third World economies, they have been largely bypassed in development strategies.”

Movement for Change

“There are 2 1/2 billion women in the world, speaking 2,976 languages and living in countries where the average annual income ranges from under $200 to $30,000 per capita,” Sivard said.

But “despite this diversity, women are finding common ground. Their shared sense of inequality has triggered a movement for change which is emerging everywhere; it differs from earlier drives for equality in being worldwide and focusing on broad issues.”

The survey looked at women’s progress compared to men’s since the Charter of the United Nations four decades ago reaffirmed “faith in fundamental human rights . . . in the equal rights of men and women.”

The report is expected to be used as a reference for delegates to a world conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in July that marks the windup of the U.N. International Decade for Women, launched in 1976.