At sixth, Nicaragua reinforces it position as Latin America and the Caribbean’s gender parity leader, due to strong performance in health, education and political gaps. It is one of 10 countries from the region that make the top 50 this year. Among the larger economies, Brazil’s nine-place decline to 71st happened in spite of having successfully closed both its educational attainment and health and survival gender gaps. Its priority must now be to secure returns on its investment through higher female participation in the labour force. Mexico’s drop to 80th, on the other hand, comes as a result of reduced female representation in politics, but is partially offset by improvements in labour force participation and income gaps.
In the Middle East and North Africa, Kuwait, at 113th, is the highest-placed country in the region, after making significant gains in overall income, including for women. The United Arab Emirates, at 115th, falls in the rankings but shows major improvement relative to its past performance on economic and political participation and remains the second highest-ranked country in the region. The region is also home to the lowest-ranked country in the index, Yemen, which, at 142nd, has remained at the bottom of the index since 2006; but it has significantly improved relative to its own past scores.
Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, boasts three countries in the top 20 of the index. The highest placed, Rwanda, scores highly in terms of economic and political participation and is the highest-ranked developing country in the index. Next is Burundi, which climbs five places to 17th, followed by South Africa. Nigeria, the region’s largest economy, falls 12 places to 118th.
Nine years of data from the Global Gender Gap Report – first published in 2006 – reveal the pattern of change around the world relative to countries’ own past performance and in relation to each other.
“Much of the progress on gender equality over the last 10 years has come from more women entering politics and the workforce. While more women and more men have joined the workforce over the last decade, more women than men entered the labour force in 49 countries. And in the case of politics, globally, there are now 26% more female parliamentarians and 50% more female ministers than nine years ago. These are far-reaching changes – for economies and national cultures, however it is clear that much work still remains to be done, and that the pace of change must in some areas be accelerated, ” said Saadia Zahidi, Head of the Gender Parity Programme at the World Economic Forum and lead author of the report.
Progress has not been even across the four pillars of economy, politics, health and education. On educational attainment and health and survival, although many countries have already reached parity, the trend is actually reversing in some parts of the world. In fact, nearly 30% of the countries covered have wider education gaps than they did nine years ago, and over 40% of countries have wider health and survival gaps than they did nine years ago.
The direction of change within countries from 2006 to the present day has been largely positive, but not universally so. Of the 111 countries that have been continuously covered in the report over the last nine years, 105 have narrowed their gender gaps, but another six have seen prospects for women deteriorate. These six countries are spread across regions: in Asia, it is Sri Lanka; in Africa, Mali; in Europe, Croatia and Macedonia; and in the Middle East, Jordan and Tunisia. In the Americas, no country has widening gender gaps.
While the Nordic nations continue to act as role models in terms of their ability to achieve gender parity, some of the biggest absolute and relative improvements of the past nine years have come from countries that are low in the rankings. For example, the most improved country relative to its starting point nine years ago for economic participation and opportunity is Saudi Arabia; Burkina Faso for educational attainment; Angola for health and survival; and the United Arab Emirates for political empowerment. In absolute terms, the most improved countries include Guatemala for economic participation; Nepal for educational attainment; Angola for health and survival; and Nicaragua for political empowerment.
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