From Gender Inequalities to Women’s Quality of Life

Increasing awareness about deprivation of the half of the world’s population’s from human rights and negligence of their needs as well as participation in decision makings which affects their quality of life, have encouraged researches to look for the related factors of such a situation. In addition, it has confronted policy makers with serious challenges for elimination of hindrance for equal access to resources and benefits of development.
Thus to help policy makers, programs have been initiated to manifest gender inequalities in life’ domaines through development of different indicators. In the last decades, as the search for more appropriate indicators with women’s situation has continued, for a better understanding of gender inequalities in objective and subjective aspects of life, national surveys on quality of life with samples representing the whole population have been conducted and gender analysis of findings is presented, mostly in developed countries.
A review of the publications based on data from national surveys (accessible ones) on Japan, Russia, Australia, Britannia, America, Romani, Singapore, and countries of European Union reports differences in women and men’s quality of life and different degree of their life satisfaction. In few countries, women are happier than men are and in some others, men are more satisfied from their lives. It seems the reasons behind gender differences in quality of life is not due to the sex of individuals, but rather social and cultural context of the societies.