INTERACTIVE: The glass-ceiling index - adjust indicator weightings and create your own index here

Progress towards workplace equality for women comes in small steps. Last month Keidanren, Japan’s powerful business lobby, appointed its first female executive. This week Toyota announced its first foreign female executive. Japan’s government is pressing businesses to appoint more women to their boards. But as shown by our glass-ceiling index, updated to mark International Women’s Day on March 8th, it remains far behind the Nordic countries, which are the best places to be a working woman.

The index combines data on higher education, labour-force participation, pay, child-care costs, maternity rights, business-school applications and representation in senior jobs. Finland is now in first place, leaping ahead of Norway and Sweden, in part because it has recently given women almost two and a half weeks of extra paid maternity leave. New Zealand has slipped five places, because of the rising cost of child care.