Telling an Old Story with New Maps - Geographic Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications - page 78

Text Box 5.8: Female Youth Unemployed
This map only shows the unemployed young women that live in the territories of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of these
women, who are aged between 15 or 16 and 24, live in Western Europe. Within this
region the highest rates of young unemployed women were in Greece, Italy, Spain
and France, in 2002. Unemployment is high both where there are few jobs and where
people are supported and so are not compelled to take any work just to survive.
Only a small proportion of territories are shown here because the majority of terri-
tories are not part of the OECD.
In a majority of . . . Europe . . . there is a higher youth unemployment rate for
women than for men, but in many countries the differences are not large'
(Economic Commission for Europe, 2003)
5.2.8 Teenage mothers
Very few of the 26 million teenage mothers in the world live in those territories where many
of their peers are unemployed. Teenage motherhood is normal in much of the poor majority
of the world. That is partly why it is not seen as normal in most of the triad. These teenagers
are mothers to over a fifth of all the children born into the world. They are disproportionately
likely to see their children die before them - not because of their age when giving birth -
but because of the circumstances in which they are living. Most of the fifth of young people
in the world who are the children of teenagers are born into poverty. Where education rates
are high, and especially where female literacy is high, and particularly where there is female
unemployment - few children have children themselves.
Figure 5.10 Territory size shows the proportion of all teenage (15-19 year old) mothers that lives
there (Worldmapper Map 136)