Yes, it’s another global survey. Which accounts to some degree for the jaded and outrageous headline. It is either that or my latent misogyny.
Anyway, this list is one of importance and to come in at number one, ahead of so-called moral super powers like the Norse countries, is something to be especially proud of. It’s the Booz Third Trillion Index and it measures the economic empowerment of women:
Nearly 1 billion women around the world could enter the global economy during the coming decade. They are poised to play a significant role in countries around the world—as significant as that of the billion-plus populations of India and China. Yet this Third Billion has not received sufficient attention from governments, business leaders, or other key decision makers in many countries.
There is compelling evidence that women can be powerful drivers of economic growth. Our own estimates indicate that raising female employment
to male levels could have a direct impact on GDP of 5 percent in the United States, 9 percent in Japan, 12 percent in the United Arab Emirates, and 34 percent in Egypt; but, greater involvement from women has an impact beyond what their numbers would suggest. For example, women are more likely than men to invest a large proportion of their household income in the education of their children. As those children grow up, their improved status becomes a positive social and economic factor in their society. Thus, even small increases in the opportunities available to women, and some release of the cultural and political constraints that hold them back, can lead to dramatic economic and social benefits.In that context, a critical question of the 21st century becomes: What can governments, companies, investors, and NGOs do to ensure that the Third Billion realizes its potential? One of the factors that makes the Third Billion so powerful—its global reach—also makes that question difficult to answer. Any answer must start with an assessment of the specific constraints faced by Third Billion constituents in a given region. To begin understanding the levers available to decision makers, we developed the Third Billion Index, a means of ranking countries in terms of how effectively they are empowering women as economic agents in the marketplace. The index itself is a composite of established data drawn from the World Economic Forum and the Economist Intelligence Unit, among other sources. Our composite index is unique, however, in that we have chosen to focus on women’s economic and professional empowerment.
The Third Billion Index groups the indicators of women’s economic standing into two clusters. The first is “inputs,” meaning steps that governments and the private sector can take to improve the economic position of women. These inputs include laws and policies regarding minimum schooling, employment policies during and after childbirth, and access to credit.
The index also considers “outputs,” meaning the observable aspects (social, political, and economic) of women’s participation in the national economy. These include the ratio of pay between women and men as well as the proportion of women among technical workers, senior business leaders, and employees. A combination of the input and output factors for a country determines its overall index ranking.
The results of the index lead to several striking conclusions. First, there is a clear correlation between the front-end processes and policies regarding women’s economic opportunities (inputs) and the actual success of women in national economies (outputs). We discovered this by clustering 128 countries into five broad categories based on their index rankings. The countries with a strong set of inputs, labeled “on the path to success,” universally also have strong outputs. These are typically developed economies such as Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, and Norway.
And on it goes with Australia at numero uno:
