As many as 40% of the world's female population live in countries that fail to meet the mark on basic measures of gender equality, while a further 40% face substandard equality conditions. That's according to a new report released Monday by Equal Measures 2030, which found that 2.8 billion women and girls globally live in countries with "poor" or "very poor" levels of gender equality, despite ongoing efforts to bridge the gap. The Gender Index measured the countries' success in achieving gender equality across 14 of the 17 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It found that no country in the world has yet "achieved the promise of gender equality," nor does any one country score consistently well across all measures. The SDGs are a range of measures laid out in 2015 in a bid to improve global living standards by 2030. For the purposes of the study, those categories were broken down into 51 subsections measuring factors such as health, education, gender-based violence, work and politics.

Equal Measures 2030'S 2019 SDG Gender Index

Best and worst performers

Just 8% percent of the 129 countries measured scored a "good" rating of 80 or more — out of 100 — for their progress in achieving gender equality, the report found. Meanwhile, 12% managed a "fair" rating of 70 to 79. The remaining 80% of countries measured scored either "poor" (60 to 69 points) or "very poor" (below 60). No single country achieved an "excellent" score of 90 or above. The global average score was 65.7 out of 100, which the report said was "barely (a) pass." More than 60 countries were omitted from the list due to lack of data. Denmark emerged as the world's most progressive country in terms of gender equality, achieving a near-excellent score of 89.3 out of 100. It was joined in the top 10 by Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Canada, Ireland and Australia. The U.K. ranked 17th and the U.S. came in at 28th. At the other end of the spectrum, Chad came out at the bottom of the list, with a score of 33.4 out of 100. Other countries in the bottom 10 of the index included Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Yemen, Congo, DR Congo. All those countries also appeared on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2018 list of fragile states.

Equal Measures 2030'S 2019 SDG Gender Index Equal Measures 2030

A 'wake up' call