The United States came close to electing its first female President in 2016. How does the United States compare with other nations regarding women’s role in politics, education and the economy? Find out with these five facts.
1) 26th in economic participation
The United States ranked 26th out of 144 nations for which data was available regarding economic participation and opportunity, according to a 2016 World Economic Forum (WEF) report. The report measured economic participation and opportunity by labor force participation, wage equality, earned income, and proportions of managers and professionals who are women.
2) First in education
The United States placed first out of 144 nations in educational attainment in 2016. However, more and more nations are enrolling girls and boys equally in school, rather than reserving education more for boys, so more and more nations are scoring close to the USA at 1.0 (1.0 is perfect equality, 0 is perfect inequality). Significantly, beyond primary and secondary school, women are surpassing men in university education in a growing number of nations, including the United States.
3) 73rd in political empowerment
The United States placed 73rd among 144 nations in political empowerment, which is measured by the proportion of women in the national legislature and key government positions, and the number of years with a female head of state (president or prime minister) in the last 50 years. The U.S. ranked 41st in the percentage of women in key government positions, but 82nd in women legislators in 2016.
4) 45th overall
The United States ranked 45th overall among the 144 nations the WEF studied in 2016 for their gender gap in politics, economy, education and health.
5) 73% of Americans see a woman president in their lifetimes, but…
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of American adults believe that they will see a female U.S. President in their lifetime. This belief carries for large majorities of men (75%), women (72%), Republicans (64%), independents (75%), and Democrats (85%). However, only 38% of American adults actually hope for a female president in their lifetime.
Two New U.S. Families Join Citizen Diplomacy Initiative
On Sunday, October 9, 2016, two new American families joined Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI) )in a live dialogue with a family in Senegal. The families posed questions to get to know each other then learned more about our developing international photovoice project.
“What time is it where you are?” “What type of food do you eat?” “Where do you go to school?” “How long does it take you to get to school?” “What do you do for fun?” “What holidays do you celebrate?” “Are you happy living in the place you are?” “What do your children want to do when they grow up?”
These were some of the questions the families posed to each other, and their answers revealed both differences and commonalities. For instance, on differences, the Diagne family is Muslim, as are 90%+ of Senegal’s 14 million people. This means they celebrate very different holidays, like the recent Eid Al-Adha, a four-day Muslim religious observance in which, following tradition, many Senegalese slaughter a sheep and shared its meat. On similarities, the families learned that they share a taste for some American musicians, like Beyonce. They also like to dance, which led, as in previous CDI dialogues, to live demonstrations of each other’s preferred music and dance (videos of some of these dances coming soon!).
This U.S.-Senegal live dialogue was a first for two American families living in Washington D.C. One D.C. mother, Janelle, brought her two daughters, Bianca (11) and Kristin (7) to the dialogue. Another mother, Sharon, brought her daughter, Kennedy (11) along with three young cousins. (Also in attendance were Learning Life volunteers, Emilie, Alisse, Carolyn and Steve.) Here are some of their written responses to our survey following the dialogue:
“We connected and nobody felt uncomfortable. All of us had fun. Their language is way different than ours.”
“They do just about everything we do: work, go to school, make clothes, dance, etc.”
“After speaking with the family, they are very similar to my family. However, they seem more friendly than Americans. I don’t know much about the history or political climate, [so] will ask during the next session.”
As in previous CDI dialogues, the participants in Sunday’s session expressed strong interest in continuing the dialogues.
After a preliminary “get to know you” dialogue like this one, Learning Life moves participating families toward a project intended to develop participants’ knowledge, skills and interest in local and international affairs. The first project is a international “photovoice” album that will gather the participants’ photos in answer to the question “what is the past, present and future of your community?” Learn more about this project here.
Stay tuned for news of our upcoming dialogues and developments in our Citizen Diplomacy Initiative!
Thanks to Learning Life volunteers, Emilie Mondon-Konan and Alisse Palmer, for translating participants’ words from English to French and vice versa during the dialogue. Thanks also to Carolyn Rider, who helped take photos (some displayed on this page) and video of the dialogue.
About Our PhotoVoice Project
Background
Learning Life’s Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI) engages lower-income American families, starting in Washington D.C., in live internet dialogues and project collaborations with lower-income families in other nations to nurture more caring and capable global citizens. Our photovoice project is the first of a series of international CDI projects. The electronic photo album that results from this first project will form part of a growing portfolio of products – photo albums, art works, videos, research reports, published articles, etc. — documenting our families’ local community engagement, international collaborations, and developing global knowledge, skills, attitudes and connections.
Project Description
This first project’s outcome will be an album of selected photos from participating families in the USA, Senegal and Jordan. To create the album, the families first go into their community to take some initial photos in answer to the project question “what is the nature of your community?” Learning Life then provides the families with some training in photography, and the families take a second round of community photos. The two rounds of photos before and after training allow us to to assess if we see any improvements in the quality of each family’s photos resulting from the training.
The photos are posted to Learning Life’s CDI Facebook group for all our families and volunteers to see and comment on wherever they are in the world. Once all the families have taken their community photos, each family votes on the photos they like best. Their votes help determine which photos end up in the final electronic album. That album compares the families’ best photos, organized by topic, taken from their different standpoints in the world. We anticipate that this initial photovoice project will identify community issues to explore and address in subsequent CDI project collaborations.
As CDI expands, and more families in more communities across the world complete their own photovoice projects, we will gather selected photos in answer to the same community question above in an album at our CDI Facebook group. That album will give a view of a growing number of communities worldwide from the vantage points of our CDI participants.
Project Goals
Improve project participants’ photography skills.
Deepen participants’ knowledge of and interest in learning about the world.
Identify community issues for CDI participants to explore in follow-up projects.
Learn more
Interested in learning more, or getting involved in CDI as a family or volunteer? Contact us at email@learninglife.info.
International Photovoice Project Begins
On Sunday, September 25, 2016, in Learning Life’s fifth live, international, family-to-family dialogue, two American families in Washington D.C. and members of four Salvadoran families in Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador began discussing their first collaboration: an ambitious international photo project.
Following on two prior dialogues dedicated to introducing the Salvadoran and American families to each other, the conversation in this third dialogue between these families turned to the nature of community and community change, and how to answer the question “what is the past, present and future of your community?” in photos.
“Community” is a commonly used, widely cherished, but seldom defined term. If community is defined in terms of shared interests, activities and/or goals, then a group of friends, a business association, or a sports team can be seen as communities. As Kaniya, an 11-year old American participant in the international dialogue noted, she feels that her school basketball team (on which she is one of the star players) is a kind of community because they work together toward shared goals.
But in the most common parlance, community is place-based, and local, like a town or neighborhood. It is also something to which people often feel emotionally attached, especially as they develop meaningful experiences and memories of sites, sounds, textures, tastes and/or smells involving certain people, places and activities. And, as Danjha, one of our Spanish interpreters noted during the dialogue, that attachment can inspire a sense of goodwill and reciprocity between community members. Communities as localities in which people live, work and play thus have tactile and emotional components.
They also change to varying extents with time. In a modern world characterized by rapid social change, communities can change visibly in the span of just a few years as new homes, offices, factories, stores and other landmarks go up, old ones come down, and different people move in and out. That change — the past, present and future of communities — can be captured in photos of people, events, objects, buildings and larger scenes. For example, as Terri, one of the mothers participating in our live dialogue noted, a statue of a slave fighting for freedom in her neighborhood can say much about the past of her community, just as a photo of a current neighborhood leader next door to her can speak to the present civic strength of her community.
Each person can bring a different perspective to community change by photographing different things, capturing those things in varied manners (playing with different angles, times, distances, lighting, color, props, etc.), and labeling or describing photos in diverse ways. “Photovoice” projects recognize that photographs are selective representations of reality, and that people can exercise their voice through the photos they take and how they take and describe them. Photovoice also recognizes that different people can look at the same photo in very different ways.
It is with these and other thoughts in mind that we embark on a photovoice project over the next several months that will culminate in an international photo album composed of photos our participating families take in five communities across the world — in the United States, El Salvador, Senegal, Jordan and the Philippines. Learning Life plans to publish the photo album online, and have willing family participants co-present the album in local and international public presentations. This album will be the tangible outcome of the first of many planned international projects we hope our Citizen Diplomacy Initiative families will engage in to develop their skills, knowledge, interest, perspectives and social connections as rising citizens of the world.
Special thanks to Learning Life volunteers, Karen Tituana and Danjha León for their assistance with language interpreting, and Cintia and Antonio with CRIPDES, our nonprofit partner in El Salvador, for their help in facilitating the dialogue.
3) 73rd in political empowerment
