Explore the Women, Peace, and Security Index
Which countries are worst and best for women?
Author: Laura Spoelstra
What is women’s status in the world today? How and what do you measure if you want to know what the best countries are for women’s wellbeing and to live in?
Several existing global indices have attempted to measure that status, including those published by the Human Development Report and the World Economic Forum. The goal is to distill a complex array of information into a single number and ranking. Recent research has shown that such “scorecard diplomacy” can motivate change.
But most gender indices are limited, research found. They measure a few simple facts, such as what percentage of a nation’s women finish school or are employed for pay. They leave out critical aspects of girls’ and women’s lives, such as whether they are safe and secure in their homes or communities, or face systematic bias and discrimination in the justice system or in daily custom.
To fill that gap, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo launched the global Women, Peace, and Security Index. This new index measures women’s well-being by assessing their inclusion, justice and security in a single number and ranking. It’s the first gender index framed explicitly by the Sustainable Development and Sustaining Peace Agendas.
To get an objective measure of women’s lives in 153 countries covering more than 98 percent of the world’s population, GIWPS used transparent and reliable data from the United Nations, the World Bank and the Gallup World Poll. They grouped the results by region, for developed countries, and call out the Fragile States group, as defined by the World Bank.
This index gives a fascinating insight on various measurables. Explore any of the 153 countries, by dimension (Inclusion, Justice, Security) or by story.
The index can be found here https://giwps.georgetown.edu/the-index/
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