Namibia holds on to top gender gap ranking
Namibia remains among the top 10 countries to have closed at least 80% of its gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2022.
However, the country has dropped two places to number eight from its previous ranking.
This while the report warned that, globally, equality is not improving.
“It will take another 132 years to close the global gender gap. As crises are compounding, women's workforce outcomes are suffering and the risk of global gender parity backsliding further intensifies.”
Iceland has once again been named the most gender equal country.
The Nordic country has closed more than 90% of its gender gap – and tops the ranking for the 12th year in a row out of a total of 146 economies in the index.
Iceland’s near neighbours Finland, Norway and Sweden dominate the top five, while only four countries in the top 10 are outside Europe: New Zealand (fourth), Rwanda (sixth), Nicaragua (seventh) and Namibia (eighth).
Keeping track
The international index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. It is the longest-standing index which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time, since its inception in 2006.
This year, the index benchmarks 146 countries, providing a basis for robust cross-country analysis.
Of these, a subset of 102 countries has been represented in every edition of the index since 2006, further providing a large constant sample for time series analysis.
The annual report measures scores on a zero to 100 scale, which can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity, or the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed.
The cross-country comparisons aim to support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender equality gaps.
It said that although no country has yet achieved full equality between the genders, the top 10 economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps.
Namibia at the top
Iceland (90.8%) remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.
Other Scandinavian countries such as Finland (86%), Norway (84.5%) and Sweden (82.2%) feature in the top five, with additional European countries such as Ireland (80.4%) and Germany (80.1%) in ninth and 10th positions respectively.
Sub-Saharan African countries Rwanda (81.1%) and Namibia (80.7%), along with one Latin American country, Nicaragua (81%), and one country from East Asia and the Pacific, New Zealand (84.1%), also take positions in the top 10.
However, Namibia’s ranking dropped by two places. Its performance in the health and survival sub-index remained unchanged since 2014, but it reported lower levels of equality in three economic participation and opportunity indicators than in 2021: Women’s labour force participation (-0.014), wage equality (-0.017) and estimated earned income (-0.005).
Although the country reported equality across all levels of education and a high literacy score (0.998), Namibia’s ranking in the educational attainment sub-index has not gained ground since slipping from parity in 2016.
In the political empowerment pillar, the only change in 2022 was a small reduction of the gender gap score for women in ministerial positions (-0.001).
However, the country has dropped two places to number eight from its previous ranking.
This while the report warned that, globally, equality is not improving.
“It will take another 132 years to close the global gender gap. As crises are compounding, women's workforce outcomes are suffering and the risk of global gender parity backsliding further intensifies.”
Iceland has once again been named the most gender equal country.
The Nordic country has closed more than 90% of its gender gap – and tops the ranking for the 12th year in a row out of a total of 146 economies in the index.
Iceland’s near neighbours Finland, Norway and Sweden dominate the top five, while only four countries in the top 10 are outside Europe: New Zealand (fourth), Rwanda (sixth), Nicaragua (seventh) and Namibia (eighth).
Keeping track
The international index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions - economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. It is the longest-standing index which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time, since its inception in 2006.
This year, the index benchmarks 146 countries, providing a basis for robust cross-country analysis.
Of these, a subset of 102 countries has been represented in every edition of the index since 2006, further providing a large constant sample for time series analysis.
The annual report measures scores on a zero to 100 scale, which can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity, or the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed.
The cross-country comparisons aim to support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender equality gaps.
It said that although no country has yet achieved full equality between the genders, the top 10 economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps.
Namibia at the top
Iceland (90.8%) remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.
Other Scandinavian countries such as Finland (86%), Norway (84.5%) and Sweden (82.2%) feature in the top five, with additional European countries such as Ireland (80.4%) and Germany (80.1%) in ninth and 10th positions respectively.
Sub-Saharan African countries Rwanda (81.1%) and Namibia (80.7%), along with one Latin American country, Nicaragua (81%), and one country from East Asia and the Pacific, New Zealand (84.1%), also take positions in the top 10.
However, Namibia’s ranking dropped by two places. Its performance in the health and survival sub-index remained unchanged since 2014, but it reported lower levels of equality in three economic participation and opportunity indicators than in 2021: Women’s labour force participation (-0.014), wage equality (-0.017) and estimated earned income (-0.005).
Although the country reported equality across all levels of education and a high literacy score (0.998), Namibia’s ranking in the educational attainment sub-index has not gained ground since slipping from parity in 2016.
In the political empowerment pillar, the only change in 2022 was a small reduction of the gender gap score for women in ministerial positions (-0.001).
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