NZ turns the Tables on Norway again: Wins on Women’s Status across Three Global Indexes

I swear I did not cook the books nor fiddle the stats, nor guess the outcome before analysis.

On the eve of the final games in the Women’s World Cup, I thought I would crunch the numbers for three different global indexes measuring women’s status and participation in society, and - on average - New Zealand tops all 32 nations that competed at the WWC. If you’ve seen earlier postings, you may remember Norway came out on top on the global Women Peace and Security Index (WPS Index) which Ive used as my main measure of women’s inclusion, justice, and security.

Since then, I’ve found an updated (2023) Global Gender Gap Index (GGG Index) put out by the World Economic Forum. This measures gender-based gaps across four dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment, across

Finally, the US-based Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) puts out the Women's Workplace Equality Index which measures formal legal obstacles to women’s economic participation around the world, recognising that formal legal equality is a critical first step to closing the gap between women and men.

SO, crunching the numbers putting all the indexes on a scale from 0.000 to 1.000, then averaging them, New Zealand comes out on top across the 32 nations that began the Women’s Football World Cup competition last month. This is primarily due to its relatively high ranking in both the GGG and CFR Indexes. Below are all the countries ranked in order with the average index. You can check out the full table, with index rating and rank in each of the three indexes (along with the FIFA football ranking in June) at this link.

WWC Countries 3-Index Average Overall rank (among WWC nations) New Zealand  0.888 1 England (= UK) 0.866 2 Canada  0.865 3 Spain  0.864 4 Norway  0.863 5 Australia  0.861 6 Denmark  0.859 7 Sweden  0.854 8 Netherlands 0.851 9 Germany  0.842 10 France 0.834 11 Portugal 0.827 12 United States  0.822 13 Ireland 0.822 14 Switzerland  0.811 15 South Africa  0.792 16 South Korea 0.786 17 Italy  0.785 18 Costa Rica  0.777 19 Philippines  0.773 20 Argentina  0.763 21 Brazil  0.751 22 Panama  0.751 23 Colombia  0.737 24 Zambia 0.725 25 Jamaica  0.719 26 Japan  0.712 27 Vietnam 0.706 28 China  0.694 29 Nigeria  0.649 30 Morocco  0.622 31 Haiti* 0.540 32

 *= average across 2 indexes; GGG index not available for
  Haiti

Photo sourced from NZ Football