Germany up to 6th in gender equality list, Iceland stays top

Germany has climbed four places to land the sixth spot in the Global Gender Gap rankings, published Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

Iceland remains atop the list that evaluates countries' gender gaps across four dimensions — economic opportunities, education, health and political leadership.

The study covers 146 countries across the globe, where the necessary data on the economic and educational participation of women is available.

Highest ranking yet for Germany

Germany achieved its highest-ever ranking in this year's report. The jump comes amid a near equal number of men and women heading major ministries in the federal government, but also due to having high equality scores in the education and health-care sectors.

In German DAX-listed companies, women made up 17.1% of top positions as of March 1, compared to 14.3% a year earlier, according to an investigation carried out by the Allbright Foundation.

Iceland again came out on top in the index, followed by Norway and Finland.

Elsewhere in Europe, Switzerland, which last week saw thousands take to the streets to oppose the gender pay gap and discrimination in the country, slid down the list, from 13th to 21st place. Austria, meanwhile, plummeted from 21st to 47th place, largely due to a lack of female lawmakers in government.

Significant leap in Liberia

Compared to last year, progress towards narrowing the gender gap has been more widespread, with 82 of the countries making progress towards closing the disparity.

According to the report, the economies with the greatest increase in score (gains of 4 percentage points or more) are Liberia, Estonia, Bhutan, Malawi, Colombia and Chile.

The West African country of Liberia also logged the greatest jump of progress in bridging the income gap between men and women, according to the report.

Complete parity more distant than before pandemic

Despite this, the World Economic Forum found that overall progress toward equality has slowed and that the narrowing of the gap is going at a snail's pace, with it not expected to close entirely for well over a century.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, there was more optimism that the chasm would narrow quicker, but the pandemic has halted progress, according to Saadia Zahidi, the managing director of the World Economic Forum.

"It’s clear that there was a massive generational loss that was created because of the pandemic and everything that followed afterwards," she wrote in the report. "And now we’ve sort of stalled in terms of progress, even if some of the numbers have started to recover."

Edited by: Rebecca Staudenmaier

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