Middle East, North Africa Below Global Gender Gap Average

Four Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the latest Gender Gap Index released today by the World Economic Forum.  The 2007 Rankings cover 128 countries.

Israel (36) continues to hold the top spot in the Middle East and North Africa region, favored by higher-than-average performances on economic participation, educational attainment and political empowerment.

This year, the Gender Gap Index has included three new countries from the region: Syria, Qatar and Oman.  Kuwait (96) remains the second-highest ranking country in the region, followed by Tunisia (102), Syria (103), Jordan (104), the United Arab Emirates (105), Algeria (108), Qatar (109), Bahrain (115), Oman (119), Egypt (120), Morocco (122), Saudi Arabia (124) and Yemen (128).  

Tunisia (102) and Morocco (122) show a drop in scores relative to their own performance last year respectively 90 and 107.

Most Arab world countries not only continue to perform far below the global average, but have also do not show much improvement over the last year or have deteriorated. The exception comes from The United Arab Emirates which had significant improvements on both economic participation and political empowerment subindexes.

Wage inequality for similar work decreased and the gap between women and men’s estimated earned income also diminished. Furthermore, both women and men stood for election and voted for the first time in that country’s history.  Nine women entered Parliament gaining 22.5 percent of the seats.

In Bahrain, a woman was elected to the Lower House of Parliament for the first time in that nation’s history.  These economies have invested large amounts of resources in increasing women’s education levels over the last decade and will now need to better integrate these women into the economy to reap the benefits of this investment.

Egypt’s minor improvements on economic participation are offset by drops in both its health and education scores.  In Morocco, the gap on estimated earned income worsens as does the gap between the percentages of women and men who are legislators, senior officials and managers and the gap between the enrolment of women and men in tertiary education.

Saudi Arabia shows minor improvements on labor force participation rates of women and revised data for tertiary education enrolment present a more positive picture than that of 2006. However, Saudi Arabia remains the lowest ranking country in the region on political empowerment.  Yemen (128) continues to occupy not only the last place in the region, but also the last place in the overall rankings of the 128 countries, having closed only a little more than 45% of its gender gap.