Norway still 2nd most gender-equal

Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Minister of Finance Siv Jensen (t.h) and Minister of Culture Trine Skei Grande (t.v), gender-equalityGender-equality? The leaders of all 3 government parties in Norway are women. Prime Minister Erna Solberg, Minister of Finance Siv Jensen (r) and Minister of Culture Trine Skei Grande (l).Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB scanpix

Norway is the world’s second most gender-equal country

Norway is in second place in a new global ranking for gender equality. Only Icelanders are more gender-equal than us.


The equality barometer, first mentioned by the VG newspaper, is done by the World Economic Forum and addresses the gender equality situation in 149 countries. The countries get a total score of between 0 and 1, based on how many points they achieve in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, education, health and life expectancy, as well as political participation.

Norway and Iceland have held the two top positions for several years, with the exception of 2016, when Finland passed Norway.

The Finns are in fourth place this year, right behind Sweden, who occupies the ‘bronze medal’ position.

The other countries on the top ten list are Nicaragua, Rwanda, New Zealand, the Philippines, Ireland, and Namibia. The seven first listed countries are the only ones that achieved a score of more than 0.8, indicating that the countries are more than 80% equal. If a country had achieved perfect equality, the score would be 1.

Norway’s score was 0.835, which means that we are regarded as being 83.5% equal.

Within education, both Norway and Iceland achieve 0.999 points.

Nevertheless, we were only 41st in this category as a large number of countries got 1 whole point.

Health is the area where there is the least difference between the countries of the world, which means that Norway, with a score of 0.972 was in 95th place. Within politics, we were in third place with a score of 0.563.


© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today