Turkey hits bottom in OECD gender equality

ISTANBUL

‘Turkey is still the lowest performing country from the OECD on the overall Index,’ reads the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Gender Gap 2014 report.

Turkey has shown slight improvement in narrowing its wide gender gap, though it still languishes in the lower reaches of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2014, published on Oct. 28.

Turkey ranked 125th out of 142 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report 2014, though a 5.7 percent improvement on its overall score has been measured since the report was first published in 2006, and a 1 percent improvement has been made since 2013.

Turkey had ranked 120th out of 136 countries in last year’s report, and Turkey dropped five places this year despite a 1 percent overall increase between 2013 and 2014. This could be explained by taking into account the rise in the number of countries observed.

The WEF, which organizes the high-powered annual Davos summit, aims to measure the relative gaps between women and men across the areas of health, education, economic participation and political empowerment in its annual Global Gender Report.

Since the WEF first started measuring the gender gap in 2006 “the world has seen only a small improvement in equality for women in the workplace,” according to its press release.

The gender gap for economic participation and opportunity is at 60 percent worldwide, while this figure was 56 percent in 2006, according to the report. “Based on this trajectory, with all else remaining equal, it will take 81 years for the world to close this gap completely,” it added.

In 2014, among the 49 countries in the high-income group, the Nordic countries led the way, while Turkey is among the lowest ranked of the 40 countries in the upper-middle income group.

“Turkey has experienced a steady improvement of its overall score since 2011. Compared to 2006, all of its sub-index scores have improved. Yet, Turkey is still the lowest performing country from the OECD on the overall Index; and it is the lowest performing country from the region on the economic participation and opportunity sub-index, ranking 132nd. The country ranks 128th overall on the labor force participation indicator and is part of the 20 lowest-ranked countries on the legislators, senior officials and managers’ indicator,” reads the report’s analysis on Turkey.

Nordic countries top the list

There is no country that has closed the overall gender gap, though the Nordic countries remain the most gender-equal societies in the world.

Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark top the list respectively, whereas Yemen is at rock-bottom, a rank at which the country has remained since the beginning of the measurements in 2006. Rwanda, which entered the list for the first time in this year’s report, is at 7th in the list, whereas the United States climbed three places to 20 in 2014.

In 125th place, Turkey holds the lowest spot from the Europe and Central Asia region, which includes 46 countries. Twelve of the countries from this region occupy the top 20 positions, with Germany ranking 12th and France 16th, a great leap from 45th place in 2013.

Israel is the highest-placed country from the Middle East and North Africa region at 65, followed by Kuwait at 113.