Gates Foundation report: ‘Your life will be harder if you are born a girl’

A new report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation finds that gender inequality affects women and girls in every nation but particularly poorer ones.

“No matter where you are born, your life will be harder if you are born a girl. If you are born in a poor country or district, it will be even harder,” the report states.

{mosads}The analysis released Tuesday is the third such publication by the foundation tracking worldwide progress on the United Nations’ Global Goals.

It finds that inequality begins to take shape around adolescence, when, across the board, boys tend to rely less on their parents and make connections with society at large through high school, college or employment.

“At the same time, girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands,” the report states. “Although they enjoyed some measure of freedom while attending primary school, they are expected to return to the confines of the home, to devote themselves to cooking, cleaning, and raising children.”

The ratio of girls doing domestic work for no pay for at least two hours a day nearly doubles after the age of 15, with the average woman spending more than four hours a day on unpaid work by adulthood compared to just over an hour for men, according to the report.

The inequalities persist outside domestic settings as well, with the report finding a 24-point gap worldwide between women and men’s labor force participation. The report finds that in sub-Saharan Africa, girls receive two fewer years of education than boys on average, and that even educated girls are less likely to see their education translate professionally than men.

“The developed world hasn’t fully solved the problem, and yet we know it’s important and we know we need to work on it,” Bill Gates told Axios. “The gender issues are much worse as you get down into these poor countries.”