New Zealand took the top spot, followed by Norway and Sweden
Canada is the fourth-best country in the world to be a working woman, according to The Economist’s glass-ceiling index release.
Using data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the index ranked 26 countries according to five indicators: the number of men and women respectively with post-secondary education; female labour-force participation; the male-female wage gap; the proportion of women in senior jobs; and net child-care costs relative to the average wage.
New Zealand took the top spot, followed by Norway and Sweden. The United States, by contrast, didn’t crack the top 10 — it came in 12th.
About 8.1 million women were employed in Canada as of 2009, more than double the number in 1976. But women are still less likely to be employed than men, with the exception of young women aged 15 to 24, who have enjoyed increasing employment rates according to the most recent data available from Statistics Canada.
And while about 73 per cent of women worked full time in 2009, women were still more likely than men to have part-time jobs. The share of women working less than 30 hours per week has increased since 1976, to 23.6 per cent.
As for equality in the boardroom, women comprised 37 per cent of managerial roles in 2009. However, more women were working in low-level supervisor positions than senior ones.
Canada ranked 21st in last year’s World Economic Forum annual gender gap ranking. That ranking said that Canada lags behind in female politicians.
New Zealand beat out the Nordic countries for the top spot on The Economist’s list in part for its number of women in senior management jobs. The country has mandated that companies disclose how many women hold senior and executive positions. More than half of the 100 countries on the New Zealand Stock Exchange had at least one female director.
But Sweden still has the highest participation of women in the workforce, at 78 per cent. Australia, Portugal and Spain — which has the smallest wage gap at 6 per cent — also made the top 10.
Out of the 26 developed countries included in the Economist ranking, the worst places to be a working woman are Japan and South Korea.
