Benchmark
Asia’s Progress in Closing the Gender Gap Is Slow, Uneven
A customer hands over Philippine peso banknotes to a fishmonger at a market stall in the Tondo district of Manila.
Photographer: Seong Joon Cho/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The Philippines and New Zealand are leading the pack in Asia-Pacific on having the best gender equality, but the rest of the region still has some way to go to improving its status.
India is struggling to improve its rates of female health, despite gains on wage equality and educational attainment, while China’s gender gap has flat-lined over the past decade largely due to a decline in the percentage of women joining the workforce, said Samantha Amerasinghe, an economist with Standard Chartered Plc, in a recent report based on earlier findings by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum.