1. The Best (And Worst) Countries For Women
If you've been itching to take a sabbatical overseas, now may be the time to up and move to Iceland.
That's right, friends: That not-actually-so-icy isle may be the best country in the world to be a
working woman, according to the World Economic Forum's newly released 2011 Global Gender Gap
Report. The report ranked 135 countries -- and Iceland topped the list.
The report gets its rankings by measuring the gap between men and women in four key areas:
1. Economic participation and opportunity, which covers the wage gap as well as the percentage of
women working and women working in high-skill jobs.
2. Educational attainment, which includes access to all levels of education.
3. Health and survival, which measures life expectancy and mortality rates.
4. Political empowerment, which measures how women are represented in decision-making
structures (i.e. the government).
All 135 countries were assigned a numerical score between 0 (complete inequality) and 1 (complete
equality). These scores were calculated by taking the average of 14 different ratios, each based on a
specific indicator that falls under the heading of one of the four key areas. The indicators included
the ratio of female to male literacy, the ratio of female pay search engines to male pay for similar
work, the ratio of female legislators and senior officials to male legislators and officials, and the
number of female heads of state to male heads of state in the last 50 years.
The U.S. managed to squeeze into the where to find search results top 20 for the second time since
the report's inception in 2005, sandwiched between the U.K. and Canada. While over 90 percent of
gaps in life expectancy and access to education have already been closed worldwide, women
continue lag behind men at work and in politics.
Click through to see which countries made the top 20 -- and bottom 10 -- when it comes to equality
between the sexes:
Close
Score: .8530
Score: .8404
Score: .8383
