
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 16, 1995                   TAG: 9508160072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Medium

U.S. WOMEN NO LONGER NO. 1 ON EQUALITY LIST

American women, who once were the world's pace setters, are slipping behind women in a handful of other countries who are making even faster progress toward equality, says a new United Nations report.

Between 1970 and 1992, American women slid from first place to fifth, behind four Nordic countries, on a ``gender-related development index,'' says the report issued Thursday morning by the U.N. Development Program.

The U.N. agency's report ranked the United States first in per capita income and second, behind only Canada, in human development, as measured by life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment and earned income.

American women still trail U.S. men in their share of those social and economic benefits, according to the report.

``In no society today do women enjoy the same opportunities as men,'' the report says.

But American women no longer rank higher than women in any other country in their share of statistical measures of well-being.

The report stressed two reasons for the new U.S. status below Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark:

U.S. women have only 35 percent of their nation's earned income, less than in other industrialized countries.

Their life expectancy at birth - 79 years - while seven years longer than that of American men, is low compared to other industrialized nations.

Besides assessing women's share of their country's benefits, the 1995 annual report adds a new measure of their share of its economic and political power, the ``gender empowerment measure.''

Also called the GEM index, it analyzes how big a share women have of their country's earned income; its administrative, managerial, professional and technical jobs; and the seats in their country's national legislature.

U.S. women ranked eighth. They were behind women from the same four Nordic countries, plus Canada, New Zealand and the Netherlands on the GEM index. One big reason: Women's wages for nonagricultural jobs average 74 percent of men's in the United States. That is lower than in 29 of the 54 countries that keep comparable statistics.

The 1995 edition of the ``Human Development Report'' was released simultaneously in Washington and Oslo, Norway. It emphasizes gaps between the status of men and women because it is being issued one month in advance of the U.N.-sponsored Fourth World Conference of Women, scheduled to be held in Beijing.

by CNB