The Gender Gap? Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says - by A.Pawlowski

If you're a woman with a bit of life experience, you already know you're the boss.

You're more likely to drive health care decisions in your family, control household spending, care for millennials and elders, start a business and initiate a divorce. You have the longevity advantage over men.

In other words, you rule.

But does the world know it? Older women can sometimes feel like they're invisible to workplaces and businesses, but they're actually the trailblazers others should be watching, says Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the new book, "The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World's Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market."

As people get older, the future is female, he argues, with women better prepared for life after middle age than their male peers.

"One of the greatest under-appreciated sources of innovation and new business may in fact be women over 50 with new ideas, lots of life ahead of them and with the verve to get it done," Coughlin told TODAY.

He explained why older women will rule the world.

Women do more. They have more education than at any time in history. They're likely to live longer.

A woman is the researcher of the house. Women are far more likely to go online not just to do research for themselves, but be the go-to researcher for millennials, who identify their middle-aged mothers as their best friend.

She is the caregiver-in-chief. Women are caring for more parents than they had ever planned — their parents as well as their in-laws. Getting to 100 is so common now that we see birthday cards in the drugstore for centenarians. There may be three or four generations under the care of one matriarch.

A woman is the chief consumer officer of the house. She's the one who knows what groceries are bought, what bills are being paid, how that house actually works. The majority of car purchases are directly influenced or done by women. If they're luxury cars, the numbers go up even more. Home improvement is directed by the woman. Probably most striking is that 80-90 cents on the dollar of every healthcare decision is made by a woman.

Because of all these factors, she is likely to be the person who is closest to understanding what the new jobs and the opportunities of living longer, better are going to be.\

The number one divorce rate in the country is among the 50-plus, mostly initiated by the woman.

When we talk to men about what they think retirement is going to be, it's almost celebratory: If they've saved their money, they see it as a time to play golf, take that trip, buy that new car. And they often talk about spending time with their wives.

I can't tell you how many women have told me, 'I don't know who this man is on my couch but I wish he would just go and get a job. I have routines, I have things to do and he's always there and he's always asking me what to do next.'

I think men, particularly those of us over 50, need to up our game. We really have to take a lesson from women that life is more than work; that we need to develop new interests and keep that romance going.

The relationship began decades earlier based upon what you brought to the table and what you created together. Suddenly in older age, men get so caught into a routine — partly because of our employment and lifestyle — that they forget that they need to continue to be exciting and delighting.

Read the complete report: Older women will rule the world, MIT expert says | Euronews

Iceland gets first Green prime minister - by Lisbeth Kirk

Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland's new PM

Leader of the Leftist-Green Movement, Katrin Jakobsdottir, will become Iceland's first Green prime minister on Thursday (30 November), after agreeing to form a coalition government with the liberal conservative Independence Party and the centre-right Progressive Party.

Together the three parties hold 35 seats out of 63 in the Althingi, Iceland's parliament.

Two members of the Leftist-Green Movement are set to vote against the coalition in Thursday's parliamentary approval, technically giving the new government only a single-seat majority.

Katrin Jakobsdottir will become the country's first Green prime minister and the only ruling Green PM in the world, following in the footsteps of former Iceland president Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who became the world's first elected woman president in 1980.

Iceland is ranked top by the World Economic Forum as having the smallest gender gap among 144 countries in the world indexed.

The news will come as a welcome message to over 300 women political leaders from around the world meeting in Iceland this week for an annual summit aimed at promoting gender equality inside and outside of the political sphere.

Jakobsdottir, 41, is a former journalist and served as education minister in Iceland's first left-leaning government which took power after the country's 2008 economic collapse.

In a recent poll 49.5 percent said that they preferred her to become the next prime minister.

Bjarni Benediktsson, chairman of the Independence Party and outgoing prime minister, will become finance and economy minister in the new Icelandic government, a position he held between 2013-2016, before becoming prime minister.

The deal comes four weeks after snap elections were called in October, when a scandal involving PM Benediktsson's father prompted a government ally to drop out of his ruling coalition - after less than a year in government.

Increased taxes on capital gains, maternity and paternity leave, and infrastructure development are among the key issues for the new government.

The Left-Greens want to finance spending by raising taxes on the wealthy, real estate and the powerful fishing industry, while the Independence Party has said it wants to fund new infrastructure by selling state-owned shares in the country's banks.

Iceland was hard hit during the financial crisis when all three of the country's major privately owned commercial banks defaulted in 2008.

Now the Nordic country is experiencing an economic boom driven by record tourist arrivals, leading to shortage of labour and Icelandic workers demanding pay rises.

Note EU-Digest: Iceland is on the right track and can be an example to many other countries,specially when it comes to closing the gender gap  around the world.

Read more: Iceland gets first Green prime minister

EU - Economy: Gender Pay Gap In Europe - by Alexandra Scheele

Though the two principles “equal pay for equal work” and “equal pay for work of equal value” have been legally fixed with the European Treaty of Rome 1957 as well as with the subsequent Equal Pay Directive 1975, the EU still shows – latest data from 2015 – an average (unadjusted) gender pay gap of 16.3%.

That means that the average gross hourly earnings of female employees are 16.3 % below those of men.

Research gives evidence that the gender pay gap is caused by several interrelated factors: (1) labour market segregation by gender and the corresponding unequal distribution of women and men in sectors, occupations, and positions (horizontal and vertical segregation); (2) the fact that women (more often than men) take career breaks and/or work part-time due to care responsibilities, which has negative effects on their service length (seniority); (3) the fact that so-called ‘women’s jobs and sectors’ are often lower-paid jobs and sectors owing to existing collective agreements; (4) opaque and unsystematic wage-setting processes and individual pay agreements that are often less advantageous for women.

These factors show that closing the gender pay gap is still a challenge.
Read more: Gender Pay Gap In Europe

Turkey: Turkish businesswomen make a difference - 26 percent corporate top executives are women - well above the EU average

Turkey’s largest companies are increasingly assigning women to key positions and corporate boards. Of the top executives in these companies, 26 percent are women - well above the EU average.

Just last week, Siemens, the German engineering giant, elected renowned Turkish business women Güler Sabanci to its supervisory board. She is a member of the Sabanci family, one of the wealthiest in Turkey, but it is her individual efforts and achievements as the head of the family conglomerate which have earned her international acclaim. She was named by Forbes in 2012 to its list of the world's most powerful 100 women.

The selection of Sabanci, however, came as a surprise to many in Europe. Turkey  is more famous in Western media for unpleasant headlines, such as the rise of political Islam, the headscarf debate, violence against women, or her comments on extrajudicial killings.

But now, Sabanci has prompted fresh interest in the West on the role of women in Turkey's business world.

While the European Union is busy discussing ways to increase the number of women in top position with a gender quota, Turkey's largest companies have already set the pace with an impressive number of successful women executives in top corporations.

Read more: Turkish businesswomen make a difference | World | DW.DE | 29.01.2013

The U.S. is catching up to Europe on gender equality-by Max Fisher

Western European countries have long led the world on gender equality, but the latest annual Gender Gap Report, just issued by the World Economic Forum, shows that the U.S. is making significant gains in an area where it has often lagged the Western world.

The annual WEF report grades countries on five metrics to measure the degree of gender equality or inequality: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Countries are scored between 0.0 for most unequal, meaning that women have zero access, or 1.0 for fully equal.

The 2012 report ranks the U.S. 22nd in the world. The only non-Western nations that rank higher than the U.S., meaning their societies are more equal for women, are South Africa, Cuba, Lesotho, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.

Read more: The U.S. is catching up to Europe on gender equality

In Sweden, a debate over whether gender equality has gone too far - Nathalie Rothschild

 
Sweden has a longstanding reputation as an egalitarian country with a narrow gender gap. But a national debate about gender equality – particularly as it plays out in schools – has revealed substantial dissatisfaction, with some Swedes feeling it has gone too far.

Rousing controversy now is the issue of gender pedagogy, a concept that emerged in the early 2000s and typically involves challenging gender stereotypes in learning material and in avoiding treating male and female pupils in a stereotypical manner. Proponents believe such a perspective should infuse day-to-day work at schools rather than be taught as a separate subject. But what has sharpened the debate in Sweden has been the argument that schools should also be gender neutral, giving children the opportunity to define themselves as neither male nor female if they wish.

In 2008, the Swedish Department of Education appointed the Delegation for Equality in Schools, which  made the issue of gender equality central to the Swedish education system. The government spent 110 million Swedish crowns ($16.3 million) on promoting equality in schools along the lines of school laws that stipulate that teachers must actively counteract gender stereotypes and promote equality.

For more: In Sweden, a debate over whether gender equality has gone too far | MinnPost

Asian Journal: Sweden : Women's paradise? Michael Tan

For the complete report in the Asian Journal click on this link

Sweden : Women's paradise? Michael Tan

Last year, newspapers all over the world noted that among the top 10 countries with the smallest "gender gap," the only developing country was the Philippines, which came in sixth. In case you missed the news items last year, the top 10, out of a total of 115 countries, were: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Germany, the Philippines, New Zealand, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Gender Gap Index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, was mainly based on a review of female-to-male ratios in four areas: (a) economic participation and opportunity, (b) educational attainment, (c) health and survival and (d) political empowerment. Besides these four areas, the index considered data on maternity and childbearing, education and training, employment and earnings, and basic rights and social institutions.