Thursday, November 13, 2008



Something to be proud of

The World Economic Forum released their annual Global Gender Gap Index today. New Zealand ranked as the fifth most equal country in the world for women's rights, following the usual Scandinavian suspects. Digging into the country report [PDF], it seems we've closed the gap on education and health, but still lag behind on economic equality and (significantly) on political empowerment. We are still one of the best countries in the world for the latter, but only because everywhere else is so dismal - and a Parliament where only 33% of the MPs are women shows we have a long, long way to go.

The results are summarised graphically below:

nzgendergap2008

On the minus side, even the best countries are only scoring 82.4% - so we could all do a lot better.