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03/08/2006:
"This is your life (if you are a woman)"
1% of the titled land in the world is owned by womenA baby girl born in the UK is likely to live to 81 - but if she is born in Swaziland, she is likely to die at 39
70% of the 1.2 bn people living in poverty are women and children
21% of the world's managers are female
62% of unpaid family workers are female
9% of judges, 10% of company directors and 10% of top police officers in the UK are women
Women comprise 55% of the world's population aged over 60 years old and 65% of those aged over 80
£970,000 is the difference between lifetime earnings of men and women in the UK finance sector
85m girls worldwide are unable to attend school, compared with 45m boys. In Chad, just 4% of girls go to school.
700,000,000 women are without adequate food, water, sanitation, health care or education (compared with 400,000,000 men)
Women in full-time jobs earn an average 17% less than British men
Women in part-time jobs earn an average 42% less than British men
67% of all illiterate adults are women
1,440 women die each day during childbirth (a rate of one death every minute)
1 in 7 women in Ethiopia die in pregnancy or childbirth (it is one in 19,000 in Britain)
In the US, 35% of lawyers are women but just 5% are partners in law firms
In the EU, women comprise 3% of chief execs of major companies
12 is the number of world leaders who are women (out of 191 members of the United Nations)
Men directed 9 out of every 10 films made in 2004
independent.co.uk
UN: Women denied representation, making war on poverty hard to win
Millions of women around the world, including those in the UK and other Western countries, are being denied effective representation because of the low numbers of female politicians, judges and employers, the United Nations has warned.
Campaigners say that unless urgent action is taken on the status of women, the Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty, infant deaths and standards of education will not be met.
To mark International Women's Day, the UN has published a report that says rates of female participation in governments across the developed and developing world are still appallingly low. The report says that for women to be adequately represented in their country, at least 30 per cent of parliamentary seats should have a female representative.
