Malta ranks low on gender equality

Malta ranks 43rd out of 58 countries on gender equality according to the World Economic Forum's first ever Gender Gap Index.

The study, Women's Empowerment: Measuring The Global Gender Gap, attempts to measure the extent to which women have been able to achieve full equality with men in a number of critical areas.

It finds that the gender gap is widest in Egypt and narrowest in Sweden, followed by other Northern European countries.

Countries that fare worse than Malta include Thailand, Italy, Indonesia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Greece, Brazil, Mexico, India, Korea, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt in that order.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, as well as Eastern and Central European countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, the Slovak and Czech Republics and Slovenia do better.

With scores reported on a scale of one to seven - seven representing maximum gender equality - Malta's overall score is 3.65. Malta ranks lowest, 56th, in economic participation (equal remuneration for equal work) and highest, 16th, in educational attainment (access to education).

In the other areas - economic opportunity, political empowerment and health and well-being - it ranks 43rd, 45th and 24th respectively.

Ten EU countries rank among the top 15 with the Nordic countries Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland holding the first five places for having the smallest gender gap.

Characterised by strongly liberal societies, with an impressive record of openness and transparency in government, and comprehensive safety nets that provide security to vulnerable groups in the population, women in these countries have access to a wider spectrum of educational, political and work opportunities and enjoy a higher standard of living than women in other parts of the world, the study shows.

It also highlights that while no country has yet managed to eliminate the gender gap, the Nordics have succeeded best in narrowing it, providing a workable model for the rest of the world.

Among the other EU countries in the top 15 positions are the UK and Germany. Some of the new EU members also place well, with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia well ahead of Belgium, Portugal and Spain.

Italy and Greece have the lowest rankings in the EU, reflecting low levels of political participation by women in decision-making bodies and generally poor scores in terms of opportunities - for instance, for career advancement among female professional and technical workers.

The US lags behind many Western European nations, in addition to falling behind New Zealand, Canada and Australia. Former Soviet bloc countries, such as Poland, Hungary, the Slovak and Czech Republics, do well generally.

This reflects the fact that, for long periods of time, they subscribed to an ideology that encouraged a "worker-woman" notion of equality, albeit one in which women bore an unusually heavy burden at home and the workplace.

Although the Chinese government's gender equality objective still falls far short of expectations, China remains the highest-ranking nation in Asia, while Costa Rica occupies first place in Latin America by a large margin.

Large, populous nations such as India, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt hold some of the lowest positions in the rankings, reflecting large disparities between men and women on all five areas of the index.

The report covers the 30 OECD countries and 28 other emerging markets. It uses a large number of hard data indicators from international organisations and qualitative information from the forum's own Executive Opinion Survey.

It was undertaken to facilitate the work of governments, aid agencies and NGOs by providing a benchmarking tool to assess the size of the gender gap in these countries, ranking them according to the level of advancement of their female population and identifying successes and failures, based on economic, political, educational and health-based criteria.

"The forum's aim is to allow countries to identify their strengths and weaknesses in an area of critical importance for the development process and to provide opportunities for them to learn from the experiences of others that have been more successful in promoting the equality of women and men," said Augusto Lopez-Claros, chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness Programme at the World Economic Forum.

"The experience of the Nordic countries provides a useful benchmark for comparison purposes - an excellent example of the fact that concerted efforts over time yield lasting results.

"These societies seem to have understood the economic incentive behind empowering women: countries that do not fully capitalise on half of their human resources are clearly undermining their competitive potential," Mr Lopez-Claros added.