We managed to get in touch with Pacion, and the writer said she's very happy about the way her tweet was received.
"I tweeted about an ordinary encounter that resonates with women because it is such a relatable situation, and the comments read like a live action women's studies class, with women sharing specific examples of their own encounters across a wide range of fields," Pacion told Bored Panda.
"The follow-up comments range from those of support that build women up to criticism from people who simply don't see or understand the issue. My biggest takeaway is that women want their stories to be heard, and there is a great opportunity to elevate these powerful and real-world stories through other mediums, like an article, a book, or a podcast."
Pacion believes the large number of replies to her original tweet indicates that gender bias is pervasive. "I think the most blatant forms of gender bias I currently see are with my girls (ages 9 and 13) and what they experience at school, from learning 'pink is a girl color and blue is a boy color' to being admonished to 'sit like a lady' to being told girls can't be spies, not even as a Halloween costume."
"There are far more qualified people who can talk about the areas in which women suffer the most sexism, but an area I see it in a lot is in politics, where coverage for women candidates is often more about what they wear and how they look as opposed to their positions," the writer added.
Interestingly, there's a way we can calculate just how different societies treat men and women. Since 2006, the Global Gender Gap Index has been measuring the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Tracking the progress towards closing these gaps over time, it reports benchmarks and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across and within regional peers. According to its 2020 data, there is still a 31.4% gender gap that remains to be closed globally.
Across the four characteristics, on average, the largest gender disparity lies within political empowerment. Despite being the most improved dimension that year, the gap on this subindex has only been closed by 25%, meaning there are still not enough women occupying seats in government across the world.
However, it's important to note that the political empowerment subindex fails to measure the legal rights of women and girls in comparison to those of men, which plays a significant role in determining the extent to which a society is equal.
"Although progress [has been] made in advancing women’s rights, it has been slow and inconsistent, and many sex-discriminatory laws remain entrenched,” Romina Canessa, a human rights lawyer at Equality Now, told Global Citizen. “When governments deny women and girls the same rights as men and boys, this legitimizes discrimination and abuse, and means they have no formal recourse if their rights are violated.”
The economic and labor market gender gap has been closed by 58%. This is due to the fact that, on average, only 55% of women are participating in the global workforce, and their presence in higher-yielding positions is even lower.
Plus, this disparity is exacerbated by the global wage gap, which affects women across all industries and backgrounds, and has remained relatively stagnant throughout the last five years or so. These components highlight the challenges women face to escape poverty and become financially and economically independent.
At least 35 of the 153 surveyed countries have closed the education gender gap by 96.1%. However, this number varies across education levels.
Globally, girls are less likely to receive an education due to gender-based discrimination, child marriage, and the burden of fulfilling domestic chores, all of which prevent young girls and teens from attending school.
While more young girls and women are attending primary and secondary school, less than half are going on to attend college.
Although the global gender gap for health care and survival has been closed by 95.7%, millions of women worldwide still do not have equal access to health care, especially reproductive health care.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, vice-president for development at the Brennan Center for Justice, thinks that period poverty and menstrual stigma play significant roles in holding society back from achieving gender equality, noting that these barriers can also hold them back from participating in politics, the workforce, and education.
