Armenia

Background and Contextthe Russian Federation for employment. The lack of “acceptable” local jobs for Armenianmen seems to have resulted in men becoming entrenched in those few areas where jobsare available (e.g.,politics, business, construction, and industry), leaving women mainly tooccupy public sector jobs in education and health care. Further, as perceptions about maleand female roles remain strong across generations, these not only limit women’s economicopportunities but also prevent men from exploring nontraditional occupations.11. A regional survey of attitudes toward gender in the three countries of the SouthernCaucasus (i.e., Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) indicated that Armenia and Azerbaijantend to emphasize more traditional gender roles, and in global terms are often closer inattitude to Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Georgia, meanwhile, is more inclined toaspire to gender equality, and in this sense is closer to countries in Western Europe andthe Americas. 4 However, upon closer inspection, attitudes are more nuanced in Armenia.While most Armenians take a traditional view that men should have priority for jobs whenthey are scarce, they do not share a perception that education is less important for girlsthan boys. 5 Armenia is also one of the few countries in the world where people perceivewomen to have better lives than men, despite the fact that in actuality, men and womenrecord equal levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with life. Such findings about thestate of gender equality in Armenia are not conclusive, but they offer an interesting lensthrough which to view other indicators of how women and men are faring in their access toa range of opportunities and resources.2. Gender Equality Indexes for Armenia12. Indicators of human development, and particularly of the gender dimensions ofdevelopment, suggest that progress toward gender equality in Armenia has been slow, andthat while some fields exhibit positive indicators in equality, others lag behind.13. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) uses the GenderInequality Index to measure the extent to which national development achievementsare eroded by gender inequality. It is based on five indicators in the areas of reproductivehealth, the labor market, and empowerment. Armenia’s 2013 score of 0.325 representsa 33% loss in achievement due to gender inequality. This score is close to the regionalaverage for Europe and Central Asia of 0.317, 6 and it also represents a rank of 60 out of 149countries in the 2013 index.14. In 2014, UNDP introduced the Gender Development Index, which is based onsex-disaggregated data from the Human Development Index. The Gender DevelopmentIndex is the ratio of the female to the male Human Development Index, and so it takesinto consideration gender gaps experienced by both men and women. In 2013, the ratio ofHuman Development Index values for women and men in Armenia was 0.994, meaningthat the gender gap in human development is small but comparable to the gap observedfor Europe and Central Asia combined (Table 1).4 Caucasus Research Resource Centers. 2011. How Does the South Caucasus Compare? 8(48). http://www.crrccenters.org/20133/E-bulletin5 Ibid., pp. 2 and 6.6 Under the Gender Inequality Index, zero indicates that men and women fare equally, and there are no losses due to inequality. A scoreof 1.00 signifies that women fare as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions. UNDP. Human Development Reports: GenderInequality Index. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii3