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.

[astrogeek01]

Anyone who thinks carrying 5 gallons of water isn't traditionally women's work never worked on a farm.

[differenceblog]

Amen. Carrying water strikes me very much as "traditional women's work"

[kdsorceress]

(Sort of off-topic: I just heard someone in the outer office express surprise that our receptionist could move the 5 gallon water bottles with the phrase "Not traditionally women's work." I nearly sprayed my coffee. Do people still say that?)

I don't know if people still say that, but people are constantly suprised by the amount of stuff I can carry at any given point. I'm not sure how much of that is the female thing and how much is the "5'2'' and skinny", butyeah. Pisses me off every time. Small and female =/= weak.

~Sor