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Gender gap on economic participation, political empowerment remains wide: WEF

24 October 2012 03:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The gap between women and men on economic participation and political empowerment remains wide in 2012, with 60 percent of the economic gap and 20 percent of the political gap being closed, said a report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2012 ranks countries on their ability to close the gender gap in four key areas, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

It showed that 135 countries covered in the report have closed almost 96 percent of the gap in health outcomes between women and men and almost 93 percent of the gap in educational attainment.

Nordic countries continue to top the Gender Gap Index rankings this year as Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden took the first four places, followed by Ireland.

Saudi Arabia, Syria, Chad, Pakistan and Yemen (with Yemen taking the last place) have the biggest gender gap among the surveyed countries, according to the report.

The United States dropped from the 17th in 2011 to the 22nd and China dropped from the 61st to the 69th.

A total of 85 countries have improved their economic equality between 2011 and 2012, and of the top four global economies, the U. S., Japan and Germany made progress in closing their economic gender gap in 2012 while China declined from the 50th to 58th, according to the report.

It’s the seventh consecutive year for the WEF to issue the report on how well resources and opportunities are divided among male and female populations.