Gender Equity Index

[differenceblog]

Reuters (2007) reported yesterday that Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland continue to top the World Economic Forum's ranking of countries by gender equality. The countries at the bottom of the 128-country list were Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Nepal, and Saudi Arabia. The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 examines four areas for equality: economic,

Comments

[astrogeek01]

yeah wondering about that too. I always thought Sweden, Norway & Finland had pretty high quality of life. Not sure I've paid attention to Iceland. (I mean other than the volcanoey goodness)

[differenceblog]

Well, I should have checked before running my mouth. The UN's "Human Development Index" ranks those countries very well:

"The Human Development Index (HDI) is the measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living for countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used to determine and indicate whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life."

Rankings on the HDI in 2006
Norway #1
Iceland #2
Sweden #5
Canada #6
U.S. #8
Finland #11

International Living also does a yearly ranking of Quality of Life (see 2006's rankings), based on measures that I think would more accurately reflect what I'd be looking for: "Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate."

On their 2006 list:
U.S. #7
Sweden #8
Finland #9
Norway #14
Canada #16.
Iceland #39

[ukelele]

Iceland has an insane cost of living, which may be really dominating that. Oh, and the population is really slanted toward one side of the island, the rest being glacial/volcanic, so there's not a ton of infrastructure outside the west (but that's not necessarily *bad*). It seemed generally gorgeous and pleasant when we visited, though, and stuffed to the gills with luxury goods.

[differenceblog]

Honestly, I suspect that what i really need is

- a fast and reliable internet connection
- public transportation
- plentiful and reliable hot running water
- a well-established food delivery infrastructure.

Dabunny needs a local NHL hockey team. I have been informed that we can't move to a city that doesn't have one. This limits us to the U.S. and Canada, but some pretty awesome cities within those boundaries.

[ukelele]

Well, Iceland has so much hot water from geothermal you get it as a public utility, and they pipe it under the streets to keep snow from sticking. Not so much with the NHL, though.

[differenceblog]

Hm. I know how to look for the number of restaurants that deliver in US and Canadian cities. Not so much in Iceland. *pokes at internet* Tell me if I can get Thai to my door!

[ukelele]

I dunno, but if you can, it'd be like $40 anyway.

[differenceblog]

eek. spensy.

[dabunny]

They do, but they export the vast majority of their great players to the US and Canada where they can make ridiculous amounts of money instead of simply silly amounts of money.

Scandinavian Hockey

[differenceblog]

In the Men's division, Sweden won the gold for hockey in the 2006 Olympics, and Finland won the silver, but they did it with teams that were largely made up of NHL players. (Sweden: 19/23 NHL; Finland: 17/24 NHL).

In the Women's division, Sweden took the silver. Obviously, there were no NHL players in that team. There were not any NWHL players in the Swedish team, either. The Canadian team, which won the gold, did have a number of players from the semi-pro NWHL teams.

[differenceblog]

I guess that should be "the now-defunct NWHL teams" -- sad.

[differenceblog]

I don't think that those countries have "low" overall quality of life. I would like to see if they rank higher than the U.S., though.