National Gender Inequality Rankings – We Should Be Doing Better

The World Economic Forum has released its Global Gender Gap Report, in which it ranks countries according to gender equality measures. Canada came in 20th. 20th. This is even behind a country in which 40% of men admit to having raped a woman (South Africa).

According to the WEF:

[The] Global Gender Gap Report assesses gender equality in 134 countries looking at economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; political empowerment; and health and survival. The report examines both men and women’s access to resources and opportunities rather than the levels of resources and opportunities available in a country.

Most admirably, the report judges the countries on actual examples of the gender gap being narrowed rather than the efforts being made to do so.

Here are the top 36:

I was surprised to see Australia at 23rd, behind not only Canada, but also Mozambique. Having just returned from a very lovely three weeks in Mozambique, I mean it no disrespect, but given that the majority of people still live very traditional and rural lifestyles, I would have expected the gender gap to be wider than in Australia. On examination of the country profile, Mozambique ranks high for political (9th) and economic (5th) participation, though quite low for education opportunities (123rd) and health (110th). Not bad for a country that only gave women the right to vote in 1975. Australia, by comparison, ranks 1st overall for educational attainment, but lags in economic participation (24th), political participation (39th) and health (73rd).

Some interesting highlights:

  • In wage equality for similar work, the UK ranks 78 out of the 134 countries.
  • The US climbed 12 places to enter the top 20 for the first time in the report’s five-year history.
  • At the bottom of the list are Yemen, Chad, and Pakistan

According to the WEF, the majority of countries in the rankings have made improvements to the status of women and the gender gap over the last year. Hopefully this is a sign of progress we can expect to continue.