Finland ranks 2nd in global gender equality index

Finland ranked second in the global index of gender equality published by World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday.

Iceland held the top place in the list among146 countries while another Nordic country Norway secured third place followed by New Zealand and Sweden.

Afghanistan has ended up at the bottom of the list followed by Pakistan, Congo, Iran and Chad.

“Finland sits in second place, having covered 86% of its overall gender gap to date,” said the WEF report entitled “Global Gender Gap Report 2022.”

According to the report, at a subindex level, Finland reports full parity on Educational Attainment and near parity (0.97) on Health and Survival, where it maintains the scores for both subindexes that were achieved in 2021.

Finland’s 2022 score on Economic Participation and Opportunity (0.789) is lower than last year (0.806).

This is caused by a decrease in parity for labour-force participation, as well as a decrease in gender parity

for wage equality.

However, Finland retained full parity in the participation of women as professional and technical workers and increased by 0.6 percentage points the share of women in legislative, senior and managerial positions, said the report.

“Finally, in terms of Political Empowerment, Finland has closed 68% of its gap. Finland reports full ministerial parity and an increased share of the time women have held leadership as head of state in the past 50 years,” the report added.

News agency Xinhua adds: There is still a long way to go to reach gender parity as the global process has been delayed amid the compounding crises of pandemic disruptions and weak recovery, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said Tuesday.

In its latest Global Gender Gap Report, the Geneva-based forum said it will take 132 years for women to reach gender equality, a figure slightly improved from last year. Of the 146 economies surveyed, just one in five managed to narrow the gender gap by at least 1 percent compared with the past year.

"The pandemic has made a huge dent when it comes to the progress that was previously made. Even two years ago, it would have taken 100 years to reach parity," Saadia Zahidi, managing director at the WEF, told Xinhua in a virtual interview ahead of the release.

Due to the socio-economic shock of COVID-19, the global gender gap had widened by a generation from 99.5 years in 2020 to 135.6 years last year.

Considering that women are more vulnerable to COVID-19-related disruptions, Zahidi described the sustained impact of the pandemic on gender equality as "permanent scarring."

"When it comes to the care infrastructure, for example, there are still parts of the world where schools have not reopened fully, or where childcare centers are no longer available or available for very limited hours. The caregiving burden that fell on women seems to have become something that continues even to this day," she said.

The WEF's annual report assesses the evolution of gender-based gaps in four areas, namely economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

The data showed that across the 146 countries, the gender gap in health and survival has been narrowed by 95.8 percent, educational attainment by 94.4 percent, economic participation and opportunity by 60.3 percent, and political empowerment by 22 percent.

"The current economic downturn is going to have a more negative impact for women, because women are still those that have lost out more in the labor market," Zahidi warned.

"There are some silver linings when it comes to industry leadership in specific sectors, when it comes to women in professional and technical roles, and when it comes to university education," she said. "There the performance is still strong when it comes to closing gender gaps."

Zahidi specified reasons for Iceland's success, noting, "When it comes to political empowerment, it's a country that has done extremely well, including having for a very long time women in very senior positions."

"In terms of economic participation in the workforce, they've cracked the code to make it possible for women and men to participate in nearly equal numbers," she added.

The fact that four Scandinavian countries feature in the top five reflects their "belief that human capital is the greatest asset that those economies have. They are relying more on human resources than on natural resources," Zahidi said.

Closing gender gaps can help drive national prosperity and the global economy, the WEF report stressed.

Therefore, given the increasingly uncertain economic outlook, Zahidi called on global leaders to unleash the creativity and dynamism of their countries' human capital to overcome the current crises and accelerate a strong recovery.

"We are in a moment of crisis for the global economy," which stemmed from multiple factors such as the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, as well as disruptions to global trade and supplies, she noted. "That is something that in essence can only really be solved through human creativity and collaboration."

"We have to ensure that everybody can participate and decisions are taken with the broadest base possible," she emphasized. "If we want to get back to growth, if we want to get back to productivity and dynamism, we need to ensure that there is gender parity."