For the fourth year, the OECD has ranked 120 countries on their political commitments and laws aimed at eliminating gender discrimination.
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The percentage based scores measure the remaining discrimination, so the lower the score the better. Overall scores range from 8% in Switzerland, down to 64% in Yemen. Some countries had gaps in their data leaving them with no overall ranking.
Overall scores are the average of measures of discrimination in the family, the level of violence and the lack of reproductive rights, restrictions on access to productive and financial resources and gaps in laws around civil liberties.
Switzerland scores well across the board with very low levels of discrimination in the family. On this measure it scores 0%. The only notable thing clouding gender neutrality in the family in Switzerland is the widely held belief (43%) that children will suffer if mothers engage in paid work outside the home.
Rates of domestic violence (10%) and the prevalence of women justifying it (15%) are relatively low in Switzerland, as is the percentage of women with unmet family planning needs (8%), giving Switzerland an overall score of 13% here.
Women’s access to economic resources was high too with the exception of agricultural land ownership, of which 94% was in the hands of men, leading to an overall score in this area of 12%.
The score for legal and political frameworks was also very low (7%).
Denmark, with a score of 10% was second in the ranking. The main differences between Switzerland and Denmark were in the amount of unpaid care work done by men compared to women – men in Switzerland do more than men in Denmark, and the legal framework on household responsibilities, an area where Switzerland outperformed Denmark. In addition, reported domestic violence was far more prevalent in Denmark (32%) than in Switzerland (10%).
Comparing Switzerland to Yemen reveals stark differences. In Yemen, 83% think children will suffer if mothers engage in paid work outside the home, compared to 43% in Switzerland. 17% of girls under 18 are married in Yemen compared to 0% in Switzerland. And 67% of women in Yemen suffer domestic violence, with 49% of women justifying it. In Switzerland the same figures are 10% and 15%. In Yemen, women are absent from politics. There are no female MPs and 83% of the population think men make better leaders. The same percentages are 32% and 15% in Switzerland.
More on this:
OECD report 2019 (in English)
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