The UAE and Saudi Arabia showed encouraging improvements in the World Economic Forum’s 2007 Gender Gap Index though they remained at the bottom half of the list.

Four Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again topped index released today by the World Economic Forum.

Featuring a total of 128 countries, this year’s report provides an insight into the gaps between women and men in over 90 per cent of the world’s population. The report can be viewed at www.weforum.org/gendergap

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 per cent to 91.60 per cent, the political empowerment gap from 14.07 per cent to 14.15 per cent and the economic participation gap from 55.78 per cent to 57.30 per cent. On health, however, the gap increases, dropping from 96.25 per cent to 95.81 per cent.

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 US to lose 6 places relative to its rank in 2006. Switzerland (40) loses 12 places relative to its position in 2006.

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.

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.

Kuwait, with 86th rank overall, topped the list among the Arab countries. Jordan was at 93, Algeria 97, Bahrain 102, Morocco 107 and Egypt 109.

“The Global Gender Gap Report quantifies the challenge: it shows that the highest ranking country has closed a little over 80 per cent of its gender gap, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45 per cent 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.

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:
 
1) Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment

2) Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education

3) Politi