The NationStates Feminist Thread III

[Des-Bal]

It’s probably not news that a good education goes a long way to help both men and women to go further in life, and in third-world countries women should be allowed an education along with the men. The problem is...are we in the West going to do anything to support the education of girls in third-world countries? Or are we just gonna have Oprah do it?

Do you think Oprah is from the third world? That is the west supporting the education of girls in the third world, it is people volunteering their resources to aid girl's education.

[Knask]

Like all things, I'm sure it can be debated to death, but University of Missouri (US) and University of Essex (UK) designed a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) to measure the inequality between men and women to determine where men and women are the most equal and unequal. They measure three things - educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.

Researchers from the University of Missouri and University of Essex in the United Kingdom say a new way of measuring gender inequality is fairer to both men and women, and presents a simplified but more accurate picture of peoples’ well-being than previous calculations. The new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) focuses on three factors – educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.

“We calculated BIGI scores for 134 nations, representing 6.8 billion people,” said David Geary, Curators Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science about the study, published today in PLOS ONE, one of the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals focused on science and medicine. “Surprisingly, our new measure indicated that men are, on average, more disadvantaged than women in 91 countries compared with a relative disadvantage for women in 43 countries. We sought to correct the bias toward women’s issues in existing measures and at the same time develop a simple measure that is useful in any country in the world, regardless of their level of economic development.”

Using the BIGI measure, the researchers found the most developed countries in the world come closest to achieving gender equality, albeit with a slight advantage for women. In the least developed countries, women nearly always fall behind men — largely because they have fewer opportunities to get a good education. The picture is more mixed in countries with medium-levels of development, with nearly the same number of countries where women fall behind as countries where men fall behind. The men’s disadvantage is largely due to a shorter healthy lifespan.

Until now the Global Gender Gap Index, introduced in 2006, had been one of the most established and well-used measures of national gender inequality, used by academics and policy makers across the world. But Stoet and Geary argue that it does not measure issues where men are at a disadvantage, such as harsher punishments for the same crime, compulsory military service and more occupational deaths. The complexity of the Global Gender Gap Index also means it is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether gender differences are the result of inequality or personal preference.

“No existing measure of gender inequality fully captures the hardships that are disproportionately experienced by men and so they do not fully capture the extent to which any nation is promoting the well-being of all its citizens,” said Gijsbert Stoet, professor of psychology at University of Essex. “The BIGI provides a much simpler way of tackling gender inequality and it focuses on aspects of life that are directly relevant to all people.”

Researchers say that when BIGI is included along with other existing models of gender equality, it provides additional information, presenting a fuller picture of gender equality that can be used by policymakers to introduce changes to improve the quality of life for both men and women.

“Internationally, improvements in gender parity may be reached by focusing on education in the least developed nations and by focusing on preventative health care in medium and highly developed nations,” Stoet said.

“With the BIGI, we are focusing on issues that are important to all women and men in any nation, regardless of level of economic and political development, and by including factors that can disadvantage men as well as women,” Geary said. “Current equality measures are generally biased to highlight women’s issues and thus are not really measures of gender equality.”

The study, “A simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality,” was published in PLOS ONE.

https://munews.missouri.edu/news-releas ... ell-being/

And the actual study for your perusal:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0205349

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

[Galloism]

Like all things, I'm sure it can be debated to death, but University of Missouri (US) and University of Essex (UK) designed a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) to measure the inequality between men and women to determine where men and women are the most equal and unequal. They measure three things - educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.



https://munews.missouri.edu/news-releas ... ell-being/

And the actual study for your perusal:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0205349

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

Well, Saudi Arabia is an interesting duck. As the study itself notes:

As mentioned, the deviations from parity in each of the three individual components of the BIGI can be larger than the BIGI itself. This means that a country with an overall apparent lack of gender inequality may have one sex falling largely behind in one component of the BIGI (e.g., life satisfaction) while the other sex falls behind largely in another facet (e.g., education). This means that despite overall parity, the country still has much work to do to achieve parity in individual components of the BIGI. We therefore argue that it is important to consider both the overall level of parity and the level of parity (or lack thereof) in each of the individual components.

Take for example Saudi Arabia. It has a very low overall deviation from parity (0.15%) but relatively high disparity in individual components (e.g., a 7% disadvantage for women in education and a 5% disadvantage for men in life satisfaction). In other words, because men's and women's disadvantages average one another out, it reaches a high level of overall parity. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is a country with one of the largest differences between its overall level of parity and the lack of parity in the individual components (S1 Table).

So Saudi Arabia has a lot of gender inequality, in both directions, screwing both sides equally, which tends to balance out if one measures the average.

So they designed a metric for this:

Some readers may be surprised that Saudi Arabia, frequently portrayed as unfair to women in the media [35,36], has a relatively high level of overall average gender parity. This seems contradictory, because much has been reported about restrictions on women's rights in Saudi Arabia (e.g., the Saudi government only recently changed its policy on women driving a car), while Northern European countries have a reputation for progressiveness (including female participation in national politics). Apart from other academic research showing that "Islam, democracy and gender equality are not inherently incompatible" ([37], p. 518), three critically important points should be noted here.

The first is that the lack of gender inequality does not imply that women or men have abundant opportunities in life (see Introduction), and neither does it mean that a country is free of sexist attitudes; all that matters for the expression of gender parity using the BIGI (or any other composite measure of gender inequality) is whether there are overall differences in disadvantages between the sexes. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has much to do, because girls fall behind considerably in educational opportunities (7%, S1 Table), while men fall behind in both healthy life span and life satisfaction.

It is exactly because of this potential of having a low level of average overall gender inequality and still have relatively large disparities in the individual components that we have also provided a score for the average absolute deviation from parity (AADP); this better reflects the amount of work to be done (in a society) to resolve all relevant gender disparities as captured by the BIGI. We have ranked the BIGI according to this latter score (S1 Table). It should be noted that our approach of ranking in accordance to the average absolute deviation from parity is a novelty in gender equality indicators. It is another dimension that should be taken into account when comparing nations; it is particularly useful to prevent overestimation of progress in countries in which both men and women fall behind in different aspects of life (such as in Saudi Arabia).

Also for this quote:

"There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality."

I don't see that in the study. Where did you see that?

[Luminesa]

It’s probably not news that a good education goes a long way to help both men and women to go further in life, and in third-world countries women should be allowed an education along with the men. The problem is...are we in the West going to do anything to support the education of girls in third-world countries? Or are we just gonna have Oprah do it?

Do you think Oprah is from the third world? That is the west supporting the education of girls in the third world, it is people volunteering their resources to aid girl's education.

That's...not what I meant. I guess I should have worded it better. People like Oprah have tons of money, but she's a celebrity and she has more money than most people in the United States. What I was trying to say that we, the normal Westerners, who hope for a better future for all girls, should support the girls in third-world countries, and we can't just leave it up to celebrities to do so. Which means yes, volunteering resources to help young girls is awesome. And we should be doing more of it, and helping girls in the third-world should be a more mainstream part of feminism.

[Luminesa]

Like all things, I'm sure it can be debated to death, but University of Missouri (US) and University of Essex (UK) designed a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) to measure the inequality between men and women to determine where men and women are the most equal and unequal. They measure three things - educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.



https://munews.missouri.edu/news-releas ... ell-being/

And the actual study for your perusal:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0205349

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

[Knask]

Also for this quote:

"There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality."

I don't see that in the study. Where did you see that?

On their website:

https://bigi.genderequality.info/#_bahrain_1_span_class_icon_fuchsia_i_class_fa_fa_female_i_span

[Knask]

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

You can't argue with science!

Just look at the other countries where women are favored: Iran, Turkey, Russia, Colombia, El Salvador, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates...

[Galloism]

Also for this quote:



I don't see that in the study. Where did you see that?

On their website:

https://bigi.genderequality.info/#_bahrain_1_span_class_icon_fuchsia_i_class_fa_fa_female_i_span

I see.

I do see their point though - women and men have equal lifespans, about the same education, and about the same life satisfaction, so by those criteria, it's about equal.

[Galloism]

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

You can't argue with science!

Just look at the other countries where women are favored: Iran, Turkey, Russia, Colombia, El Salvador, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates...

Again, if society sucks against both, that's equality.

It's just really really sucky equality.

If you look at a group of 50 slaves, 25 men and 25 women, and they all have about the same life expectancy, about the same life satisfaction, and about the same education, they're roughly equal.

This is true even if the life expectancy is 30 years, life satisfaction is zero, and education is being literally illiterate.

[Galloism]

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

That's why they put in that metric to measure divergency.

Saudi Arabia is really really sucky for women, compared with men, by some metrics. It's really really sucky for men, compared with women, on completely different metrics. They have a lot of work to do towards equality - but they have a lot of work to do on both sides, and that's the point.

[Des-Bal]

That's...not what I meant. I guess I should have worded it better. People like Oprah have tons of money, but she's a celebrity and she has more money than most people in the United States. What I was trying to say that we, the normal Westerners, who hope for a better future for all girls, should support the girls in third-world countries, and we can't just leave it up to celebrities to do so. Which means yes, volunteering resources to help young girls is awesome. And we should be doing more of it, and helping girls in the third-world should be a more mainstream part of feminism.

Well one way you could support them is by volunteering your time or money to charities with the education of women as a goal. Like Oprah's.

It's dangerous to lean too heavily on stereotypes though because women tend to get more education than men everywhere except the third world and even there it varies.

[Des-Bal]

You can't argue with science!

Just look at the other countries where women are favored: Iran, Turkey, Russia, Colombia, El Salvador, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates...

Sure you can, you could argue their methodology isn't good or that the results don't mean what they're saying they do, the only thing you can't do is treat a conclusion as absurd based on common knowledge and not support it with anything.

[Luminesa]

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

You can't argue with science!

Just look at the other countries where women are favored: Iran, Turkey, Russia, Colombia, El Salvador, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates...

> Women are favored in Iran and Turkey.

You mean two countries that are very unsafe for women who don't veil themselves?

[Luminesa]

That's...not what I meant. I guess I should have worded it better. People like Oprah have tons of money, but she's a celebrity and she has more money than most people in the United States. What I was trying to say that we, the normal Westerners, who hope for a better future for all girls, should support the girls in third-world countries, and we can't just leave it up to celebrities to do so. Which means yes, volunteering resources to help young girls is awesome. And we should be doing more of it, and helping girls in the third-world should be a more mainstream part of feminism.

Well one way you could support them is by volunteering your time or money to charities with the education of women as a goal. Like Oprah's.

It's dangerous to lean too heavily on stereotypes though because women tend to get more education than men everywhere except the third world and even there it varies.

That's fair, and that's mostly what I mean. Volunteering time, donating to charities, etc.

[Luminesa]

Saudi Arabia favors women...and I'm Mary, Queen of Scots. How you doin', I'm doing good, aside from my cousin tryna cut my head off.

That's why they put in that metric to measure divergency.

Saudi Arabia is really really sucky for women, compared with men, by some metrics. It's really really sucky for men, compared with women, on completely different metrics. They have a lot of work to do towards equality - but they have a lot of work to do on both sides, and that's the point.

I can see that. Saudi Arabia is probably crummy for most people who aren't in the royal family.

[Ostroeuropa]

You can't argue with science!

Just look at the other countries where women are favored: Iran, Turkey, Russia, Colombia, El Salvador, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates...

> Women are favored in Iran and Turkey.

You mean two countries that are very unsafe for women who don't veil themselves?

They're going to be more unsafe for men in general. Every society is less safe for men. Focusing in on something like the veil is reductionist instead of holistic. There's an equivalent for men. The study demonstrates a holistic approach returns the result that men are worse off in most societies, and reveals why the common feminist tactic of refering to isolated issues in a reductionist fashion to support their overall contention that society is anti-woman relative to men is not only a fallacious argument, but delivers the wrong conclusions.

[Luminesa]

> Women are favored in Iran and Turkey.

You mean two countries that are very unsafe for women who don't veil themselves?

They're going to be more unsafe for men in general. Every society is less safe for men. Focusing in on something like the veil is reductionist instead of holistic. There's an equivalent for men.

I wouldn't put a blanket over it quite like that, though I'm sure Turkey and Iran are both quite unsafe for men who don't adhere to Sharia law.

[Ostroeuropa]

They're going to be more unsafe for men in general. Every society is less safe for men. Focusing in on something like the veil is reductionist instead of holistic. There's an equivalent for men.

I wouldn't put a blanket over it quite like that, though I'm sure Turkey and Iran are both quite unsafe for men who don't adhere to Sharia law.

The blanket statement is meant to be taken as a holistic analysis, as in, on average, men are in more danger. That's supported by the violence stats and murder rates and so on.

[Luminesa]

I wouldn't put a blanket over it quite like that, though I'm sure Turkey and Iran are both quite unsafe for men who don't adhere to Sharia law.

The blanket statement is meant to be taken as a holistic analysis, as in, on average, men are in more danger. That's supported by the violence stats and murder rates and so on.

Places like Bangladesh are dangerous too because they're constantly being ravaged by violence and terrorism.

[Ostroeuropa]

The blanket statement is meant to be taken as a holistic analysis, as in, on average, men are in more danger. That's supported by the violence stats and murder rates and so on.

Places like Bangladesh are dangerous too because they're constantly being ravaged by violence and terrorism.

I'd argue Bangladesh is dangerous because it isn't a viable country and should be annexed by India. This is being resolved slowly because (Only within the last decade mind you) India decided to enter a trade agreement with Bangladesh that said food and water won't be tariffed between them anymore, and Bangladesh is allowed to use Indian waters, rivers, rails, roads, and so on, to transport its own goods to third party countries, without paying tariffs to India, provided the goods remain in transit and don't stop.

Prior to that Bangladesh was forced to try Autarky in a state that is extremely populous and while fertile, is not fertile enough. The social impacts of these food famine/trade poor economy (Radicalization, normalization of violence and crime) will take a while to go away, but they should start going away now.

These new arrangements were part of the drive to better relations between the countries and a humanitarian effort on the part of India, and occured alongside the final settlement with respect to Enclaves in India/Bangladesh, which while still an issue, is now less of an issue, and emergency services (Not the police though) from both countries are now permitted to cross borders. This was to assist the people who lived in the enclaves surrounded by the other countries territory, including the "Third order" enclaves, where a country is surrounded by a country surrounded again by the first country.

It's like Palestine. It simply lacks the resources to be viable.

Violence and terrorism are there, and are problems, but its one of those instances where that is caused by material circumstance.

[Galloism]

That's why they put in that metric to measure divergency.

Saudi Arabia is really really sucky for women, compared with men, by some metrics. It's really really sucky for men, compared with women, on completely different metrics. They have a lot of work to do towards equality - but they have a lot of work to do on both sides, and that's the point.

I can see that. Saudi Arabia is probably crummy for most people who aren't in the royal family.

That's pretty true.

[Luminesa]

Places like Bangladesh are dangerous too because they're constantly being ravaged by violence and terrorism.

I'd argue Bangladesh is dangerous because it isn't a viable country and should be annexed by India. This is being resolved slowly because (Only within the last decade mind you) India decided to enter a trade agreement with Bangladesh that said food and water won't be tariffed between them anymore, and Bangladesh is allowed to use Indian waters, rivers, rails, roads, and so on, to transport its own goods to third party countries, without paying tariffs to India, provided the goods remain in transit and don't stop.

Prior to that Bangladesh was forced to try Autarky in a state that is extremely populous and while fertile, is not fertile enough. The social impacts of these food famine/trade poor economy (Radicalization, normalization of violence and crime) will take a while to go away, but they should start going away now.

These new arrangements were part of the drive to better relations between the countries and a humanitarian effort on the part of India, and occured alongside the final settlement with respect to Enclaves in India/Bangladesh, which while still an issue, is now less of an issue, and emergency services (Not the police though) from both countries are now permitted to cross borders. This was to assist the people who lived in the enclaves surrounded by the other countries territory, including the "Third order" enclaves, where a country is surrounded by a country surrounded again by the first country.

It's like Palestine. It simply lacks the resources to be viable.

Violence and terrorism are there, and are problems, but its one of those instances where that is caused by material circumstance.

It's listed as a developing economy and as one of the countries that's coming-up, along with the likes of Vietnam. But Bangladesh does get a lot of help from surrounding countries. I wouldn't say they're completely dependent on India though.

[Mardla]

I can see that. Saudi Arabia is probably crummy for most people who aren't in the royal family.

That's pretty true.

My boss lived there several years and she loved it. Although my boss has a very old-fashioned persprctive on criminal justice, that seemed to be what impressed her the most

[Liriena]

Like all things, I'm sure it can be debated to death, but University of Missouri (US) and University of Essex (UK) designed a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) to measure the inequality between men and women to determine where men and women are the most equal and unequal. They measure three things - educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.

Researchers from the University of Missouri and University of Essex in the United Kingdom say a new way of measuring gender inequality is fairer to both men and women, and presents a simplified but more accurate picture of peoples’ well-being than previous calculations. The new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) focuses on three factors – educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.

“We calculated BIGI scores for 134 nations, representing 6.8 billion people,” said David Geary, Curators Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science about the study, published today in PLOS ONE, one of the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals focused on science and medicine. “Surprisingly, our new measure indicated that men are, on average, more disadvantaged than women in 91 countries compared with a relative disadvantage for women in 43 countries. We sought to correct the bias toward women’s issues in existing measures and at the same time develop a simple measure that is useful in any country in the world, regardless of their level of economic development.”

Using the BIGI measure, the researchers found the most developed countries in the world come closest to achieving gender equality, albeit with a slight advantage for women. In the least developed countries, women nearly always fall behind men — largely because they have fewer opportunities to get a good education. The picture is more mixed in countries with medium-levels of development, with nearly the same number of countries where women fall behind as countries where men fall behind. The men’s disadvantage is largely due to a shorter healthy lifespan.

Until now the Global Gender Gap Index, introduced in 2006, had been one of the most established and well-used measures of national gender inequality, used by academics and policy makers across the world. But Stoet and Geary argue that it does not measure issues where men are at a disadvantage, such as harsher punishments for the same crime, compulsory military service and more occupational deaths. The complexity of the Global Gender Gap Index also means it is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether gender differences are the result of inequality or personal preference.

“No existing measure of gender inequality fully captures the hardships that are disproportionately experienced by men and so they do not fully capture the extent to which any nation is promoting the well-being of all its citizens,” said Gijsbert Stoet, professor of psychology at University of Essex. “The BIGI provides a much simpler way of tackling gender inequality and it focuses on aspects of life that are directly relevant to all people.”

Researchers say that when BIGI is included along with other existing models of gender equality, it provides additional information, presenting a fuller picture of gender equality that can be used by policymakers to introduce changes to improve the quality of life for both men and women.

“Internationally, improvements in gender parity may be reached by focusing on education in the least developed nations and by focusing on preventative health care in medium and highly developed nations,” Stoet said.

“With the BIGI, we are focusing on issues that are important to all women and men in any nation, regardless of level of economic and political development, and by including factors that can disadvantage men as well as women,” Geary said. “Current equality measures are generally biased to highlight women’s issues and thus are not really measures of gender equality.”

The study, “A simplified approach to measuring national gender inequality,” was published in PLOS ONE.

https://munews.missouri.edu/news-releas ... ell-being/

And the actual study for your perusal:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0205349

Kudos to the researchers. This is good stuff.

[Liriena]

Ha! It proves what I've been saying all along! There is no Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia, or if there is, it favors women!

And as your study also says, "There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality." It shows that Sharia law is the way to go in order to get perfect gender equality.

Well, Saudi Arabia is an interesting duck. As the study itself notes:

As mentioned, the deviations from parity in each of the three individual components of the BIGI can be larger than the BIGI itself. This means that a country with an overall apparent lack of gender inequality may have one sex falling largely behind in one component of the BIGI (e.g., life satisfaction) while the other sex falls behind largely in another facet (e.g., education). This means that despite overall parity, the country still has much work to do to achieve parity in individual components of the BIGI. We therefore argue that it is important to consider both the overall level of parity and the level of parity (or lack thereof) in each of the individual components.

Take for example Saudi Arabia. It has a very low overall deviation from parity (0.15%) but relatively high disparity in individual components (e.g., a 7% disadvantage for women in education and a 5% disadvantage for men in life satisfaction). In other words, because men's and women's disadvantages average one another out, it reaches a high level of overall parity. Indeed, Saudi Arabia is a country with one of the largest differences between its overall level of parity and the lack of parity in the individual components (S1 Table).

So Saudi Arabia has a lot of gender inequality, in both directions, screwing both sides equally, which tends to balance out if one measures the average.

So they designed a metric for this:

Some readers may be surprised that Saudi Arabia, frequently portrayed as unfair to women in the media [35,36], has a relatively high level of overall average gender parity. This seems contradictory, because much has been reported about restrictions on women's rights in Saudi Arabia (e.g., the Saudi government only recently changed its policy on women driving a car), while Northern European countries have a reputation for progressiveness (including female participation in national politics). Apart from other academic research showing that "Islam, democracy and gender equality are not inherently incompatible" ([37], p. 518), three critically important points should be noted here.

The first is that the lack of gender inequality does not imply that women or men have abundant opportunities in life (see Introduction), and neither does it mean that a country is free of sexist attitudes; all that matters for the expression of gender parity using the BIGI (or any other composite measure of gender inequality) is whether there are overall differences in disadvantages between the sexes. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has much to do, because girls fall behind considerably in educational opportunities (7%, S1 Table), while men fall behind in both healthy life span and life satisfaction.

It is exactly because of this potential of having a low level of average overall gender inequality and still have relatively large disparities in the individual components that we have also provided a score for the average absolute deviation from parity (AADP); this better reflects the amount of work to be done (in a society) to resolve all relevant gender disparities as captured by the BIGI. We have ranked the BIGI according to this latter score (S1 Table). It should be noted that our approach of ranking in accordance to the average absolute deviation from parity is a novelty in gender equality indicators. It is another dimension that should be taken into account when comparing nations; it is particularly useful to prevent overestimation of progress in countries in which both men and women fall behind in different aspects of life (such as in Saudi Arabia).

Also for this quote:

"There is very little Bahrain can do in regard to gender inequality."

I don't see that in the study. Where did you see that?

Yeah, Saudi Arabia kinda falls squarely in the "everyone is getting screwed in some way" camp (paraphrasing our Dark Mother of Youtube, Contrapoints).