Where in the World Is Best to Be a Woman?

Ben Curtis | BenjaminCurtis.me

Here’s a fun game to play: If you could live anywhere in the world—money, career, and family ties aside—where would that be? What’s your shortlist?

If you’re a woman, as part of your decision you might want to consider which societies treat women the best. And hey, I’m a man, but it’s an important factor for me too, since I’d want to live someplace where women are most empowered and enjoy the greatest opportunities. Where are those places?

She’s got the whole world in her hands…
Image | Ben White, Unsplash

Well, to answer that question, you have to think about how to measure things like empowerment, equal rights, freedom from oppression, etc. So I’m going to put on my social scientist hat, and let’s look at some relevant ways to measure the quality of women’s lives around the world. Then at the end of this article I’ll reveal which countries stack up the best on these measures. (Hint: if you recognize the city in this picture, you’ll know which country comes out tops.)

The capital of the best country in the world for women
Image | AlexDrop


To begin with a big-picture perspective, let’s look at the Gender Inequality Index. This is a measure produced by the United Nations Human Development Program. It computes a “gender gap” using several factors: reproductive health (composed of the maternal mortality ratio and the adolescent fertility rate); empowerment (composed of the share of parliamentary seats held by each sex, and higher education attainment); and labor market participation (women’s participation in the workforce). The bigger the gap, the worse the situation for women in that country. In the map below, the darker red the country, the bigger the gap—the countries with the lowest gender inequality are dark green.

The Gender Inequality Index, mapped by country, 2019 data
Image | Asus2004

The Gender Inequality Index shows that to measure quality of life for women, you need to take multiple dimensions into account. The Social Institutions and Gender Index provides a much more detailed picture. It analyzes discrimination against women in four areas:

• Discrimination in the family (based on data on child marriage, household responsibilities, divorce, and inheritance);

• Restricted physical integrity (data on violence against women, female genital mutilation, missing women, and reproductive autonomy);

• Restricted access to productive and financial resources (data on secure access to land assets, non-land assets, formal financial services, and workplace rights);

• Restricted civil liberties (data on citizenship rights, political voice, freedom of movement, and access to justice).

Below you can see a map that plots which countries have the institutions most discriminatory against women. The darker red or orange the country, the more discriminatory it is; the countries in grey have no data.

Discrimination against women by country, according to the SIGI
Image | OECD

Let’s take a look at one last measure. I will openly confess that I love powerful women—and the Women’s Power Index shows where in the world women have the most political power. It compiles data on women heads of state, women in cabinet/ministerial positions, women in legislatures, and so on. It puts all these measures together for a political parity score, which is an aggregate measure of the representation of women in a country’s government. With this one, I can’t include a map, so we’ll focus on which countries have the highest political parity score. It’s time to figure out where in the world it’s best to be a woman. Some of the answers might surprise you!

The country with the highest political parity score is… (drum roll please!) Costa Rica, followed by Rwanda, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. Americans might be interested to learn that the United States ranks 128th out of 193 countries. That’s not good. The US is way behind other countries including Mongolia, Iraq, and Mexico… it even ranks lower than Afghanistan, believe it or not.

Which countries score best on the Social Institutions and Gender Index? Switzerland tops the list as the country with the least gender discrimination, followed by Denmark, Sweden, France, and Portugal. The United States and Canada make the cut as countries with “very low levels” of discrimination, though they’re still behind places such as Colombia and Romania.

The countries that come out the best on the Gender Inequality Index are Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The US ranks 46th out of 162 countries tallied, behind Qatar, Albania, and Kazakhstan, among others.

So from this quick survey, what’s the best country in the world to be a woman? Start singing your ABBA songs, assembling your IKEA furniture, and flying your blue and yellow flag, because Sweden is the only country in the top 5 in all the measures we looked at. Yep, that was Stockholm in the earlier picture. Well done, Swedes!

They’ve got good reason to wave all those little flags!
Image | Bengt Nyman

Obviously, a country’s score according to these various analyses of gender equality and empowerment wouldn’t be anybody’s sole factor in fantasizing about where it’s best to live. There are many more things you could consider just on the topic of women’s lives too. But I hope this little survey has provided an interesting look at which societies treat women the best—and maybe reminds us to work harder to fight discrimination and secure equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of gender.