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Saadia Zahidi, Economist at the World Economic Forum and Co-author of the "Women's Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap" study, discusses the significance of the report and the need to close the gender gap
 The top five spots are all occupied by Scandinavian countries. Why is the gender gap in this part of the world relatively small?
The data tells us that the Nordic countries lead the way in providing women with economic freedoms and empowering them politically in addition to offering excellent healthcare and education. For example, Denmark has the highest private sector employment of women out of the 58 countries, according to our Executive Opinion Survey, while Sweden offers the most government-provided childcare. Additionally, almost half the seats in Sweden’s parliament are occupied by women, an achievement unmatched elsewhere. Most of the Nordic countries also offer among the best maternity leave benefits in the world.
Switzerland, an OECD nation, comes 34th out of 58 countries, behind Colombia, Costa Rica and the Slovak Republic. How do you account for this?
Switzerland performs well in terms of health and well-being (7th) as well as on political empowerment (17th), a particularly notable achievement for a country that only gave women full rights to vote in 1971. However, Switzerland’s performance on the other three categories pulls down its overall rank. It is one of the few developed nations where female enrolment rates for primary, secondary and tertiary education are consistently lower than those of males, pulling down its ranking on the educational attainment category (49).
Additionally, Switzerland provides among the lowest number of weeks of maternity leave out of the 58 countries covered – this affects its ranking on the economic opportunity category (42). Finally, youth unemployment among females is much higher than that among men, women are paid far less than men for comparable work and their participation rates in the workforce are far lower than those of men, all of which significantly worsens Switzerland’s ranking on the economic participation category (43).
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"Countries that do not fully take advantage of one half of the talent in their population are misallocating their human resources."
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The World Economic Forum in Jordan 2005 meeting (20-22 May) will examine the role of women in society. How did Arab countries perform in the Global Gender Gap index?
Due to data limitations, Jordan and Egypt were the only two Arab world countries that we were able to include in the Report. While Egypt is the worst performing country out of the 58, scoring poorly on all five categories, Jordan ranks 55th out of the 58 and its relatively better rank on the economic opportunity category (32) is a sign of the economic freedoms that are increasingly available to women in the Arab world and provides hope for the future.
This is the first study of its kind to be done by the World Economic Forum. Why is this survey of the global gender gap important?
The Forum has for a number of years been committed to the advancement of women through its Women Leaders Programme. In addition, the Global Competitiveness Network has been publishing unique data on maternity leave benefits, childcare availability and the private sector employment of women in its annual Global Competitiveness Reports for several years. In this latest study we acknowledge the clear economic incentive behind empowering women: countries that do not fully take advantage of one half of the talent in their population are misallocating their human resources and thus undermining their competitive potential. The goal of the study is to create awareness, and to provide countries with a benchmarking tool. Measuring the magnitude of the problem is a first step - we hope that governments and NGOs alike can use the rankings in our study to identify issue areas and to learn from the experiences of nations that have been more successful in narrowing the gender gap.
What were the main criteria that the 58 countries were measured against?
There were five main criteria used in the study, drawn from the findings of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM): Economic participation: the number of women in the workforce and the remuneration they receive (for equal work) as compared to men. Economic opportunity: captures the opportunities available to women once they are part of the workforce – this category includes unique survey data on maternity leave benefits, government-provided childcare, etc, from the World Economic Forum’s own annual Executive Opinion Survey. Political empowerment: the participation of women in decision-making structures, as compared to men. Educational attainment: women’s enrolment rates in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Health and well-being: this category attempts mainly to assess the quality of reproductive healthcare available to women, given the quality of the overall healthcare services in a particular country.
What methodology is used to build the rankings?
The study combines publicly available “hard” data from international organizations and national statistics offices with unique qualitative data from the World Economic Forum’s own annual Executive Opinion Survey to create the overall rankings. The five categories of the “gender gap index” are based on the findings of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), as described above.
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