World makes progress on economic, political and education gaps; loses ground on health gaps.
Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday 8 November – Four Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the latest Gender Gap Index released today by the World Economic Forum. All countries in the top 20 made progress relative to their scores last year – some more so than others. Latvia (13) and Lithuania (14) made the biggest advances among the top 20, gaining six and seven places respectively, driven by smaller gender gaps in labour force participation and wages.
The performance of the United States (31) was mixed over the last year – its scores on political empowerment improved but this was offset by a bigger gap on economic participation – causing the United States to lose 6 places relative to its rank in 2006. Switzerland (40) loses 12 places relative to its position in 2006. The change was the result of a correction made by the UNDP in its calculation of estimated earned income for women and men – the ratio between women’s and men’s incomes is now larger than previously reported (0.61 in 2007 vs 0.9 in 2006). Switzerland's scores on all other variables remain largely static. France (51) remains one of the few countries holding the number one ranking on both education and health and has made considerable progress relative to its 70th position in the 2006 ranking. This significant increase is due to an improvement in the ratio between women’s and men’s labour force participation rates as well as the availability of new data on women in skilled employment. Calculations based on the new data show that the proportion of women among “professional and technical workers” as well as the proportion of women among “legislators, senior officials and managers” increased. In the bottom half of the rankings, countries such as Tunisia (102), Turkey (121) and Morocco (122) not only fall further in the relative rankings but also show a drop in scores relative to their own performance last year. On the other hand, Korea (97), the United Arab Emirates (105) and Saudi Arabia (124) show encouraging improvements in their 2007 scores as compared to their 2006 scores.
Global Gender Gap Index scores can be interpreted as the percentage of the gap between women and men that has been closed. Taking averages across the subindexes for 115 countries covered in both 2006 and 2007 reveals that, globally, progress has been made on narrowing the educational attainment gap from 91.55% to 91.60%, the political empowerment gap from 14.07% to 14.15% and the economic participation gap from 55.78% to 57.30%. On health, however, the gap increases, dropping from 96.25% to 95.81%.
“The Global Gender Gap Report quantifies the challenge: it shows that the highest ranking country has closed a little over 80% of its gender gap, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45% of its gender gap. By providing a comprehensible framework for assessing and comparing global gender gaps and by revealing those countries that, regardless of the overall level of resources available, are role models in dividing these resources equitably between women and men, we are expectant that this Report serves as a catalyst for greater awareness as well as greater exchange between policy-makers,” said Saadia Zahidi, Head of the World Economic Forum’s Women Leaders Programme. (Click on the picture to watch a two-minute video with Saadia Zahidi.)
The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 is based on the innovative new methodology introduced last year and includes detailed profiles that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap in each country. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
- Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
- Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
- Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
- Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio
“The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report is a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities across the world and tracking how they evolve over time. As policy-makers and business leaders seek to address talent shortages, there is increasing urgency to close gender gaps and leverage the talents of both women and men. At the World Economic Forum, we put strong emphasis on addressing this challenge – a challenge that transcends across the majority of the world’s cultures, industries and income groups – through a multistakeholder approach,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.
The Report is the result of collaboration between Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University; Laura Tyson, Professor of Business Administration and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley; and Saadia Zahidi. “The Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities. Thus the index does not penalize those countries that have low levels of education overall, but rather those where the distribution of education is uneven between women and men,” said Ricardo Hausmann. (Click on the picture to watch a three-minute video with Ricardo Hausmann.)
The Report also provides some evidence on the link between the gender gap and the economic performance of countries. “Our work shows a strong correlation between competitiveness and the gender gap scores. While this does not imply causality, the possible theoretical underpinnings of this link are quite simple: countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right,” added Laura Tyson.
The World Economic Forum continues to expand geographic coverage in the Report. Featuring a total of 128 countries, this year’s Report provides an insight into the gaps between women and men in over 90% of the world’s population. Coverage has been expanded to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belize, Cuba, Maldives, Mozambique, Oman, Qatar, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan and Vietnam. The Report covers all current and candidate European Union countries, 23 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 from sub-Saharan Africa, over 20 from Asia and 15 from the Middle East and North Africa. Thirteen out of the 14 variables used to create the Index are from publicly available “hard data” indicators from international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization.
