That was Sissel Ekaas, of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Development is not sustainable, development is not shared by the majority of a population, unless the problems of gender inequalities are addressed. Elizabeth King is a lead economist in the Poverty and Human Resources section of the World Bank. There is no gender neutral policy claims the World Bank and sets out to prove it in this report, which was recently previewed at the United Nations. While the biggest gender inequalities are found in the lowest income countries, there are some forms of discrimination that exist across the board in rich countries as well as poor.
Political representation is one.
The female representation in parliament has no relationship to income. First of all, over time female representation has not changed, except probably in the transition countries where we did find actually a drop in female representation. But the other thing is that as you go from low income countries to high income countries, that does not change. Similarly, in no country in the world, no matter how highly developed, do women and men have equal legal and social rights, according to Ms. King. Economically, women fare even worse.