Why is Sex Equality so Unsexy?

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I have never been that interested in feminist theory or women's rights issues. This is partly due to the selfish fact that, so far in my life, these issues haven't affected me directly. I come from a society where women are treated pretty much the same way as men are, despite some lags in earning equality and burden sharing in the household.

A friend of mine suggested I look at the World Bank's most recent World Development Report, which is its biggest annual publication. The most recent one was on "Gender".

I leafed through the summary, and despite some statistics that should shock (inequality in educational opportunities, and in particular mortality rates of unborn children, children under five, and child-bearing women), I found the rest rather uninteresting.

The only paragraph that directly speaks to me is the following, on economic opportunities:


"Unequal access to economic opportunities. Women are more likely than men to work as unpaid family laborers or in the informal sector. ...Women entrepreneurs operate in smaller firms and less profitable sectors. As a result, women every- where tend to earn less than men."

Why are women's rights in a general sense less "sexy" than e.g. health, or education? This isn't just a personal opinion. I was at the Bank when the Gender Report was being compiled, and there was a general sigh of boredom that this topic had been chosen. A consultation meeting for German-speaking experts (the Report team consults hundreds of experts around the world in preparation for the report) was one of the worst workshops I have ever attended. The Bank's Chief Economist slept through most of it, there was no focus, and rather nonacademic, unrelated anecdotal statements were made by the participants.

I don't really have an answer to this question. I'm still not sure whether I'm passionately interested in this topic, despite writing all these blog entries. Maybe it's just that gender is difficult to understand through text and in an abstract form. Show me a man who tells his wife not to work, and bosses her around to make food and wash the dishes, and I'll be fuming in no time.