Archive for the 'World Values' Category

Worldwide Gender Gap in Religion

Published by ljridley on April 5, 2016 in World Values.

The Pew Research Center released a new study on gender and religion, finding that women are generally more religious than men.

Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.

See also:

Marriage and Gender Equality

Published by ljridley on February 10, 2016 in Marriage, Divorce & Cohabitation and World Values.

Philip Cohen of Family Inequality charts the correlation between marriage and gender inequality:

I used data from this U.N. report on marriage rates from 2008, restricted to those countries that had data from 2000 or later. To show marriage rates I used the percentage of women ages 30-34 that are currently married. This is thus a combination of marriage prevalence and marriage timing, which is something like the amount of marriage in the country. I got gender inequality from the U.N. Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2015. The gender inequality index combines the maternal mortality ratio, the adolescent birth rate, the representation of women in the national parliament, the gender gap in secondary education, and the gender gap in labor market participation.

World Bank Gender Data Portal

Published by ljridley on February 9, 2016 in Demographic Trends, New Resources and World Values.

The World Bank has launched a gender data portal:

Gender data are one of the most visited parts of our data site, and these new resources make it easier than ever to see our data’s gender dimensions. The country and topic dashboards give an overview of the distribution and trends in data across important themes, and the online tables and book are a useful reference for the most commonly accessed data.

Open Data, the World Bank blog, pulled four charts from the portal to illustrate gaps which still need to be closed.

Voter Turnout in OECD Countries

Published by ljridley on May 6, 2015 in World Values.

Drew DeSilver of Pew Research Center analyzed voter data for OECD countries and found that the U.S. voter turnout ranks near the bottom among the voting-age population (53.5% in 2012), but much higher among registered voters (84.3%).

Influence of the Internet in Emerging and Developing Nations

Published by ljridley on March 24, 2015 in World Values.

The Pew Research Center examines the worldwide use and influence of the internet in it’s 2014 Global Attitudes Survey.

As more people around the world gain access to all the tools of the digital age, the internet will play a greater role in everyday life. And so far, people in emerging and developing nations say that the increasing use of the internet has been a good influence in the realms of education, personal relationships and the economy. But despite all the benefits of these new technologies, on balance people are more likely to say that the internet is a negative rather than a positive influence on morality, and they are divided about its effect on politics.

Download the full report (PDF) and the Topline Questionnaire (PDF).

No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project

Published by ljridley on March 17, 2015 in Economic Behavior, Education and World Values.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation published an interactive website marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

In 1995, at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, leaders from governments and civil society around the world came together and committed to ensuring that women and girls have the opportunity to participate fully in all aspects of life.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of that moment. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the No Ceilings initiative of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation have joined forces to gather data and analyze the gains made for women and girls over the last two decades, as well as the gaps that remain.

This site and The Full Participation Report are the result—home to 850,000 data points, spanning more than 20 years, from over 190 countries. Through data visualizations and stories, we aim to present the gains and gaps in understandable, sharable ways—including by making the data open and easily available.

The full report and data are also available.

Fundamentalisms and Women’s Rights

Published by ljridley on July 8, 2014 in World Values.

Eldis has put together some resources on Christian and Islamic fundamentalism and women’s rights.

From the website:

This guide features a handful of excellent resources on this difficult and broad issue including: practical guidance on fundamentalisms for human rights activists; regional studies into Christian and Islamic fundamentalist discourses around sexual and reproductive health and rights; recommendations on broadening understanding and developing more nuanced approaches to tackling fundamentalisms; an overview of women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Find links to these resources here.

A Tape-Measure for Well-Being

Published by ljridley on May 16, 2014 in World Values.

by Tom Barlett
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education

From the article:

Pretty much everyone seems happy. In Australia, 93 percent of the population is either happy or very happy. In China, it’s 85 percent. Jordan: 86 percent. They’re chipper in Colombia at 92. Belarus is below average, at 64, but it still has a solid majority of happy campers. In the United States, 90 percent of us are happy and presumably steering clear of the sour-faced 10-percenters.

Those figures come from the latest round, released in April, of the World Values Survey, which has been tracking the beliefs and feelings of humanity since 1981. How do surveyors determine whether people are happy? They ask them. This is what social scientists usually do when they want to find out such things.

The theory is that you are the best source of information about your own happiness. But is that the case?

Read the full article and watch the video for Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”.

Sex Selection: When Technology and Tradition Collide

Published by lisan on May 17, 2013 in Families & Fertility and World Values.

When Technology and Tradition Collide: From Gender Bias to Sex Selection
Kate Gilles and Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs | Population Reference Bureau
September 2012

Bullet points from this policy brief are:

Normal sex ratios at birth range from 102 to 107 male babies born for every 100 female babies born

1.5 millions girls around the world are missing at birth every year.

In at least nine countries, the sex ratio at birth of boy babies to girl babies is at 110 or higher.

Olympic Britain

Published by lisan on August 14, 2012 in Data & Methods, Demographic Trends, Health Economics, Poverty & Inequality, Work & Family and World Values.

This is a book written by researchers of the House of Commons Library and published on 10 July 2012. It tells the story of social and economic change in the UK since the two previous London Games in 1908 and 1948, using data visualisations to bring to life a period during which our standards of living, the type of work we do, our leisure activities and our lifestyles have changed almost beyond recognition, much like the Olympics itself.

Full print version including charts and tables

Press release with sub-headings like Population, Housing and home life, Income and Education, etc.