Nordic countries tops in gender equality

GENEVA (Reuters) - Nordic countries again dominated the World Economic Forum's ranking of gender-equal countries, while New Zealand squeezed into the top five and the United States fell to 31st place.
 
Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland retained the top four spots in the 2007 Gender Gap Index released by the Swiss-based think tank on Thursday.
 
The Forum compared four areas: differences between men and women's salaries, access to education, political representation and health including life expectancy.
 
Nordic countries were "strong performers" in all four areas, although "no country has yet achieved gender equality", it said. All four countries improved their scores for women's economic participation, driven mainly by a decreasing gap between women and men's labor force participation rates and salaries.
 
New Zealand moved up two places to fifth and the Philippines ranked sixth for a second year, both thanks to better economic participation ratios. They eclipsed Germany which fell to seventh place from fifth.
 
Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Nepal and Saudi Arabia were at the bottom of the table of 128 countries, with the biggest gaps in the four areas.