Countries Where Women Do Not Feel Safe
July 10, 2012 by Mike Sauter

While the march towards gender equality slowly progresses around the world, one disturbing issue remains unresolved — safety for women. Even in the developed world, large segments of the female population do not feel safe going out in their own communities at night. A new survey released by Gallup shows that in countries like the United States, where 82% of men feel comfortable going out at night, just 62% of women do,

The least safe countries in the world for both sexes are, for the most part, war-torn areas in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. In these countries, men and women generally feel the same about their safety — though women almost always feel less secure. This trend holds true for developing countries, but the gap between men and women begins to widen.

Most of the countries on our list have among the highest GDP per capita. Two of the countries, the U.S. and Australia, are among the 10 richest in the world on that basis. Education and literacy rates are among the highest in the world in these countries as well. And secondary school enrollment is in the top third for eight of the 10 of the countries on this list (one of the remaining two does not report data).

Gender equality is generally stronger in these countries as well. According to a separate Gallup survey, the reported gap between women with full-time positions and men with full-time positions is among the lowest in the world. Generally, there are almost always more men employed full-time than women. But in Finland, one of the countries on the list, 12% more women are employed full-time compared to men. According to the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, which measures the relative opportunities for men and women in their culture, the countries on our list have some of the strongest gender equality in the world.

Gallup consultant Steve Crabtree, one of the study’s authors, suggested that the general prosperity of the nations on our list is likely the reason for the disparity between how safe men and women feel in these countries. “As countries develop and poverty declines, the economic rationale for committing an assault, which would be to steal someone’s money or property, becomes less prevalent,” he told 24/7 Wall St. But, he explained, sexual and other violent assaults against women are not based on financial incentives and therefore may still remain high.

Many of these countries appear to have real issues with violence against women. Reported rapes in these nations on a per capita basis are among the highest in the world. Three of the countries on our list, including the country with the highest disparity — New Zealand — have among the top 10 worst rates of reported rape per capita. Despite having among the strongest gender equality, it is clear that rape and other forms of violence against women — including domestic violence — are still an issue in these countries.

Not all of the countries with the largest gap between the perceived safety of men and women are developed economies with high income and otherwise strong gender equality. Two of the countries on our list, Algeria and Albania, are considered less developed countries. While these two still have above-average GDP per capita, they have lower income, worse scores on many of the measures of gender equality and lower levels of perceived safety among men than the other countries on our list. Nevertheless, violence against women in these countries is well-documented, and the gender gap in perceived safety is still high.

These are the countries where women do not feel safe.

10. Finland
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -26%
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 66%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 92%

In Finland, 80% of women are employed full-time, while just 68% of men are fully employed. When it comes to feelings of personal safety, however, women still feel less safe than men — and by a wide margin. While the likelihood of violent crime in Finland is very low according to the EIU, only 66% of Finnish women actually felt safe where they lived or when out at night. In its 2012 annual report, Amnesty International criticized the nation for having inadequate shelters and clinics for victims of rape and domestic violence.

9. France
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -27%
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 51%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 78%

Barely half of France’s women feel safe when going outside at night, compared to the nearly 80% of men who feel safe. According to the CIA World Factbook, nearly 85% of the population lives in urban areas, the 18th highest out of the 138 countries in this study. By many conventional measures, France is one of the most developed countries in the world. More than 98% of residents enroll in secondary education, compared to 95.6% in the U.S. However, there were more than 10,000 reported incidents of rape in 2009, a rate of 16.2 per 100,000 people. This is among the worst recorded rates in the world.

8. United States
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -27%
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 62%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 89%

The U.S. may be the strongest example of national wealth not ensuring personal safety. In 2011, GDP per capita on a purchasing power parity basis was $48,100 — one of the highest in the world. Yet, women in America felt far less safe than men, and likely with good reason. According to the UNODC, 88,097 incidents of rape were reported in the U.S. in 2009 — more than were recorded in any other country the UN surveyed. This only accounts for reported cases. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that one out of every six American women, 17.7 million in total, has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime

7. Australia
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -27% (tied for 6th)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 51%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 78%

Barely half the women in Australia feel safe when walking at night. In no way is this more evident than in the nation’s rape statistics: Australia recorded 91.92 rapes per 100,000 people in 2009, the highest rate in the world. In 2011, the Australian government passed the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children, a program designed to reduce incident rates for gender-based violence in Australia. According to the Australian government’s website for the program, one in three Australian women have been victims of physical violence and almost one in five have been a victim of sexual violence after turning 15.

6. Albania
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -27% (tied for 6th)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 54%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 81%

While more than four in five men in the country feel safe going out at night in Albania, just over half of the women do. The extent of actual violence against women in the country is difficult to determine. According to the UNODC, the rate of reported rapes per capita is below the world average. However, the homicide rate in the country is more than 80 per 100,000, one of the highest recorded rates in the world (in the U.S., the rate is closer to five per 100,000). The high rate of violence suggests that the rape numbers may be underreported. According to Amnesty International, Albania faces a major problem with widespread domestic violence, as well as trafficking of women for forced prostitution.

5. Italy
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -28% (tied for 4th)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 40%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 68%

When it comes to gender equality, Italy’s performance is exceptionally poor. Just 56% of women are fully employed versus 69% of Italian men, a 13% gap in employment that is among the largest in the world. Italy also had a mediocre performance on the 2011 World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, receiving a composite score of 0.6796, in the bottom half of the 135 countries surveyed. The composite measures the levels of women’s economic participation, educational attainment, health and political involvement. The World Economic Forum’s accompanying profile of Italy noted poor rates of labor force participation and little wage equality for similar work performed. When it comes to safety, gender inequality in the country persists as just 40% of Italian women feel safe compared to 68% of men.

4. Cyprus
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -28% (tied for 4th)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 57%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 85%

Women’s economic participation is somewhat advanced in Cyprus, as 74% of women are employed at full capacity versus 78% of men. However, the unemployment rate for male Cypriots was half that of women at just 3% versus 6% in 2011. In many other areas the status of women in the country also remains extremely unequal. Political participation for women is limited: just 10.7% of Cyprus’s parliament is made up of women, while just 9% of ministerial positions are held by women. The unequal treatment of women extends to many facets of women’s lives in Cyprus, adversely affecting women’s safety. According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, Cyprus is a “destination country” for sex traffickers.

3. Malta
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men: -34% (tied for 2nd)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 48%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 82%

In a 2010 report, the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women criticized Malta for its approach to women’s rights and safety. The report expressed concern that domestic violence was an ongoing problem in the country and that Maltese sociocultural attitudes continued to condone domestic violence. However, some progress has been made when in July 2011 Malta’s parliament legalized divorce. The inability to divorce has been cited by CEDAW as resulting in “de facto discrimination against women.”

2. Algeria
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men:-34% (tied for 2nd)
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 32%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 66%

Less than a third of women in the North African nation of Algeria feel safe going out at night, the fifth-worst rate in the world. While the proportion of men working full-time compared to women working full-time is nearly identical, the nation fails several other gender equality tests. Just 8% of those in parliament are women. The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index rates the country as having the 11th-worst score for equal opportunities among 114 nations. According to the UN, reported rapes per capita are relatively low, but this may be a reporting issue. Amnesty International explains that the rights of women in the country are marginalized. There are continued issues of violence against women, and women’s rights are “subordinated to those of men in matters related to marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance.”

1. New Zealand
> Pct. women who feel less safe than men:-35%
> Pct. women who feel safe at night: 50%
> Pct. men who feel safe at night: 85%

In most measures of gender equality, other than perceptions of safety, New Zealand actually performs well. The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index gives New Zealand the fourth-best score of all nations surveyed. Regarding employment prospects, the proportion of men working full-time is only slightly higher than women’s at 66% for men versus 64% for women. On the issue of political participation, 32.2% of parliament is composed by women. However, such data seemingly ignores the detrimental impact of violent crime in women’s lives in New Zealand. At a rate of 30.58 reported incidents for 100,000 people in 2009, the country has the seventh-highest frequency of rapes out of 94 countries surveyed. Gallup also cites a 2011 United Nations report that labels New Zealand as one of the worst countries when it comes to incidents of domestic violence among a surveyed group of highly developed nations.

Here is a good explanation of what Barclay’s did:

Bob Diamond, former Barclays chief, says regulators complicit in rates scandal

LONDON — Fallen banking titan Bob Diamond on Wednesday described regulators on both sides of the Atlantic as partly complicit in a scandal involving the manipulation of a key interbank lending rate, telling a British parliamentary committee that government watchdogs had failed to act after his bank, Barclays, informed them of industry-wide irregularities during the U.S. financial crisis.

The allegations highlight the relationship between financial institutions and regulators at a time when risk-taking and misdoings at big banks again are the focus of debate in Washington, on Wall Street and in London. Diamond stepped down Tuesday as chief executive of Barclays on the heels of a U.S.-British investigation that resulted in a $450 million fine for the bank for manipulating key lending rates between 2005 and 2009. The resignation ended the tenure of a legendary figure who brought a high-flying American-style culture to the bowler-hatted bankers of London’s financial district.

Barclays is one of a number of global banks being investigated for alleged improprieties that tainted the credibility of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, the benchmark figure that largely determines the adjustable lending rates for U.S. credit cards, student loans and some mortgages. The emerging scandal has touched off a firestorm engulfing the London financial world, with Prime Minister David Cameron this week announcing a broader inquiry into banking standards that is set to haul some of the globe’s most powerful financiers before a parliamentary committee.

At the hearing Wednesday, furious British politicians seemed to put Diamond on trial as if he were the Gordon Gekko character from the “Wall Street” films, blaming him for importing a culture of risk and big bonuses to London. The 60-year-old American sought to defend his response to the Libor scandal, insisting he learned only last month about the extent of wrongdoing among an “abhorrent” but “small” group of 14 rogue traders at Barclays who had been manipulating rates for personal gain.

Diamond also painted a picture of the bank’s accusers — government regulators — as at least partially to blame. Documents released by Barclays on Tuesday night said the bank had “raised concerns” with British regulators, the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve that other financial institutions were not being honest about interbank lending rates during the financial crisis that peaked in September 2008.

Other banks, Diamond said, were routinely underreporting the rates at which they were borrowing, afraid that revealing how high their costs had soared would spark an investor panic or government nationalizations. He seemed to suggest that regulators were content to see misreporting of interbank lending during times of crisis, when strict accounting of high rates could tighten lending even more, and that they acted to curb such activity only during less sensitive periods.

Asked how regulators responded to Barclays’s reports of widespread misreporting, Diamond said, “Various levels of acknowledgment but no action.”

“There was an issue out there,” he added, “and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”

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Explainer: Why the LIBOR scandal is a bigger deal than JPMorgan
By Dylan Matthews , Updated: July 5, 2012

Last week, Barclay’s admitted to rigging the London InterBank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and agreed to pay U.S. and British regulators $450 million dollars in penalties to settle the case. Then the heads began to roll: On Tuesday, its CEO, Bob Diamond, and COO Jerry del Missier resigned, and yesterday Diamond told a British parliamentary inquiry that regulators in Washington and London alike were complicit in his manipulations.

This is a big deal. Remember that JP Morgan scandal a few months back? That was mostly JP Morgan hurting itself. The LIBOR scandal was Barclay’s making money by hurting you.

In the simplest terms, LIBOR is the average interest rate which banks in London are charging each other for borrowing. It’s calculated by Thomson Reuters — the parent company of the Reuters news agency — for the British Banking Association (BBA), a trade association of banks and financial services companies. The actual process of determining the rates is dead simple, and in fact conducted by only two people. Donald MacKenzie, a sociology professor at the University of Edinburgh, described the process in the London Review of Books:

The calculation of Libor is coordinated by just two people, who work in an unremarkable open-plan office in London’s Docklands. I watched the process, which seemed utterly routine, a couple of years ago. Just after 11 a.m. on every weekday that’s not a bank holiday, traders at leading banks send in their estimates of the interest rates at which their banks could borrow money. They do this electronically, but sometimes the co-ordinators make a phone call to a bank that hasn’t sent in its estimates, and if the latter seem implausible – typos, for example, are fairly common – they’re checked, also with a quick call: ‘Hi there, is the Kiwi chap [provider of the estimates for borrowing New Zealand dollars] about? … Bit of a spread on the two month. Everyone else is coming in a good bit under that.’

A simple computer program discards the lowest quarter and highest quarter of the estimates, and calculates the average of the remainder. The result is that day’s Libor. The calculation is repeated for each of ten currencies and 15 loan durations (from overnight to 12 months), so 150 Libors are published daily: overnight sterling Libor, one-week euro Libor, one-month yen Libor, three-month US dollar Libor and so on.

So why does everyone care about a handful of numbers that a couple guys in an office crunch every day before lunch? The simple answer is that $360 trillion in assets worldwide are indexed to LIBOR, and much of those assets are consumer debt instruments like mortgages, car loans and credit card loans.

In the United States, the two biggest indices for adjustable rate mortgages and other consumer debt are the prime rate (that is, the rate banks charge favored or “prime” consumers) and LIBOR, with the latter particularly popular for subprime loans. A study from Mark Schweitzer and Guhan Venkatu at the Cleveland Fed looked at survey data in Ohio and found that by 2008, almost 60 percent of prime adjustable rate mortgages, and nearly 100 percent of subprime ones, were indexed to LIBOR:

That means that when LIBOR rises, so do the prices ordinary consumers pay to, say, get a mortgage. Which means a bank that mucks with the LIBOR rate isn’t just playing around with esoteric derivatives that will only affect other traders: They’re playing with the real economy that most of us participate in every day.

So how did the manipulations by Barclay’s affect this rate? First, from 2005 and 2007, the bank allegedly varied the rates it reported to the BBA and Thomson Reuters so as to improve its margins on internal trades. For example, it could have placed bets that the LIBOR rate would increase, and then reported artificially high rates which in turn artificially increased the LIBOR averages, so that the bets were likelier to pay off. This not only screwed the investors on the other side of the trade, but bumped up mortgage rates – however infinitesimally – for consumers even when the risk of the loans hadn’t changed at all.

Second, in late 2008 Barclay’s – and, Diamond alleges, other banks – apparently low-balled the rates they reported for LIBOR averaging so as to make the banks’ finances look more stable than they were. The idea was to put out a false image of stability to prevent market panic and stave off calls for additional regulation or even nationalization, a solution that looked increasingly likely during the height of the financial crisis. The direct effect for consumers here was to make loans cheaper, but the indirect effect, or the intended one at least, was to lessen chances of government action against the banks. So the banks manipulating LIBOR weren’t just messing with peoples’ finances – they were trying to mess with the peoples’ laws.

The LIBOR scandal, then, is something more insidious than the multibillion-dollar failed trade that got JPMorgan into so much hot water. Unlike the assets JPMorgan was trading on, the LIBOR rate has real consequences for average consumers, and its manipulation could hurt your typical mortgage-holder, however minimally.

Further, at least some LIBOR manipulation was an attempt to manipulate government policy by changing the very data that regulators use to make decisions. If the LIBOR games prevented governments from pursuing policies that could have made the financial system more stable, the main victims, again, are ordinary con

Here is the latest banking scandal, even larger than JP Morgan’s and directly impacting on customers.

Bob Diamond, former Barclays chief, says regulators complicit in rates scandal

LONDON — Fallen banking titan Bob Diamond on Wednesday described regulators on both sides of the Atlantic as partly complicit in a scandal involving the manipulation of a key interbank lending rate, telling a British parliamentary committee that government watchdogs had failed to act after his bank, Barclays, informed them of industry-wide irregularities during the U.S. financial crisis.

The allegations highlight the relationship between financial institutions and regulators at a time when risk-taking and misdoings at big banks again are the focus of debate in Washington, on Wall Street and in London. Diamond stepped down Tuesday as chief executive of Barclays on the heels of a U.S.-British investigation that resulted in a $450 million fine for the bank for manipulating key lending rates between 2005 and 2009. The resignation ended the tenure of a legendary figure who brought a high-flying American-style culture to the bowler-hatted bankers of London’s financial district.

Barclays is one of a number of global banks being investigated for alleged improprieties that tainted the credibility of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, the benchmark figure that largely determines the adjustable lending rates for U.S. credit cards, student loans and some mortgages. The emerging scandal has touched off a firestorm engulfing the London financial world, with Prime Minister David Cameron this week announcing a broader inquiry into banking standards that is set to haul some of the globe’s most powerful financiers before a parliamentary committee.

At the hearing Wednesday, furious British politicians seemed to put Diamond on trial as if he were the Gordon Gekko character from the “Wall Street” films, blaming him for importing a culture of risk and big bonuses to London. The 60-year-old American sought to defend his response to the Libor scandal, insisting he learned only last month about the extent of wrongdoing among an “abhorrent” but “small” group of 14 rogue traders at Barclays who had been manipulating rates for personal gain.

Diamond also painted a picture of the bank’s accusers — government regulators — as at least partially to blame. Documents released by Barclays on Tuesday night said the bank had “raised concerns” with British regulators, the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve that other financial institutions were not being honest about interbank lending rates during the financial crisis that peaked in September 2008.

Other banks, Diamond said, were routinely underreporting the rates at which they were borrowing, afraid that revealing how high their costs had soared would spark an investor panic or government nationalizations. He seemed to suggest that regulators were content to see misreporting of interbank lending during times of crisis, when strict accounting of high rates could tighten lending even more, and that they acted to curb such activity only during less sensitive periods.

Asked how regulators responded to Barclays’s reports of widespread misreporting, Diamond said, “Various levels of acknowledgment but no action.”

“There was an issue out there,” he added, “and it should have been dealt with more broadly.”

In notes written by Diamond and released Tuesday evening, Barclays also disclosed a conversation between Diamond and the Bank of England’s deputy governor, Paul Tucker, that took place in October 2008. Tucker is said to have called Diamond to pass on the concerns of top British government officials over Barclays’s seemingly high Libor rates at the time, suggesting that such elevated levels did not need to be as “high” as they were.

Diamond said Wednesday that he never viewed the conversation with Tucker as a “directive” to artificially lower rates. Rather, he saw it as Tucker flagging the rising political concerns over Barclays’s solvency only two days before it closed a major deal for new private equity. Diamond said his notes on that conversation, passed down to another senior official at the bank, were later misinterpreted to mean that British officials were effectively ordering Barclays to artificially lower its reported lending rates.

The Bank of England has denied knowledge of rate manipulation. On Wednesday, the bank said Tucker — the man widely expected to be the bank’s next governor — would soon appear before the committee to give his own account. A spokesman at the Financial Services Authority who declined to be named, citing the British banking regulator’s policy, declined to comment. But the spokesman cited the agency’s official report on Barclays, which suggests the bank was never explicit about its allegations that other banks were lying about their rates while attempting to mask its own misconduct.

The Fed on Wednesday said it had no immediate comment.

The 2008 period during which Diamond said regulators looked the other way is largely separate from the heart of the wrongdoing at Barclays or the manipulation of the lending rate between 2005 and 2007 that was orchestrated by a group of traders to elevate their bonuses. The numbers reported by that group were among those used to calculate the daily Libor rate, which influences the rates paid by millions of credit card and mortgage holders, affecting about $350 trillion worth of loans.

British politicians questioned Diamond’s assertion that the bank had acted as quickly as possible to investigate and contain the damage once it was uncovered. Given news reports in 2008 that suggested ongoing manipulation of Libor rates and Diamond’s own assertions that other banks were engaging in misconduct, they chided him for not digging deeper into his own organization to establish the truth.

John Mann, a lawmaker from the opposition Labor Party, pointed out to Diamond that the Quakers who found Barclays had done so with the motto “honesty, integrity and plain dealing.” He then offered to have that statement tattooed on Diamond’s knuckles.

“You’re in charge,” Mann said. “People were suggesting impropriety. And you did not investigate it. Either you were complicit or you were grossly negligent or you were grossly incompetent.”

Press release

“Women entrepreneurs are a largely untapped, under-resourced sector of the economy” – Dr Sylvia Anie.

The Commonwealth is working to unlock the potential of women entrepreneurs by urging banks and governments to recognise the economic benefits of granting women access to much needed finance.

During a roundtable held at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, UK, from 27 to 28 June 2012, delegates from development agencies, banks, member countries’ ministries of finance and other bodies discussed ways of creating an enabling environment for female entrepreneurs…..article

European leaders arrived in Brussels on Thursday afternoon for a two-day summit that some observers are calling the last chance to save the euro….articles

Asian stocks, euro surge on EU bond support…article