Sweden is the best country to be a working woman for the second year in a row, followed by its neighbours Iceland, Finland and Norway, confirmed the The Economist‘s glass-ceiling index (GCI), to mark International Women’s Day (IWD).
The Nordics are particularly good at helping women complete university, secure a job, access senior positions, and take advantage of quality parental-leave systems and flexible work schedules. Britain lags behind, along with countries like Germany and the US.
However, for the first time since the ranking began, Britain moved above the OECD average to claim the 17th spot. Its share of women completing tertiary education increased from 49% to 52%, while its share of women in the workforce also grew. The US fell by two places to the 20th spot, with decreases in both the proportion of women in the workforce and female GMAT-exam entrants. It is still an outlier for providing no federally-mandated parental leave.
PROGRESS FOR WORKING WOMEN
France fell two places to the 7th spot, performing well overall on female corporate representation but with growing childcare costs. Germany went up four places to 18th. Female representation in Germany’s parliament increased to over a third following elections in September, while its parental leave remains above OECD average.
South Korea bottoms out the index for the tenth year in a row, with Japan and Turkey not far behind. But there are signs of progress. A new Korean law barring big companies from having single-gender boards, set to go into effect in August 2022, helped lift the proportion of women on boards from less than 5% to 8.7%.
2022 GLASS CEILING INDEX
This is the tenth year that The Economist has released its glass-ceiling index. When it was launched in 2013 there were five indicators and 26 countries; today it consists of ten indicators including maternity and paternity leave for 29 OECD countries. The best and worst OECD countries to be a working woman are:
1 Sweden
2 Iceland
3 Finland
4 Norway
5 Portugal
6 Belgium
7 France
8 New Zealand
9 Poland
10 Canada
11 Slovakia
12 Denmark
13 Spain
14 Australia
15 Austria
16 Italy
17 Britain
OECD average
18 Germany
19 Ireland
20 United States
21 Netherlands
22 Israel
23 Czech Republic
24 Hungary
25 Greece
26 Switzerland
27 Turkey
28 Japan
29 South Korea
WOMEN STILL LAGGING BEHIND MEN
Women are still lagging behind their male counterparts in senior business roles, making up on average only a third of managers and just over a quarter of board seats across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to the GCI.
Elections held last year in a handful of OECD countries, including Iceland, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic, helped push average representation of women in parliaments up to 33%. When The Economist first compiled the index in 2013, that figure was just 26%.
The GCI is a yearly assessment of where women have the best and worst chances of equal treatment at work in countries in the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries. It combines data on higher education, labour-force participation, pay, child-care costs, maternity and paternity rights, business-school applications and representation in senior jobs to create a ranking of 29 OECD countries.
Click here to check out The Economist‘s interactive glass-ceiling index. Check out last year’s results to compare, here.
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