Nordic countries still most gender-equal societies

Ladies, mark your calendars.

In addition to outlining the global pay gap, the WEF’s report ranked countries according to a broader definition of the gender gap, that definition included pay as well as access to health care, education and political systems.

Women “are paid now on average is the equivalent of what men were paid in 2006”, The Guardian reports.

The ASHE showed that full-time male employees make £576 per week on average, compared to £471 earned by women in full-time work. The USA now ranks 74th in wage equality among 145 countries. Last year, it was 65th. Here are a few other findings.

Earnings aren’t equal anywhere: There’s no country in the entire world where a woman earns as much as a man for doing the same job. With only nine female MP, Malta ranks 108th in terms of women in Parliament and with only two women in Cabinet, it ranks a dismal 123rd with regards women in ministerial positions.

The island retains its number one position – joint with 24 other countries – in educational attainment for women, ranking first in terms of literacy, enrollment in primary education, enrollment in secondary education, and enrollment in tertiary education.

There is also a substantial differential between the earnings of married men and married women, with women earning 78.6 percent of what men earned in 2014.

In Asia and the Pacific, the countries which made it to the top 10 aside from the Philippines and New Zealand were Australia, Lao PDR, Singapore, Mongolia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

Weekly earnings rose for the first time since 2008 thanks to a combination of rising pay and low inflation.

Of the 109 countries that have been continuously covered in the report over the last 10 years, 103 have narrowed their gender gaps, but another six have seen prospects for women deteriorate. In Malawi, 85% of women work, compared to 81% of men. In the low-income group, out of 18 countries, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe come out on top and Ethiopia, Benin, Guinea, Mali and Chad hold the last spots.

Kate Green, shadow women and equalities minister, said: “Progress on addressing the gender pay gap has been painstakingly slow under this government”. Saadia Zahidi, the head of WEF’s Global Challenge on Gender Parity, calls this a “loss of talent”. The drop offset a slight rise in the percentage of women in Congress. That’s unfortunate because research has found that the more women that participate in politics, the more likely a country is to have policies that promote gender equality. Most corporate boards – especially public companies… do not have diverse boards. Yemen remained at the bottom of the index as it has since 2006, despite significantly improving relative to its own past scores.