After seeing Manila ranked among the world’s most stressful and dangerous cities, here’s a survey Filipinos can be proud of: a top 10 placement in the World Economic Forum (WEF) rankings of the world’s most gender equal countries.
The Philippines placed 10th in this year’s rankings, released on the WEF’s website earlier today. Although it dropped three spots from its position in last year’s version of the survey, it far easily outpaced its neighbors in Southeast Asia.
It’s the only country in Asia to finish in the top 10, making it the most gender-equal country on the continent.
The WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report ranked 144 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
This year’s survey also includes an analysis of the dynamics of gender gaps across industry talent pools and occupations.
The top 10 most gender-equal countries are ranked as follows:
1. Iceland
2. Norway
3. Finland
4. Rwanda
5. Sweden
6. Nicaragua
7. Slovenia
8.Ireland
9. New Zealand
10. Philippines
The survey says that 79 percent of the overall gender gap in the Philippines is considered “closed.”
While the country maintains its place in the top 10, it lost its position as the highest performer in East Asia and Pacific to New Zealand.
What caused the slide? WEF explained that it found the Philippines’ “wage equality for similar work” indicators to have worsened from 7th last year to 21st this year.
The country’s health and survival gender gap had been considered “closed” since 2006, but dropped to 36th place this year, although education attainment gap remains fully closed.
The Philippines maintained its first place ranking in the educational attainment category, and improved its ranking in the political empowerment category, from 17th place in 2016 moving up to 13th place this year.
The country with the next-best gender rankings in Southeast Asia is Singapore, placing 65th.
Here’s how other countries in Southeast Asia ranked in the survey:
Singapore, 65
Vietnam, 69
Thailand, 75
Myanmar, 83
Indonesia, 84
Cambodia, 99
Malaysia, 104
The WEF survey is consistent with another survey released by Thomson Reuters Foundation last month, which found Manila to be the 6th safest city worldwide for women and ranked 17th in its survey about economic opportunities for women.
Read the full report here.
