General

Iceland ranked as best place in world to be a woman

By Staff

Womens' day protests 2005 Each year on October 24 Icelandic women stage protests to commemorate the 1975 Women's Strike when 90% of women walked out of their jobs to protests inequality and sexism. Photo/Heiða.

Icelandic women enjoy greater levels of wellbeing than women anywhere else in the world, according to the Women, Peace and Security Index, calculated by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. Iceland leads the world in this first edition of the WPS Index.

Nordic countries in top tier

Norway comes in second, after Iceland, followed by Switzerland, Slovenia, Spain, Finland, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom comes in 12th and the US ranks 22nd, while war-torn Afghanistan and Syria are tied for last place. Among the main strengths of Iceland are women's share of seats in parliament, which was 48% prior to the October 28 elections and the highest in the world. Another major strength is women's employment: 77% of Icelandic women are employed, the highest proportion in the world.

Read more: Iceland best place to be a working woman, according to the Economist's Glass-Ceiling Index

Iceland also does well on measures of inclusion, like financial inclusion of women and cellphone use, as well as security and discriminatory norms.

Capturing more aspects of wellbeing

The Women, Peace and Security Index ranks 153 countries, covering more than 98 percent of the world’s population, offering a comprehensive measure of women's wellbeing and the condition of women and their empowerment in homes, communities, and societies more broadly. In addition to social and economic measures like education or the access to cell phones, the index looks at both peace and security, as well as inclusion and justice and things like violence against women and girls.

The Georgetown Institute argues the index is the of its kind to capture women’s inclusion, security, and access to justice in the context of the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda.