VITAL SIGNS

The following data were compiled from U.N. sources by Women's Feature Service

HEALTH

Heterosexual transmission is the leading cause of HIV for women. Worldwide, 3,000 women are infected daily with the virus that causes AIDS.

Of the estimated $2 billion spent annually on AIDS prevention, only about 10 percent is spent in the developing world, where 85 percent of infections occur.

85 million to 114 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation worldwide; each year an estimated 2 million more girls suffer the practice in Africa, Asia or as immigrants or refugees in Europe and North America.

Maternal mortality rates have nearly halved since 1970, yet approximately 500,000 women still die from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every year, 1,500 every day. A woman's risk of dying in childbirth in a developing country is 1 in 25-40, compared with 1 in 3,000 in developed countries.

It is estimated that one-fourth of women worldwide are physically battered.

In India, 6,200 dowry deaths were reported in 1994-- or an average of 17 married women were killed daily for failure to make dowrey payment to the husband's family.

WORK

Women represent 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty.

Women's work remains grossly underpaid, unrecognized and undervalued, on the order of $11 trillion a year, an "invisible" contribution of women to the global economy.

In Britain, more than 50 percent of women working full time earn less than the Council of Europe's decency threshold, compared with 29 percent of men.

While men have historically been more likely to be economically independent than women, the gender gap has narrowed from 26 women to each 100 men in 1970 to 40 women to each 100 men in 1990.

Women work an average of 13 percent more hours than men in every country. The difference ranges from as little as eight minutes a day in the Republic of Korea to almost three hours a day in rural Kenya--the equivalent of more than forty-five round-the-clock days every year.

In many African countries, women account for more than 60 percent of the agricultural labor force and contribute up to 80 percent of the total food production--yet receive less than 10 percent of the credit to small farmers and 1 percent of the total credit to agriculture.

EDUCATION

Almost a quarter of the world's adult population--905 million women and men--are still estimated to be illiterate. Sixty-five percent of the illiterate are women.

The gender gap in education was more than halved in developing countries between 1970 and 1990.

Girls' primary school enrollment has reached parity with boys' in all regions except in Africa and Asia.

An increase in per capita gross domestic product tends to improve female schooling and literacy. However, remarkable success can be found even in areas with a low G.D.P, suggesting policy can be more influential than the economy. In 1991, the Indian state of Kerala was below the country's average per capita G.D.P.; but the percentage of literate women in 1991 was 87 percent in Kerala compared with 34 percent for India countrywide.

CHILDHOOD

A social preference for male children leads to the neglect of female infants, sex-selective abortions and other gender violence.

For Bangladeshi children under age 5, boys receive 16 percent more food than girls, despite equivalent nutritional needs.

An estimated 1 million child prostitutes, mostly girls, work in Asia, including 300,000 in India, 200,000 in Thailand, 100,000 in the Philippines, 40,000 in Vietnam, 30,000 in Sri Lanka and many thousands in China.

DECISION-MAKING

The percentage of women as parlimentarians globally, has not changed much in twenty years (1975: 6.8 percent; 1987: 9.7 percent; 1993: 8.8 percent), and in 1994 only eight countries were close to having 30 percent of their decision-makers as women. At 30 percent, women start to have a visible impact on the style and content of political decisions.

Between 1987 and 1994, the number of countries with no women in ministerial positions dropped from 93 to 62.

Nineteen ninety-four data indicate that in economic ministries (including finance, trade, economy and planning ministries and central banks), women constitute only 36 percent of the total positions. In 144 countries, there are no women at all in these areas and at these levels.

At the current rate of progress, it would take 475 years for women to reach equality with men as senior managers.

Studies show that poor women invest more in their families than poor men. In Brazil, for example, children's chances of survival increase by approximately 20 percent when income is in the hands of mothers versus fathers.