NZ near top of world for closing gender gap
New Zealand has maintained its high fifth place in the world in the Global Gender Gap Report 2008, while Australia has dropped four places to 21st.
“For New Zealand to hang on to its high ranking out of 130 countries behind Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland is remarkable and we must ensure that women are not disproportionately affected by job loss and redundancies in the economic downturn.”, said EEO Commissioner Dr Judy McGregor.
| Rank 2008 | Country | Score* | Rank 2007 |
| 1 | Norway | 0.823 | 2 |
| 2 | Finland | 0.819 | 3 |
| 3 | Sweden | 0.813 | 1 |
| 4 | Iceland | 0.799 | 4 |
| 5 | N.Zealand | 0.785 | 5 |
| 6 | Philippines | 0.756 | 6 |
| 7 | Denmark | 0.753 | 8 |
| 8 | Ireland | 0.751 | 9 |
| 9 | Netherlands | 0.739 | 12 |
| 10 | Latvia | 0.739 | 13 |
New Zealand must try and maintain the gains it has made for women in economic participation despite the global recession, she said.
The Global Gender Gap report produced by the World Economic Forum measures the gap between men and women in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival. The report shows that New Zealand closes 78.59% of equality gaps between men and women, while the Nordic countries close over 80%. The lowest ranking country, Yemen, has closed only a little over 45% of its gender gap in 2008.
New Zealand has fully closed the gap in educational attainment which measures the literacy rate, and enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary enrolments between men and women. It has closed over 97% of the gap in health and survival measured by sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy. It has improved from 58% of the gap closing to over 77% in economic participation and opportunity which is measured by labour force participation, wage equality for similar work, income levels and numbers of managers, professional and technical workers and law and policy makers.
New Zealand has also improved in the 2008 report from closing around 16% of the gap between men and women in political empowerment to closing over 39% through increased numbers of women in parliament, ministerial positions and female head of state. The report was compiled prior to the 2008 elections.
“The report is important because it measures outcomes rather than inputs and we can track progress over time. For example New Zealand was 7th in the first report and has made significant progress up the ladder in the past three years. Australia was 17th but has fallen to 21st and Great Britain was 11th and has fallen to 13th. The United States has improved to 27th, Dr McGregor said.
The report provides some evidence of the link between the gender gap and economic performance and its authors from Harvard and Berkeley universities in the United States and the World Economic Forum state they want to highlight the economic incentive behind women’s involvement as well as promoting equality as a basic human right.
Download the Global Gender Gap 2008 report (PDF, 181 pages)