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Statistics tell us how women are faring around the world. They also hide some important realities.

The story of women is often told through numbers.

Reports and studies tell us how much less women make than men, how much more unusual it is for girls to go to school than it is for boys or how much less likely women are to hold elected office or run companies than men.

Those analyses are important, but they can sometimes obscure the deeper truths and facts on the ground of women’s lived experience.

We know 62 million girls are not in school. Why is that the case, and how can we do better? We are told one in five women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. How accurate are those numbers, and what can they really tell us about safety? We have heard women outlive men, often by a decade or more. What does life look like after a partner dies?

Here are some of the stories behind those numbers.

Bans — and growing disapproval — aren’t stopping female genital mutilation

For millions of girls, one of the first serious threats they will encounter in their lives is female genital mutilation. Typically carried out by community leaders or midwives, the practice is often seen as a rite of passage for young girls and is most prevalent in parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. But it can be deadly, or lead to serious health complications, including chronic kidney infections, painful sex and difficulties in childbirth.

The World Health Organization defines FGM as any procedure that involves the “partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” Despite having no medical benefits, the practice has been inflicted upon at least 200 million women and girls across the world.

Momentum has grown to ban FGM, which also violates a number of U.N. human-rights conventions, and some countries have passed laws making it illegal. Such laws have the potential to be effective — if cases lead to prosecution. But in many places where FGM is banned, it is still pervasive because of the lack of accountability and inadequate outreach in rural areas where the practice is most common.

Burkina Faso, for instance, banned FGM in 1996 and threatened those found guilty of performing it with up to three years in prison. While data organized by UNICEF shows that the rates of FGM decreased after the ban, girls there are still at risk. In September, around 50 girls ended up hospitalized in the country’s northeast after their procedures went badly.

In most countries where FGM is still practiced, a majority of girls and women do not support it Majority support Majority do not support 25 50% do not support FGM 75 100 Togo 99% Ghana 98 Benin 97 United Republic of Tanzania 97 Iraq 95 Kenya 94 Niger 94 93 Cameroon Burkina Faso 91 Uganda 91 Central African Republic 89 Eritrea 88 Guinea-Bissau 87 Côte d’Ivoire 86 Senegal 83 Ethiopia 82 Yemen 81 Nigeria 78 Chad 71 Mauritania 64 Djibouti 63 Liberia 61 Sudan 59 Egypt 46 Gambia 35 Somalia 35 Guinea 33 Sierra Leone 32 Mali 25 Note: Charts shows percentage of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years who have heard about FGM and think the practice should be ended. Source: UNICEF global databases, October 2018, based on DHS, MICS and other national surveys, 2004-2017. In most countries where FGM is still practiced, a majority of girls and women do not support it Majority support Majority do not support 25 50% do not support FGM 75 100 Togo 99% Ghana 98 Benin 97 United Republic of Tanzania 97 Iraq 95 Kenya 94 Niger 94 93 Cameroon Burkina Faso 91 Uganda 91 Central African Republic 89 Eritrea 88 Guinea-Bissau 87 Côte d’Ivoire 86 Senegal 83 Ethiopia 82 Yemen 81 Nigeria 78 Chad 71 Mauritania 64 Djibouti 63 Liberia 61 Sudan 59 Egypt 46 Gambia 35 Somalia 35 Guinea 33 Sierra Leone 32 Mali 25 Note: Charts shows percentage of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years who have heard about FGM and think the practice should be ended. Source: UNICEF global databases, October 2018, based on DHS, MICS and other national surveys, 2004-2017. In most countries where FGM is still practiced, a In most countries where FGM is still practiced, a majority of girls and women do not support it Majority support Majority do not support 25 50% do not support FGM 75 100 Togo 99% Ghana 98 Benin 97 United Republic of Tanzania 97 Iraq 95 Kenya 94 Niger 94 93 Cameroon Burkina Faso 91 Uganda 91 Central African Republic 89 Eritrea 88 Guinea-Bissau 87 Côte d’Ivoire 86 Senegal 83 Ethiopia 82 Yemen 81 Nigeria 78 Chad 71 Mauritania 64 Djibouti 63 Liberia 61 Sudan 59 Egypt 46 Gambia 35 Somalia 35 Guinea 33 Sierra Leone 32 Mali 25 Note: Charts shows percentage of girls and women aged 15 to 49 years who have heard about FGM and think the practice should be ended. Source: UNICEF global databases, October 2018, based on DHS, MICS and other national surveys, 2004-2017.

In Kenya, where FGM was banned in 2011, many women and girls have been subjected to the practice. In some areas where the ban has been effective, it has led to the introduction of alternative coming-of-age ceremonies, including dances and other celebrations. The government initially seemed committed to investigating cases of FGM, prosecuting dozens of cases after the law was passed.

But in the country’s northeast, the practice is still widespread. Many people there live in rural or pastoralist communities where centuries of tradition, and unofficial legal structures, still trump national law. Activists worry that FGM remains normalized and that certain community leaders are unwilling to report cases even when they hear about them.

Earlier this year, a Kenyan doctor even petitioned a court to legalize FGM for adults, claiming women should be able to decide for themselves if they want to go through with it, alarming those who see the medicalization of the procedure as an effort to normalize it.

— Siobhán O’Grady

The fight to get girls in school is stalling in some regions

Over the past couple of years, there has been some good news in the global fight to give women access to education. Girls and women have traditionally been kept out of school at much higher rates than their male counterparts. But that gap has slowly been closing, and it has virtually disappeared as of 2016 for children older than 11, according to statistics from UNESCO.

But the worldwide numbers do not tell the whole story. In some regions, there is still a gender imbalance in who is kept out of school, and it is still women and girls who suffer the most from exclusion.

There are any number of reasons, including wars and poverty, that contribute. But perhaps the most important factors are cultural. The expectation that women should be mothers and wives, not students, remains the largest obstacle to getting girls in school.

The problem is particularly acute across sub-Saharan Africa. There, according to UNESCO, girls of every age group are more likely to be excluded from learning than boys. For every 100 boys who are kept out of primary school, the organization said, “there are 123 girls who are denied the right to education.”

The gap in education access is slowly closing, but the difference in access for girls and boys remains larger in low-income countries Out of school 30% 0 10 20 35.8% Low-income countries 29.9% 3.4% High-income countries 4.1% 18.5% World 17.2% Note: Chart shows out-of-school percentage rates for girls vs. boys, combining the primary, lower secondary and upper secondary age groups. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics database, February 2018 report on out-of-school children/youth. The gap in education access is slowly closing, but the difference in access for girls and boys remains larger in low-income countries 0 10 20 30% out of school 35.8% Low-income countries 29.9% 3.4% High-income countries 4.1% 18.5% World 17.2% Note: Chart shows out-of-school percentage rates for girls vs. boys, combining the primary, lower secondary and upper secondary age groups. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics database, February 2018 report on out-of-school children/youth. The gap in education access for girls and boys remains larger in low-income countries 0 10 20 30% out of school 35.8% Low-income countries 29.9% 3.4% High-income countries 4.1% 18.5% World 17.2% Note: Chart shows out-of-school percentage rates for girls vs. boys, combining the primary, lower secondary and upper secondary age groups. Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics database, February 2018 report on out-of-school children and youth.

Girls are often kept out of school with the expectation they should get married and have children. In more than a dozen sub-Saharan countries, at least 30 percent of girls give birth before the age of 18, according to the U.N. Population Fund.

And young women in school are sometimes forced out when they get pregnant. In 2017, Human Rights Watch found that in Tanzania and Sierra Leone, school policies kept young mothers and pregnant women out of the classroom. In Tanzania, officials conducted pregnancy tests in schools and kicked out those with positive results.

Other countries, including Cameroon and South Africa, have enacted policies that allow young mothers to return to school after giving birth. But cultural stigmas remain; Human Rights Watch found school officials sometimes refuse to welcome such students back.

Some societies may see girls as better wives and mothers than as students, but studies show if countries invest in girls’ education, they will reap the benefits. The World Bank estimates that girls who receive an education can lift their households, communities and countries out of poverty. Indeed, the countries where education is the worst for girls — such as South Sudan or the Central African Republic — are often the countries where poverty is the most extreme.

Even a slight increase in enrollment can cause immense change. In 2014, the U.S. Agency for International Development said if 1 percent more girls were enrolled in secondary school in India, the country’s GDP would rise by $5.5 billion. If all girls were enrolled in school in sub-Saharan Africa, the region’s agricultural output would increase by 25 percent. It has even been suggested that promoting girls’ education can help fight climate change.

— Ruby Mellen

Low rates of sexual violence are masking serious dangers to women

By the numbers, Japan is one of the safest places on Earth to be a woman. It has low rates of reported domestic violence and sexual violence, according to United Nations data.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. Take it from Shiori Ito.

Ito was an aspiring journalist in her 20s when one of Japan’s best-known television journalists, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, invited her out for a drink. While out with him, she began to feel dizzy and fainted in the bathroom of a restaurant. When she woke up, she was naked. Yamaguchi was on top of her, she said, and he had raped her while she was unconscious.

Ito waited five days to go to the police. She was too ashamed to go right away, she said, but she eventually reported the assault: “I know if I didn’t talk about it, this horrible climate of sexual assault will never change,” she told the New York Times.

The police did not want to pursue the case, but Ito pushed them to investigate. Even after they gathered security footage and eyewitness testimony that helped her case, they declined to make an arrest.

Ito’s story demonstrates one of the major challenges in understanding the global landscape of sexual violence: Scholars believe there is a significant gap between the number of crimes committed and the number of allegations reported to authorities — and another one between the number of allegations and actual prosecutions.

Does this country have legislation ... Specifically addressing sexual harassment? On sexual harassment in employment? On sexual harassment in public places? Country United States Yes Yes No Brazil Yes Yes Yes Canada Yes Yes Yes China Yes Yes No France Yes Yes Yes Germany Yes Yes No Japan No No No Russia No No No Sweden Yes Yes No Sources: “Women, Business and the Law,” 2018 report from The World Bank. Does this country have legislation ... Specifically addressing sexual harassment? On sexual harassment in employment? On sexual harassment in public places? Country United States Yes Yes No Brazil Yes Yes Yes Canada Yes Yes Yes China Yes Yes No France Yes Yes Yes Germany Yes Yes No Japan No No No Russia No No No Sweden Yes Yes No Sources: “Women, Business and the Law,” 2018 report from The World Bank. Does this country have legislation addressing sexual harassment ... U.S. Yes Yes No Brazil Yes Yes Yes Canada Yes Yes Yes China Yes Yes No France Yes Yes Yes Germany Yes Yes No Japan No No No Russia No No No Sweden Yes Yes No Sources: “Women, Business and the Law,” 2018 report from The World Bank.

In Japan, for example, a 2014 study by the Japanese government found two-thirds of rape victims told no one about their assaults — not family members. Just 4 percent went to the police.

Japan is not an anomaly. More and more countries recognize sexual violence as an epidemic. But few have figured out how to change their laws, legal system and culture to make women safer.

To fix this, experts says changes are needed at every level. Schools must do a better job defining consent and teaching both women and men what constitutes rape. Police and legal professionals must investigate claims thoroughly and pursue assailants. And the legal definition of rape must be broad enough to capture sexual violence as women actually experience it.

Sweden, for example, appears to have much higher official rates of sexual violence. But experts say the country has simply done a better job of educating women and encouraging accountability. A new law, for example, defines rape broadly and puts the burden of proof on the defendant to show he or she obtained consent.

In most countries, including the United States, the plaintiff must show her rights were violated. Sweden’s investigative legal system also leads to much higher rates of conviction than in other countries.

Other countries, like France and Germany, require police to pass all rape allegations on to prosecutors who can bring a case against the alleged attackers. This means police officers cannot decide whether a victim can bring a legal case, like they did in Ito’s case.

— Amanda Erickson

Putting more women in power requires a push

It is fair to say men make the majority of political decisions around the world. Only a handful of governments around the world are led by women, and, according to the World Bank, less than a quarter of members of parliament around the world are female.

There is one country, however, where female parliamentarians easily outnumber their male counterparts: Rwanda, a small, landlocked nation in central Africa still mostly known for the genocide that took place there in 1994.

After elections in September, 49 of the seats in Rwanda’s 80-seat Chamber of Deputies now belong to women. This means 61 percent of the country’s most powerful legislative body is female.

For comparison, only 20 percent of the U.S. Congress is female — a record, incidentally. Rwanda has a higher proportion of female lawmakers than Iceland — called the world’s most gender-equal country by the World Economic Forum — where 48 percent of lower-house parliamentarians are female.

Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world % of seats in national parliaments held by women Rwanda 61.3% 60 Iceland 47.6 40 United Kingdom 32 China 24.2 World 23.7 20 United States 19.4 0 2002 2017 Sources: The World Bank; Inter-Parliamentary Union. Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world Rwanda 61.3% 60% of seats in national parliaments held by women Iceland 47.6 40 United Kingdom 32 China 24.2 World average 23.7 20 United States 19.4 0 2002 2017 Sources: The World Bank; Inter-Parliamentary Union. Rwanda has the highest proportion of women in parliament in the world Rwanda 61.3% 60% of seats in national parliaments held by women Iceland 47.6 40 Iceland has been called the world’s most gender-equal country by the World Economic Forum. United Kingdom 32 China 24.2 World average 23.7 20 United States 19.4 0 2002 2017 Sources: The World Bank; Inter-Parliamentary Union.

So how did Rwanda get here?

The genocide, which left up to a million dead and many more displaced, is one major factor: After the mass killings, 70 percent of the country’s population was female. But many countries have more women than men. What also matters is how Rwanda changed its laws in response to the genocide to encourage female participation in politics.

Drude Dahleup, a professor at Stockholm University and the author of “Has Democracy Failed Women?,” said Rwanda’s path to a female majority began after the country implemented a constitution that set a quota of 30 percent women in “decision-making organs.”

The first election under that constitution, in 2003, was also the first since the 1994 genocide. The percentage of women in parliament jumped from just under 26 percent to almost 49 percent thanks to the new electoral rules. It would reach a peak of 63.8 percent in 2013.

To an American audience, the idea of a gender quota for Congress may be hard to imagine. But it is an increasingly popular trend around the world. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance says more than half of all countries now apply some sort of gender quota to their parliaments.

Of course, not all countries have seen such a dramatic shift in representation because of quotas. Some countries, such as Somalia, have actually missed their targets in elections. The results, Dahleup said, depend heavily on how the quotas are constructed.

And even when quotas are implemented successfully, some worry female politicians can end up with little influence. In Rwanda, critics have called the high number of female parliamentarians a “smokescreen” that hides the political domination of President Paul Kagame.

Studies have shown quotas do increase the number of women in high-level elected offices. And once in office, female lawmakers tend to raise issues important to women. In Rwanda, regardless of anything else, that has certainly mattered: The WEF now ranks Rwanda fourth in the world for gender equality.

— Adam Taylor

Many elderly women are finding the freedom they once lacked

In almost every country in the world, women outlive men — often by a decade or more.

That is true in both normal times — men are more likely to die of chronic diseases or suffer from illnesses related to smoking and alcohol — and in emergencies. One 2017 study found women outlive men even during famines and epidemics.

As a result, there are an estimated 258.5 million widows worldwide, according to Reuters. Almost a third of them live in India and China.

Life for widows can be challenging. One in seven widows lives in extreme poverty (numbers that echo the rates of women in extreme poverty more generally). In several countries, women are unable to inherit land after their husbands’ deaths. And in some places, widow “cleansing” rituals — like forcing a widow to drink the water in which her husband’s dead body was cleaned — can leave women vulnerable to disease.

Widowed women are also sometimes shunned. A 2015 study commissioned by the Loomba Foundation found 70 percent of Turks surveyed said widows are treated worse than other women because they are seen as a threat to other people’s marriages.

The data on widowhood also reveals something interesting: While being a widow is an immense challenge in some of the world’s poorest countries, in other places it actually offers women more freedom and opportunities. Some research suggests women are happiest in old age and after their partner has died.

Women outlive men in all but one country — Bhutan Number of years women are expected to live longer than men 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Syria 13 Lithuania 11 Seychelles 10 Belarus 10 Russia 10 El Salvador 9 Poland 8 Brazil 7 Thailand 7 Puerto Rico 6 Japan 6 Spain 6 United States 5 Mexico 5 France 5 Canada 4 Iraq 4 United Kingdom 4 Ethiopia 3 India 3 China 3 Iceland 3 Ghana 2 Iran 2 Algeria 1 Burkina Faso 1 Nigeria 1 Sierra Leone 1 Nepal 1 Bhutan 0 Note: Chart shows difference between average life expectancy at birth for women and men. Other than the top five and bottom six, a selection of countries from the overall dataset is shown. Sources: Population Reference Bureau, 2018 World Population Data Sheet. Women outlive men in all but one country — Bhutan Number of years women are expected to live longer than men 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 more years Syria 13 Lithuania 11 Seychelles 10 Belarus 10 Russia 10 El Salvador 9 Poland 8 Brazil 7 Thailand 7 Puerto Rico 6 Japan 6 Spain 6 United States 5 Mexico 5 France 5 Canada 4 Iraq 4 United Kingdom 4 Ethiopia 3 India 3 China 3 Iceland 3 Ghana 2 Iran 2 Algeria 1 Burkina Faso 1 Nigeria 1 Sierra Leone 1 Nepal 1 Bhutan 0 Note: Chart shows difference between average life expectancy at birth for women and men. Other than the top five and bottom six, a selection of countries from the overall dataset is shown. Sources: Population Reference Bureau, 2018 World Population Data Sheet. Women outlive men in all but one country — Bhutan Number of years women are expected to live longer than men 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 more years Syria 13 Lithuania 11 Seychelles 10 Belarus 10 Russia 10 El Salvador 9 Poland 8 Brazil 7 Thailand 7 Puerto Rico 6 Japan 6 Spain 6 United States 5 Mexico 5 France 5 Canada 4 Iraq 4 United Kingdom 4 Ethiopia 3 India 3 China 3 Iceland 3 Ghana 2 Iran 2 Algeria 1 Burkina Faso 1 Nigeria 1 Sierra Leone 1 Nepal 1 Bhutan 0 Note: Chart shows difference between average life expectancy at birth for women and men. Other than the top five and bottom six, a selection of countries from the overall dataset is shown. Sources: Population Reference Bureau, 2018 World Population Data Sheet.

Married women are “more likely to feel stressed and find their role restrictive and frustrating,” researcher Caterina Trevisan said to the Telegraph in 2016. Trevisan followed thousands of men and women for four years to understand how losing a partner affects their happiness.

She found men typically struggled after their wives died. But women reported feeling more content and less stressed. “Since women generally have a longer life span than men, married women may also suffer from the effects of caregiver burden, since they often devote themselves to caring for their husband in later life,” she said.

A study from Britain’s National Health Service found something similar. The NHS surveyed nearly 8,000 people and concluded British women are more unhappy than men at nearly every stage of their lives — as teens, young adults and in middle age.

By the end of their lives, there is a shift: After 85, women say they are just as happy as men and often happier. There are fewer responsibilities and less housework, researchers point out. They are also more likely to be widowed, a fact that adds to their happiness.

It is yet more evidence that the unpaid labor women do — running households, caring for partners and children, tending to parents and grandkids — is a burden that adds up over a lifetime, both for the women and society. As Brigid Schulte of the think tank New America told CNN Money, “That’s robbing women of the ability to be innovators, for economics and companies and societies to take full advantage of women’s talents.”

— Amanda Erickson

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