- What is a gender gap? Um.
- I think I heard it was
79 cents on the dollar.
- Every woman will
experience it at some point,
even if you don't see it.
- The guy was getting paid
$10,000 more a year than me.
What are you talking about?
- I can tell you from
experience that it sucks.
- [Narrator] Everyone thinks
they know about gender gap.
(coins tinkling)
But that 79 cents is just
the tip of the iceberg.
- Very few people realize
just how pervasive
the gender gap is.
- The gender gap exists
in lots of different
surprising places.
- [Narrator] It's in the
design of everything around us.
In medicine, government.
What we value and what
we take for granted.
(cars crash)
- I see the gender
gap everywhere.
- It's so much a part of society
that we cease to
notice it anymore.
- [Narrator] How we got here
is a mind-boggling story
of numbers, hidden Wonder Women,
and a monstrous
shape-shifting super villain.
- A lot of people contribute
and even continue the gender gap
not because they are sexist
but because that's
all they know.
- I think all
genders should care
about closing the gender gap
and I want my full dollar.
(upbeat music)
(bright music)
(children laughing)
(couple smooching)
- [Narrator] The
gender gap grows
when we act like there's
only two types of people
and one is more important.
- [Man] Yeah.
- The gender gap is
about recognizing
that the world is designed
with an average person in mind,
and that average
person is not female.
- [Woman] Yes,
distinctly average.
- It's this sort of
invisible privilege
that I get to collect
when I walk around the world
recognizing that it was designed
for people who are
approximately my size and shape.
- [Narrator] Meet
the Standard Man.
- [Man] Hello!
- There he goes again,
man the everything.
Man the hunter, man
the this, man the that.
Man the human being.
- [Narrator] In the 1940s,
French architect Le Corbusier
created Modulor Man,
a standard human
template intended for use
in architecture and design.
He was a fan of English
detective novels
and imagined a strapping
English policeman
as his standard human body.
But, at six feet tall,
his Standard Man isn't
exactly standard.
In 1940, the average
woman was only around 5'2.
- Modulor Man is
simply the forerunner
of so many of our
modern day problems.
- There's constantly things
that do not fit my body.
First of all,
seatbelts suck, right?
Seatbelts are the worst.
- Seatbelts, they just
cut my boobs in half.
- How flat-chested do
they want everyone to be?
- One of the ways
in which we assume
a default male shape and size
is in crash test dummies.
- [Man] Safety first.
- [Man] Help!
(crash crashing)
- [Man] Help!
(man screaming)
- [Sarah] When crash test
dummies were designed
in the 1950s,
they were built around
a 50th percentile male
for height, weight, and
spinal column shape.
- [Man] Ride 'em, cowboy!
(man screaming)
- It turns out that
I am about the size
of a crash test dummy.
They're designed
with me in mind.
- [Narrator] At
5'9 and 172 pounds,
it's about four inches taller
than the average
American female today.
And while it weighs
about the same,
the weight distribution
is all wrong.
- [Man] I have no
booty, don't judge me.
- In 1966, they did introduce
the female crash test dummy,
but it was just a scaled down
version of the male dummy.
- [Woman] Who you
calling a dummy?
- [Narrator] In the early 1980s,
researchers argued
for the inclusion
of a 50th percentile
female in regulatory tests,
but this advice was ignored by
manufacturers and regulators.
- It wasn't until 2011
that the US introduced
a female crash test dummy
that was actually shaped
like a woman.
- [Woman] I feel so alive.
- [Narrator] But that
woman is about the size
of a 12-year-old girl.
And they still don't
put the female dummy
in the driving seat
for safety tests.
- [Woman] Who's the dummy now?
- [Narrator] And it turns out
that designing and testing cars
without taking the
different sizes and shapes
of half the population
into account
translates to some genuinely
horrifying numbers.
- [Man] Help me!
(cars crashing)
- [Narrator] 62% of people
in their third
trimester of pregnancy
do not fit the
standard car seatbelt.
Women are 47% more likely
to be seriously injured
in a car crash than men.
And women are 17% more
likely to die in a car crash.
And the standard man's
sinister role in the gender gap
doesn't just play
out on the road.
Some design problems are just
about making poor assumptions
about what women want and need.
- Pockets do seem like
a really innocent thing.
They aren't.
- Women's pants
never had pockets.
Even going to back
to Tudor times,
women's skirts
never had pockets.
- [Woman] Hey, nice dress.
- [Woman] Oh, thanks. I
just wish it had pockets.
I don't know what
to do with my hands.
- [Rosalind] Women weren't
supposed to carry money,
the men carried the money
and paid for everything.
- [Man] This one's on me.
(cash register clinks)
- [Woman] Oh, thanks
- [Narrator] It
was safe to assume
that women had as little
need for functional pockets
as they had for their
own money or property.
- [Woman] (sighs) I don't
even get pocket money.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] It's
been over 400 years,
and yet when it
comes to pockets,
women's clothing
still falls short.
- I can fit nothing
in my pockets.
- If I wanna keep
something somewhere,
it's gonna be in the tatas.
- I have two pair of (mumbles)
in this pocket right now,
hair gel, I have a Tide to
Go stick, I have a phone.
- Front pockets are,
they fit up to my,
for me I'm like a
woman, I'm like oh yeah,
we got to the second
knuckle, we're winning today.
- [Narrator] Only 10%
of women's pockets
can fit an average female hand,
but 100% of men's pockets
can fit an average male hand
with room to spare.
That's because the
average man's pocket
is 9.1 inches deep.
The average depth
of women's pockets?
Only 5.6 inches.
- [Woman] Ugh, I
guess you can fit
some gum in there or something.
- [Narrator] And the
gender gap even shows up
in the architecture around us,
making assumptions
about who belongs where.
- The most popular
renovated room
in American households today
is the kitchen
and it's because it
was literally designed
for a separate set
of gender relations.
If you're sitting in a
home that has a kitchen
that was built in the 1960s,
it's probably a small room.
It probably has one
or two doors into it
and it's closed off from
the rest of the house.
I spoke to an architect once
who referred to them as
wife-in-a-box kitchens
and it's one of the ways
that I think we can see
that gender has structured
the world around us
because it's literally
erected walls
that we have to break
down to eradicate gaps.
- [Narrator] And it's
not just at home.
(clocks ticking)
- Some examples of that include
our basic public bathrooms.
- [Narrator] Globally,
one in three women
lack access to safe toilets,
and girls and women
collectively spend about
97 billion hours a year
finding a safe place to go.
But even in places where
there are public restrooms,
women get shafted.
- The women's washroom,
the lineup is
Every single time, I don't
understand why it's so long,
and then guys they just
go in and out, in and out.
- Yeah, it's weird
the bathroom thing.
It's like women's line,
crazy, men's line, nothing.
- [Narrator] On average,
the wait for the men's
room is a mere 11 seconds,
while getting in the
women's room means
waiting six minutes
and 19 seconds.
During busy times,
people have to wait
34 times longer
to use the women's restroom.
- It's not because there's
necessarily more women
that need to go to the bathroom.
Our clothing's designed that
we have to take off more.
And they set the same
standard square footage
for male and female bathrooms
but fewer female toilets can fit
into the same square footage.
- That's by design
and that's something
that could be changed.
Bathrooms are
segregated by gender
even though in our households
most of our bathrooms are not.
- [Narrator] Studies have shown
that public gender
neutral bathrooms are
way more efficient,
but for some reason that
freaks a lot of people out.
- [Man] No no no no no.
- Segregating bathrooms based
off of gender hurts everybody,
but it specially hurts
transgender people
often being made uncomfortable
or sometimes even criminalized
for using the bathroom
that they think is best.
- The social world
was simply not built
recognizing all the
diverse groups of people.
It's not the individuals
we should be blaming here,
it's the structure of our world.
- [Narrator] And we've been
building this biased world
for thousands of years.
It turns out the
insidious Standard Man
has been around for
a very long time.
- To find societies
that we could truly
describe as egalitarian,
we'd have to go back
at least 12,000 years.
- [Man] Me want food.
- Early evolving societies,
human beings were
pretty much equal.
- When you live in a
group of 10 people,
you can't have this
is my male roles
and this is female roles.
Everyone needs to be
able to participate
to ensure that the group
survives and has enough food.
- [Man] (munches) Eat some.
- It's only when
you begin to get
town settlements and property
you get women being
made more housebound.
Suddenly women are property.
- [Narrator] Men become
kings of their world.
And that turns history
into his story.
- [Man] Dear diary, another
awesome day of being a man.
- It's a part of that whole, oh,
the great man theory of history,
like man conquerors
leading the chart.
- Women are always
written out of history.
- Unless they were basically
the main person in this
story like Cleopatra,
even then the roles
are relegated down
to someone who's kind of slutty
instead of a diplomat
or a politician.
(engine rumbling)
- [Rosalind] Now we all know
about the Wright brothers,
Orville and all that.
- [Man] Is that one of
them new flying machines?
- But what nobody knows
is Katharine Wright
was the third leg of the
Wright family triangle.
She ran everything, she
organized everything.
- [Woman] Look at
me, I'm flying.
- There's a marvelous
picture of her
sitting in one of
their airplanes
with a piece of string
tied around her knees
to keep her skirts down
when she went up in the air,
a problem that boys
didn't have to face.
- [Narrator] And it
can take a long time
to find the women who
have been there all along.
Like 138 years long.
It's 1878 and an extraordinary
burial chamber is uncovered
by archeologists exploring
the 10th century Viking site
of Birka, Sweden.
- [Woman] Ooh, check it out.
- [Man] It's a bit
stuffy in here.
- [Narrator] A body is
found in a seated position
surrounded by weapons
including a sword,
an ax, two lances,
25 armor-piercing arrows,
a battle knife and two shields.
Two horses were also
buried with the deceased.
(horses neigh)
- The Birka burial is really
one of the most iconic burials
because it included
so many grave goods
and was considered kind of
the ultimate warrior burial.
- [Narrator] Of the 1,100
excavated burials at the site,
this is one of 75
that contains weapons.
Archeologists identified it
as the grave of a
battle-hardened man.
Argh, me warrior.
- This burial is a great example
of how gender is a
social construct.
Researchers looked
at this burial
and they saw evidence of a role
that they thought was masculine
and they absolutely just assumed
that that must be
a male skeleton.
- [Narrator] But
138 years later,
Swedish bio-archeologist
Anna Kjellstrom
does an analysis of the
skeleton's pelvis and jaw
and finds that they have
strong female traits.
- [Woman] Hm, wait a second.
- [Narrator] Could it be
that this was a
Viking warrior woman?
- [Woman] Oh yeah.
(sword clanking)
- Hell yeah a woman could be
a badass f*cking
warrior, why not?
- I think I would
look freaking badass
in a shield and some fur.
- We can k*ll just as
well as men, I think.
- [Sarah] There was
some written evidence
that there were Viking
female warriors,
but many researchers
kind of downplayed them
and thought that they
were a bit of a mythology.
- [Narrator] In
order to 100% confirm
the sex of this skeleton,
DNA is extracted from a tooth.
(machine whirring)
- And indeed it has
two X chromosomes.
This appears at least
biologically to be a woman.
(soldiers shouting)
- [Narrator] And we keep
finding evidence of women
in the most unexpected places.
A study of 1,000
Scythian burial mounds
from Ukraine to Central Asia
revealed that up to 37% of
Scythian women and girls
were active warriors.
- [Woman] We kick butt.
- [Narrator] 3/4 of hand
prints in ancient cave art
were left by women.
And a 9,000-year-old
grave in Peru
was found containing a woman
surrounded by her hunting tools,
including 20 projectile points.
- So it's only surprising
because we expect ancient people
to do gender the same way we do,
but they didn't,
and we don't have to either.
- Women undoubtedly have
made major contributions
to every society on this planet.
But it often has come
as an uphill battle
of trying to get those
contributions recognized
and taken seriously.
- [Narrator] The fact
is it's just too easy
to erase women from
the historical record.
- The insignificance of
women in numerical terms
is clearly indicated in the fact
that of the world's currency
so few are represented at all.
- Women on currency.
Viola Desmond.
- Younger version of the
Queen, does that count?
- I think Jane Austen is on
the British thing. (chuckles)
- [Narrator] There are
currently 180 currencies
recognized as legal
tender around the world.
Of these, 117 feature people
but only 12% are women,
and that's including the Queen
who appears on more
than 35 currencies.
- [Woman] Ew, but
isn't it lovely.
- [Narrator] If we
exclude her Majesty,
91% of the figures on
the currencies are men.
- [Man] It's all
about the Benjamins.
- By not putting
women on currency
you're giving the impression
that we don't admire
or value women.
- It's been almost 150 years
since a woman was on a
currency note in the US.
- [Nicholas] In the 1800s
we had Martha Washington
and Pocahontas
both on paper notes.
- The image of Pocahontas
being baptized,
that is not a good example
of an image of a woman.
We're talking about
a 14-year-old girl
that was sex trafficked
being valorized for her
conversion to Christianity.
- Also, a lot of the time,
people who are on bills are
not the greatest people.
- And it might mean our
views of that equity
are not necessarily
supported by who we glorify
and who we hold up as a hero.
- There's a big push in America
to replace Andrew Jackson,
a sl*ve holder who's
on the $20 bill,
with Harriet Tubman,
a woman who dedicated her
life to freeing sl*ves.
- I think that's a great example
of attempting to bring
that particular woman's
amazing story and narrative
into a more central and
fundamental place in US society.
- [Narrator] There
is one shocking arena
where a lethal gender
gap can threaten
even the strongest
and healthiest women.
- [Man] It's alive! (laughs)
- No kidding, genius.
Every time I go to the
doctor for anything
they're gonna ask me if I
think I might be pregnant.
- She's got the
vapors, you know.
Like she's in a
fit of womanhood.
- It's like, no.
I got drunk and fell off
my bike, my knee hurts.
- There is a long history
of the healthcare
and medical industry
conforming to this idea that
men are a model patient.
- [Man] (coughs) Uh-oh.
- [Adia] Women then become seen
as kind of an afterthought
or an aberration.
- [Narrator] It may shock
and horrify you to learn
that women were excluded
from most medical
trials until 1990.
- Which has implications for
women's healthcare, obviously,
because the conclusions
that are drawn
are not done based
on women's bodies.
- [Narrator] One study found
that over a range
of 770 diseases,
women are diagnosed on average
four years later than men,
which means the conditions
are more serious
by the time they're
properly treated.
- It's indicative of
the way in which women
often face challenges in
the healthcare industry
in terms of their experiences
being taken seriously.
(camera shutters clicking)
- [Narrator] And that
struggle to be taken seriously
holds true even if
you're a living legend.
(crowd cheers)
- When it comes to
Serena Williams,
she unquestionably is
one of the greatest
athletes on the planet.
- [Narrator] Tennis
champion Serena Williams
may look like the picture of
optimum health on the court,
but at the age of 35 she
came very close to death.
The cause? The misunderstood,
understudied female body.
It's 2017, Serena is
in a Florida hospital,
she's just given birth
by emergency C-section
to baby Alexis.
(baby crying)
She has every reason to
think the hard part is over,
but she is about to face
the most uncertain
six days of her life.
- Health during
pregnancy and motherhood
has been massively
under-researched
because it's always been assumed
that it's women's
natural function
and we can do it naturally.
- [Narrator] Within 24
hours of giving birth,
Serena starts to have
trouble breathing.
- [Adia] Serena
Williams was pretty sure
that she had blood clots.
Having had those clots before,
she was aware of what she
needed to address the issue
and to get it resolved.
And the nurse didn't believe her
and tried to send
her back to bed.
- [Man] Oh don't worry
your pretty little head.
- Luckily, Serena
Williams persisted.
- [Narrator] Doctors do find
several blood clots in her lungs
and the complications get worse.
Doctors discover
the blood thinner
taken to treat blood clots
has caused a large hemorrhage
at the side of her C-section.
Serena is whisked into the OR.
- [Woman] Finally,
took you long enough.
- [Narrator] Fortunately,
it all worked out.
- What happened
to Serena Williams
when she was having her baby
was horrible and horrifying
but not surprising.
- It is emblematic of what
many black women go through.
- [Rosalind] Let us
not forget to this day
childbearing is the most
life-threatening thing
any woman can do.
- [Woman] Help.
- Anywhere and
everywhere in the world.
- Over 800 women die a day
because of maternal health
complications around the world,
and black women are
significantly more likely to die
in childbirth and related
to maternal health issues
than are white women.
- [Narrator] In the US,
black women are three to
four times more likely to die
from pregnancy-related
complications.
- It says a lot about
how much we value women,
particularly women of color.
- Maternal health is not
considered a priority.
- [Narrator] But it's
not all bad news.
One of the most groundbreaking
medical discoveries
of the 20th century
sees two hormones take a big
bite out of the gender gap.
And it begins with the smuggling
of over 1,000
pieces of contraband
through New York Harbor.
- I feel like there's
one way to smuggle things
and we all know what it is.
- I mean, in my butt.
Obviously in my butt. (laughs)
- It goes right up
your (beep). (laughs)
How else are you gonna do it,
right?
- Yep.
- [Man] Aboard!
- [Narrator] 1922.
Wealthy American heiress
Katharine McCormick
is disembarking from a
4,000-nautical-mile trip
across the Atlantic.
She's been shopping in Europe
and she has the
luggage to prove it.
Eight large steamer trunks
packed with the latest fashions.
- Katharine McCormick
has outlived several
wealthy husbands
and she has piles of money
and she is an educated
woman and a scientist.
- [Narrator] But her massive
fashion haul is just a cover
and Katharine is hoping
that customs officials
don't discover the hundreds
of ill*gal items she's hiding.
- [Woman] Lalala, nothing
to see here, heehee.
- [Narrator] If she's rumbled,
she's in deep trouble.
- [Woman] No jail
for me, thanks.
- [Narrator] So what exactly
is this Paris Hilton of yore
sneaking across the border?
- She's not smuggling drugs,
she's not smuggling anything
incredibly dangerous.
She is risking her life and
her safety, her freedom,
to smuggle in something
so women could have
access to birth control.
- [Narrator] Katharine ordered
huge quantities of diaphragms
on her shopping trips
to Rome and Paris
and had them shipped to her
family chateau outside Geneva.
She hired seamstress to
sew over 1,000 diaphragms
into hundreds of new garments
that were then packed
into her steamer trunks
destined for New York.
So why go to all this trouble?
- Contraception was
criminal, ill*gal,
sacrilegious to even
consider the thought
of controlling the
birth of a child.
- It's an absolutely
fundamental strike
at male dominance.
The body is the battle ground.
- [Narrator] Katharine
also invests $2 million,
worth around $20 million today,
in the development of one
of the most revolutionary
medical breakthroughs ever.
(uplifting music)
- The importance of the
pill is clear from the fact
that you simply
have to say the pill
and everybody knows what
you're talking about.
It's absolutely revolutionary,
and it's entirely down
to McCormick's money.
- [Narrator] Today it is used
by more than 100
million women worldwide.
- [Woman] Yay, I'm flying.
- It takes women
out of male control.
The limitless power
it gives to women
was quite extraordinary.
- It's really an
amazing invention.
If man and woman
both had a pill,
you'd be like, it'd be so sick.
It's an amazing, amazing thing.
- We tend to think of birth
control as a woman's issue,
and it's really problematic
that we think about it that way
because of course it
takes two to tango.
- There's been many
studies trying to develop
a male birth control pill,
but most of these
studies have failed.
- Side effects were seen as
too onerous for men to bear.
Although ironically
those side effects
are pretty similar
to the side effects
that are present for women
who take birth control.
- Should I be trusted
to take an oral pill?
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
I can barely keep up with
my vitamins, no, no no no.
- I would love
male birth control.
I'd be pretty good, I'd
miss some days for sure.
But I could figure
it out, I think.
- No. No, no, no,
no, definitely, no.
- I don't know if
I would trust men
to take male birth control,
but I sure as heck
would remind them
to take their birth control.
- Among many of the
vitally important changes
that the pill brings
about for women
is the ability to hold a job
and hold it down.
And that is absolutely vital
in terms of women's freedom
and power and control.
- [Narrator] But when
it comes to work,
we face one of the biggest
gender gaps of all.
- I would say there
is these expectations
of being a mom and being
the homemaker, right?
- It's kind of a 24/7 job.
- Chores, dishes, laundry,
mopping the floors, dusting.
- I spend about I wanna say an
hour a day doing house work.
- Probably 20 to 30 minutes.
- 30 to 40 minutes a day.
- I would say probably
10 minutes a week.
I work really hard for my
wife to enjoy the benefits
of staying at home. (chuckles)
- [Narrator] Ever
heard the expression
a woman's work is never done?
On average, a woman will work
four years more than a man
in her lifetime.
And there's no economic
or professional perk
to the extra effort
because she's working for free.
- [Rosalind] Most women do
two shifts of work a day.
They do one shift at
their place of employment,
they come home and
do the home shift.
- [Woman] Ugh, I'm
raising monkeys.
- And whenever men do assist
with housework, which they do,
they always think they're
doing more than they do.
And they always wrap it
up as kind of a present.
I'm doing this for you.
- This has a long
historical precedent
dating back to
earlier conceptions
of the home being
a woman's sphere
while men were responsible
for the public sphere.
- [Man] No, I told you I
wanted meatloaf for dinner.
- [Tristan] The
gender binary provides
this ready-made story for us.
- [Woman] Oh honey,
you're working so hard.
- In a way that explains women's
sort of natural capacities
in that way
and it helps us feel like
they're simply better suited
for performing this labor
that we all benefit from
than are men.
- [Narrator] 75% of unpaid
care and domestic work
is done by women and girls.
That's three times
more than men.
- [Woman] Excuse me?
- To be perfectly honest,
I think that sounds low.
Men tend to overestimate
how much they're doing
and women tend to underestimate.
- [Narrator] And the
amount of unpaid labor
women do globally
is worth $10.9
trillion per year.
- $10.9 trillion a year?
That's a lot of money
that I would like right now.
- Yeah, this makes
sense, unfortunately.
- [Narrator] It is
an impressive number,
but the reality is women's
work has always been
unacknowledged and undervalued.
- [Woman] No one
cares, I can't take it.
- [Woman] There there.
- [Narrator] And never
was it more apparent
than on a long Friday in Iceland
when grocery stores
started selling out of,
what do you think?
Yep, sausages.
- [Man] Yummy.
- [Man] That's a lot of meat.
- In Iceland, the women
simply decided one day
to show the men what
their labor was worth
and what it would cost the
men if they didn't do it.
- [Narrator] It's Friday,
October 24th, 1975.
21-year-old Gudrun Jonsdottir
walks out of her home in
Reykjavik, Iceland, at 8:00 a.m.
closing the door on her
husband and two children.
(woman yawns)
Her husband is going
to look after the kids,
do the cooking and tend to
the housework for a change.
She's taking the day off.
(baby crying)
- [Man] Please stop crying,
please, please, stop crying,
daddy made your favorite
breakfast, please.
- [Narrator] And she's
joined by a whopping 90%
of the women in the country.
- And they all (mumbles).
- [Narrator] Protests
are happening
in more than 20 locations
around the country.
This is the biggest
demonstration Iceland
has ever seen.
(lively music)
- [Rosalind] It's rather
a surprise for the men
when they suddenly find that
women aren't doing anything
of the normal things
that they would do.
- [Narrator] Factories,
banks, schools, nurseries,
and some shops are
forced to close.
- [Man] Is this day over?
- [Man] Longest day ever.
- [Man] What time is it?
- The men were
completely at a loss.
There was a rush on sausages
because that was the only
thing they knew how to cook.
- [Man] Have you ever wondered
what's in these things?
- And that is simply hilarious.
- [Narrator] What became
known as Long Friday
showed the world
that women provide
a huge unacknowledged subsidy
to the smooth functioning
of our economies,
which would grind to a halt
if women stopped working.
- [Man] Oh this
really sucks, dude.
- If all the women went
on strike tomorrow,
this world would end.
It would end,
there'd be nothing.
No one would know
how to do anything.
- Things are gonna
fall apart for sure.
- It'd be pure chaos.
- If all men went on strike,
I don't think we'd have
that much of an issue.
Like World w*r II, men went
away, women took their jobs.
- Everyone would
be a lot happier.
Honestly, go do it,
do it, I can't wait.
- [Narrator] But when
it comes to paid work,
there is another
Standard Man in play.
- [Man] Yeah, just
flew in from New York,
and boy are my arms tired.
- A man must provide.
A man must provide both
financially and security.
- They are expected
to make more,
they are expected to
be ambitious at work.
- You make all the money
and then you never
talk to your kids,
you never let them
know that you feel
and are sad and
insecure sometimes.
- Do I think the gender gap
exists in the workplace?
That's like asking me if I
think fish exist in water.
- [Man] Oh, women.
- [Woman] (chuckles) Men.
- [Narrator] Globally, 49%
of women and 75% of men
are either employed or actively
looking for employment.
But 70% of women would
prefer to work in paid jobs
rather than exclusively
care for their families.
- When a woman
decides on a career
or wants to be independent
or do something great,
the question she always gets is,
how are you gonna do that
and support a family?
As if a man has no role
within the family framework.
It's only a woman's
responsibility.
- [Narrator] And that
means we all miss out
on some serious bank.
If women in developing countries
achieved equal participation,
they could boost the
GDP by $6 trillion.
But when women do
join the workforce,
the numbers rarely
work in their favor.
- [Woman] Hm, it's
not looking good.
- When women are
a disproportionate
share of workers
in a certain profession,
the payment and often the status
associated with that profession
tends to drop.
- I'm in a female-dominated job.
I promise you if 77%
of teachers were men,
I'd be making six figures.
Money, yeah ♪
Ooh, money ♪
Ooh ♪
- [Narrator] Many countries
now have laws in place
making it ill*gal to
pay women less than men
for equal work,
but according to the
World Economic Forum,
globally women make
37% less than men.
- Women, even when doing
the same work as men
often with the same levels
of experience and education,
still end up seeing
a gap in their wages.
- If we just measured sort
of the average women's wages
and compared it with
the average men's,
it would be much much worse.
- [Narrator] In the US,
things are a bit better,
but it's not perfect.
Remember that 79 cents?
- I think I've heard it
was 79 cents on the dollar?
- [Adia] White
women earn 79 cents
to every dollar that men make.
- So that gender
wage gap changes
depending on which groups of
women we're talking about.
- [Narrator] In the US,
black women are paid
63% of what white men are paid.
Native-American women make
just 60 cents on the dollar.
- [Adia] And Latino
women earn about 55 cents
for every dollar
that white men make.
- [Nicholas] Trans women
make the least among them.
- [Narrator] One study found
that after transitioning,
trans women's pay
dropped by nearly 1/3.
- Women with disabilities
struggle even more
with the gender wage gap
and it's actually ill*gal in
the United States right now
to pay people less
than the minimum wage
if they happen to
have a disability.
- [Narrator] And on average
women with disabilities
are paid only 83%
of what men with
disabilities are paid.
- That says a lot,
and that says we instinctively
do not value a woman's work
the same we do men's.
- [Narrator] All this
inequality really adds up.
- It's just nuts.
You can't say you're
a logical person,
look at those numbers
and say that's okay.
- It's bad, it's awful
that it's happening.
- Even with the gender gap
there's a small part
of me that's like
it still should be
closer than that.
- Most of the dudes at the
top of the game right now
are rich old white dudes
and they hate it when
anyone else succeeds,
so I fully believe that.
- [Adia] The other factor
that can be a limiting factor
for women moving
into certain jobs-
- [Woman] What are you doing?
- Has to do with
sexual harassment.
- [Woman] Ew ew ew ew ew
ew, get off me, ew ew.
- I do not know a single woman
who has not been touched
without her consent.
- [Narrator] One in three women
are subject to sexual
violence or domestic abuse.
- It's a statistic we should
care about no matter who we are
because that's a horrible thing
that's impacting huge
numbers of girls and women
in our society.
- [Adia] The perpetrators
of this violence
are often not
sanctioned or punished
for the behaviors that
they are engaging in.
- [Narrator] But two simple
words and one hashtag
changed the game.
(earth rumbling)
- Me Too arrives as a
historical earthquake.
It literally shakes the
foundations of the known world
when women begin to speak out.
- The Me Too movement
actually has its origins
in the work of an activist
named Tarana Burke
who started using the
terms as a way to highlight
how widespread sexual
as*ault and sexual violence
was among American women.
- [Narrator] In 2006,
Tarana creates Just Be Inc.,
an organization to
help the victims
of sexual as*ault
and harassment.
She gives her movement
a name, Me Too.
- [Adia] In later
years it was picked up
by actor and activist
Alyssa Milano
who tweeted it.
- [Narrator] The
post goes viral.
24 hours later, the tweet has
been shared 12 million times.
Tarana's Me Too movement
becomes a global phenomenon.
In the three months after the
social media campaign launched
there was a 14% increase
in sex crime reporting
in countries with
strong Me Too movements.
The hashtag has trended
in at least 85 countries.
In the first year after
Alyssa's tweet goes viral,
#MeToo is used over
19 million times.
That's more than 55,000
uses of the hashtag per day.
- Oh the Me Too movement
was a long time coming,
I'm glad it happened.
- You can't ignore us now
and that's such a great thing
but it also sucks
that for so many years
these people have been able
to get away with so much.
- I think all of a
sudden we realized
sexual violence is not something
only committed by monsters.
It's committed by lots
of different people.
- I think it was a big teaching
moment for a lot of people.
- Honestly, I think the
Me Too movement was great
because I think it
gave people power
that they didn't
have previously.
(thunder booming)
- [Narrator] Speaking of power.
- We see the gender gap in
the political sphere as well.
- If you close your eyes
and you're asked to
imagine a leader,
it wouldn't be surprising to me
if you closed your eyes
and you imagined a man,
because we tend to associate
leadership with masculinity.
- [Man] My fellow Americans.
- [Narrator] And
that mental image
has real world consequences.
- Fewer women run for office
and they're also less
likely to win elections.
- When we look at
politics we see inequality
in every country in the world.
- [Narrator] Of the
world's 195 countries,
119 have never had
a female leader.
Women currently serve
as elected heads of
state or government
in just 24 countries,
and a mere three countries
boast a female
majority in government.
- We still don't have
a female president
of the United States,
which is crazy.
- [Narrator] But women have
been fighting for a fair say
since the very beginning.
- Victoria Woodhull ran
for president in 1872
under the Equal Rights Party
with Frederick Douglass.
Talk about a great ticket.
They were fighting for equal
rights across the spectrum.
- [Narrator] But
not everyone is keen
on having women in charge.
- I think men don't even
wanna take direction
from females now.
- They probably would be like,
"Oh no, she's gonna
burn the town down
"'cause she has her period."
- Wait, when do
women get the vote?
- In Kansas in 1887,
women have just been
given the right to vote
but only in municipal elections.
- [Narrator] Susanna Salter is
a 27-year-old mother of four
and an activist in a local
women's temperance organization
in Argonia, Kansas.
- [Woman] Well, I do
like to keep busy.
- Susanna Salter and the
women's temperance movement
want to encourage the election
of a male mayoral candidate
that supports temperance.
But local men in politics didn't
like them getting involved.
- [Narrator] A
local cabal of lads,
anti-temperance dudes
who hate the idea
of women messing
around in politics.
- [Man] No girls allowed.
- [Narrator] Decide
to pull a prank.
- [Man] Haha, hold me beer.
- And they thought they
would teach them a lesson
by putting her
name on the ballot
so she could see herself lose.
- [Narrator] But,
surprise of the century,
she wins with over
60% of the vote, yes.
- Even though it was
a political joke,
they made her the first
female mayor in US history.
- Modern female politicians
would definitely recognize
what happened to Susanna.
First, the media made a
big deal about her winning
but then they started
to pick her apart,
including what
she chose to wear.
- Those pantsuits
look ridiculous, you
know what I mean?
Like get a stylist,
Hillary, what are you doing?
You know what I mean?
Try to make me dream a little.
- Meanwhile, these balding old
white dudes are being praised
and nobody cares about
the mustard stains
that you can see on their shirt
when they're having
a conference.
(lively music)
- [Narrator] Women's battle
with the political gender gap
is a longstanding global fight.
Egypt has many famous ancient
women who wore the pants,
or the headpieces.
Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and
Cleopatra are household names.
But few have heard the
name of the Egyptian woman
who changed her country's
history in 1951.
- Doria Shafik is
a feminist in Egypt
really challenging patriarchal
ideas in her own society
and pushing for women's rights.
- [Narrator] On a
quiet February day,
Doria Shafik, PhD,
secretly gathers 1,500
women for what she bills
as a feminist congress.
But she has more dramatic plans.
- [Woman] Oh I'm
just getting started.
- [Narrator] Together with
her army of 1,500 women,
she storms the
Egyptian Parliament,
filling the floor with
their bodies and voices.
- [Woman] Vive la resistance!
- [Narrator] The women
shut down the legislature
for more than four hours.
Finally, the president
of its upper chamber
pledges to take up two
of their key demands.
The right for women to
vote and to hold office.
- [Man] Oh all
right, I'll do it.
- This was a great
victory for Doria
but she had other demands
that weren't granted,
including more marriage rights
for women and pay equality.
- I think the story
of Doria Shafik
is the story of so many
women who have tried
to affect change in the
societies where they live.
She's in good company
with a lot of other women.
- History for women has
proved to be a pendulum.
It swings and we make gains,
but it always swings back.
(building booming)
- [Narrator] And
we're in the middle
of quite a swing right now.
- The gender gap always
becomes more prominent
in times of struggle.
- The COVID pandemic
is reversing
some of the gains we have made
in closing the gender gap.
- Another way of
look at it is to say
that maybe we weren't
as far forward
as we thought we
might have been.
- You were out there
crushing it at your job
and then all of a sudden
you have to take a step back
from your career
and you have to look
after the kids at home.
There's no school,
no babysitter.
- Yeah, I don't
know how, wow, wow,
I need to buy my
wife flowers now.
- [Narrator]
Progress is fragile.
The COVID crisis added
a whopping 40 years
to the estimated time it will
take to close the gender gap,
bringing it up to 136 years.
- What? 136 years to
close the gender gap?
Okay, uh, I'll be
dead, that's insane.
- Knowing that it
will take 136 years
to close the gender gap
reinforces the magnitude
of this problem.
- 136 years is a
long time to wait.
That's outside of my lifetime,
that's outside of my
children's lifetime.
- [Narrator] Despite
the disastrous impact
the pandemic has had on
the gender gap at large,
a few talented women have
been making a big impact.
In the first three
months of COVID,
a handful of countries
stand out above the rest,
reporting lower death
rates, fewer cases,
and shorter, more
effective lockdowns.
What do they all have in common?
They are all led by women.
- There's this gender
discrepancy that we see,
a gap in why people are
running for political office
in the first place.
Women are more likely to say
that they're running
for political office
to do something,
men are more likely to say
they're running to be someone.
- [Narrator] Maybe women should
rule the world after all.
- I mean, if I said I think
women should rule the world,
there's gonna be so many
angry men coming after me
calling me some crazy feminist,
but when they're ruling the
world it's totally fine,
why can't I wish for that too?
- Should women rule the world?
I thought they already did.
- Women already rule the world,
but men just
control it. (laughs)
- I consider myself non-binary,
so it's just like I
should rule the world.
Non-binary people are
now gonna rule the world,
there you go.
- [Narrator] The lessons
from history are clear.
When everyone is included,
the whole world wins.
- A society with
greater equalities
is typically a happier society.
- If we are serious about
closing the gender gap,
we have to remake the world,
remake the system,
and remake the male.
- And we need to think about
the sort of default
masculine bias.
- [Man] Oh, well,
this is awkward.
- Women are leaning
on an opening door.
We simply have to keep our
shoulders to the gender gap
and keep pushing.
- Equality doesn't mean
that we're gonna be
getting more than men.
It's just we want the same.
- Everyone actually has to
be involved for this to work.
It has to be 100%
backed by everyone
or it's gonna take forever.
- Close the gender gap
because women are people.
- Let's close the gender gap.
No, let's actually
close it, though.
- If you're a person of
logic, you can agree.
Just do it, there's no
reason not to it, honestly.
- You want me to look into it?
I get to talk to the gender gap?
Go away.
(bright music continues)
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
01x11 - The Gender Gap
Watch/Buy Amazon
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.
This series is loaded with mind-blowing factoids and stats, entertaining expert interviews, and infographics injected with cheeky humor.