Developing coutries - Essay Example

This is because she emphasized on how women’s rights are as much human rights as any other and should be given due importance. According to a survey conducted by Forbes.com, third world countries like Pakistan, Chad and Yemen are the worst ranked for gender equality and are in fact the worst places for women to be. Countries like these have had few or no female leaders in their history and this has adversely impacted the position of their female citizens over the years. However, there are some countries in the world that have had female leadership and not still been able to establish a favorable position in society for women; this may be because they have not had adequate support in their endeavors or even had opposing forces diverting resources and attention away from working for women’s rights. 2. Consulting with UNDP website at www.undp.org enables you to compare a country's HDI SCORE AND ITS Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) score.

What relationship does there seem to be between those two scores? Identify several countries that have wide discrepancies (in either direction) between their HDI and GEM and offer your best explanation for these wide differences. Largely, the GEM and HDI scores for different countries are positively related. Where one country has a higher GEM score, it most likely also has a higher HDI score. The biggest example is Norway that tops the ranking list for both HDI and GEM. However, there are some discrepancies to this observation as well.

For example, while France is number 10 in GEM rankings it stands much lower (at number 20) in HDI rankings. Further, while Cuba stands at number 26 in GEM rankings, it scores really low in the HDI rankings. These discrepancies can be attributed to factors such as life expectancy and income levels which are factored into the HDI but do not affect the GEM rankings. 3. What are some of the reasons that democracy seems to contribute to greater gender equality? Under what circumstances might greater democracy ends up diminishing women's right in some countries?

Democracy goes hand in hand with gender equality, in a political system where the people have a voice it is easier for women to emerge and establish an equitable position for themselves in society. However, sometimes democracy may harm women’s rights in a country. This can be in instances where the country prioritizes other concerns over women’s rights such as in most third world democratic countries and women’s rights often entirely get overlooked. Chapter 6 1. Peasant were the major foot-soldiers in most twentieth-century revolutions (China, Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam).

Is that likely to be true of twenty-first century revolutions in developing world? Why or why not? 21st century revolutions are not like 20th century revolutions because in the former, not just a specific class of people takes part but everyone does. For example, the recent wave of revolutions in the middle east (Libya, Egypt and Tunisia etc) the masses started and took part in the whole revolution process. This is because the structure of society has changed over the years, now there aren’t class divisions based on rulers and peasants but the majority of the people constitute the working class among which there are economic divisions.

Further, this is also because the reasons of inducing the revolutions have changed; where once the ruling class mobilized the peasants to fight for their cause, now the people fight