Ireland improves gender gap rating

Ireland is ranked eighth in the world in terms of closing the gender gap between men and women, according to a study released today.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2008 from the World Economic Forum found Norway had overtaken Sweden as the most highly ranked nation in terms of closing the gender gap with a score of 82.39 per cent.

Three other Nordic countires - Finland, Sweden and Iceland also topped the index.

Ireland has risen one place from last year in the rankings with a score of 75.18 per cent.

Former high ranking countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain have all slipped down the index but remain in the top twenty ranked nations. The Netherlands, Lativa, Sri Lanka and France all made significant gains this year.

The World Economic Forum's report covers 130 countries. A total of eight European countries are included in the top ten nations in terms of closing the gender gap.

Yemen comes bottom of the rankings this year while Chad, Saudia Arabia and Pakistan also scored badly.

The Global Gender Gap Index scores can be interpreted as the percentage of the gap between women and men that has been closed. The three highest ranking countries have closed a little over 80 per cent of their gender gaps, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45 per cent of its gender gap.

Out of the countries covered in both 2007 and 2008, more than two-thirds have posted gains in overall index scores, indicating that the world in general has made progress towards equality between men and women.

Additionally, taking averages across the sub-indexes for these countries reveals that, globally, progress has been made on narrowing the gaps in educational attainment, political empowerment and economic participation, while the gap in health has widened.

The report provides some evidence on the link between the gender gap and the economic performance of countries.

"Our work shows a strong correlation between competitiveness and the gender gap scores. While this does not imply causality, the possible theoretical underpinnings of this link are clear: countries that do not fully capitalise effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential," said Laura Tyson, Professor of Business Administration and Economics at the University of California and one of the report's authors.