The latest Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Germany as the 10th best country for gender equality in the world, one spot better than it achieved last year. This marks Germany’s joint-highest ranking since the first Gender Gap Report in 2006.

Global Gender Gap Report 2022

Once again, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has released its annual Global Gender Gap Report, a ranking that describes the current state of gender parity (equality) in 146 countries. Each country receives a score of 0 to 1, with 1 being complete gender parity and 0 being complete imparity. The score is discerned from four key dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment.

This year, Germany climbed one spot in the ranking to achieve 10th, attaining a score of 0,801. This is the federal republic's highest ranking since the first ever Gender Gap Report in 2006, when it ranked fifth with a score of 0,7524.

The report also found that the global gender gap has closed by 68,1 percent, and in just 132 years (at the current rate of progress) the world will supposedly achieve full gender parity. This is a slight improvement on last year's estimate (which estimated we would have to wait 136 years until global parity). However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, this is still a far cry from the trends leading up to 2020, when global parity could have been achieved within 100 years.

The Angela Merkel Effect

This year, Germany’s scores in the four key dimensions were relatively similar to last year’s report. In the Health and Survival category, Germany received the exact same score as last year (0,972), although this was enough for Germany to rise in the rankings, from 75th last year to 70th this year.

In the Political Empowerment category, Germany achieved a score of 0,550, which is a noticeable improvement from last year and earned it a jump from 10th to eighth place in the rankings compared to last year. One of the reasons for this is Angela Merkel, whose reign as chancellor came to an end last year after 16 years. This saw Germany perform particularly well in the “years with female / male head of state” metric, in which it ranked 5th out of the 146 countries.

Germany slips up in career and education

Germany actually posted slightly lower scores in the Economic Participation and Opportunity and Educational Attainment categories.

Within the four main dimensions are a number of metrics that are used to discern the overall category score. In Economic Participation, Germany performed particularly poorly in the “wage equality” metric, reflecting the difference in salaries between men and women. The country also performed poorly in terms of the percentage of female legislators, senior officials and management. While in Educational Attainment, Germany was identified as having reached full gender parity in all the metrics except the “enrolment in secondary education” metric, in which it ranked 112 out of 146.

The top 10 countries for gender equality

Scandinavian countries continue to dominate the rankings when it comes to gender equality, with the three top spots being taken by Iceland, Finland and Norway. However, the top 10 does include a few countries that might come as some surprise, like Rwanda or Nicaragua.

The top 10 countries for gender equality are:

1. Iceland - 0.908
2. Finland - 0.860
3. Norway - 0.845
4. New Zealand - 0.841
5. Sweden - 0.822
6. Rwanda - 0.811
7. Nicaragua - 0.810
8. Namibia - 0.807
9. Ireland - 0.804
10. Germany - 0.801

You can find the full report on the WEC website.