Canada’s “gender gap” is growing

Canada’s ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index has slipped, to 21 in 2012 from 18 in 2011.

For the World Economic Forum (WEF), gender equality is more than a human rights issue; it is an economic issue.  “Women make up one half of the world’s human capital,” says the WEF in its report The Global Gender Gap Report 2012  “Empowering and educating girls and women and leveraging their talent and leadership fully in the global economy, politics and society are thus fundamental elements of succeeding and prospering in an ever more competitive world.”

The WEF measures four “pillars”: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and, political empowerment. A number of factors are taken into consideration in each pillar. The goal, it says, is to provide “a framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress.”

And both Canada and the United States have slipped out of the Top 20 this year, the U.S. to 22 and Canada to 21 out of a field of 135 countries. In economic participation and opportunity Canada ranks 18^th, staying within the top 20. But on educational attainment, Canada ranks 70th; on health and survival, it ranks 52nd; and, on political empowerment it ranks 38^th.

“This is the result of a small decrease in the secondary education ratio and in the percentage of women in ministerial positions,” says the report. “Canada is among the top 20 best-performing countries on the economic participation and opportunity subindex. Canada ranks 20th on the labour force participation indicator and 21st on the professional and technical workers indicator.”

So, which countries claim the best records for gender equality? For the fourth consecutive year, Iceland ranked first, followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden and Ireland.