Nordic Countries Top the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index

The report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women.

London, United Kingdom, Tuesday, 21 November – The Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4), top the latest Gender Gap Index released today by the World Economic Forum. Germany (5) completes the top five countries with the smallest "gender gap". Germany has particularly strong scores in the area of political empowerment (6) but displays a weaker performance in the area of economic participation and opportunity (32) deriving, in particular, from a persistent wage gap. EU countries generally perform well in the rankings, with 10 EU members, two of which joined in 2004, in the top 20 positions. The United Kingdom (9) and Ireland (10) both show a strong performance. The United Kingdom displays a particularly strong performance on educational attainment, as one of the 11 countries in the world that have fully closed the gender gap in education, and on political empowerment where it ranks 12th out of the 115 countries. Latvia (19) and Lithuania (20) are some of the new EU members that place well ahead of long-time EU members Austria (26) and Belgium (33), but behind Spain (11) and the Netherlands (12). At the other end of the rankings, Greece (69), France (70), Malta (71), Italy (77) and Cyprus (83) have the lowest rankings in the EU, reflecting, in particular, low levels of political participation by women in decision-making bodies and generally poor scores in terms of economic participation and opportunity, although France’s poor performance in these areas is partially offset as it is one of the 11 countries holding the top spot in closing the education gap and one of 34 countries having closed the health gap.

Switzerland (25) ranks behind some of its neighbours such as Germany (5), but well ahead of others such as France (70) and Italy (77). The United States (22) lags behind many European nations in addition to falling behind Canada (14). The United States performs particularly well on economic participation and opportunity (3) and on health (1), sharing the number one spot in this category with 33 other countries, but lags behind on political empowerment (66). Both New Zealand (7) and Australia (15) rank well in closing the gender gap. The Philippines (6) is distinctive as the only Asian country in the top 10. For highlights of the Gender Gap Report, click here

The report covers all current and candidate European Union countries, 20 from Latin America and the Caribbean, over 20 from sub-Saharan Africa and 10 from the Arab world. Together, the 115 economies cover over 90% of the world’s population. The index mainly uses publicly available "hard data" indicators drawn from international organizations and some qualitative information from the Forum’s own Executive Opinion Survey^1.

The Global Gender Gap 2006 Rankings

^{Download the full Global Gender Gap Report 2006 Index in  Excel format.}

The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 includes an innovative new methodology including detailed profiles of each economy that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women:

"The World Economic Forum is an organization integrating all leaders of global society. In this respect, we put strong emphasis on our Women Leaders Programme and the Global Gender Gap Report. This study provides a unique benchmarking tool to assess the size of the gender gap based on economic, political, educational and health-based criteria. Our aim is to allow both high-ranking and low-ranking countries to identify their strengths and weaknesses in an area of critical importance for the development process," said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

This year marks an important progression in the Report’s methodology, with the adoption of a new tool that focuses on the relative size of the gender gap rather than levels of women’s empowerment and access. The new methodology is the result of collaboration between Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, Laura D. Tyson, Dean of the London Business School and Saadia Zahidi, Head of the World Economic Forum’s Women Leaders Programme.

"The new 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.

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 GDP per capita 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 new methodology reveals some very unique and interesting insights at the global level. "Our index shows that the world (115 countries) has on average closed over 90% of the gender gap in education and in health. On the other hand, the countries covered have closed only a little over 50% of the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity, and only 15% of the gap in political empowerment," said Saadia Zahidi.

Note to Editors:
The entire report and individual country profiles are available free of charge online at http://www.weforum.org/gendergap
Download the full Global Gender Gap Report 2006 Index in Excel format.

Print-quality high resolution photographs of the authors of the report – Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Center for International Development, Harvard University; Laura Tyson, Dean, London Business School; and Saadia Zahidi, Economist and Head, Women Leaders Programme, World Economic Forum – can be downloaded free of charge here: http://www.pbase.com/forumweb/gendergap

For more information, you can watch video interviews with the authors of the report on our website at http://www.weforum.org/gendergap

Carlson Companies, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Goldman Sachs, NYSE Group and Nike are Partners of the Women Leaders Programme of the World Economic Forum.

1The Executive Opinion Survey is a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum, which in 2006 polled over 11,000 business leaders in 125 economies worldwide. The survey questionnaire is designed to capture a broad range of factors central to creating a healthy business environment, including rare information on issues such as childcare availability and cost, the prevalence of private sector employment of women and wage inequality.

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Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests. (www.weforum.org)