The Philippines ranked ninth overall out of 142 economies assessed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which aims to measure the relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy and politics.
Compared to ASEAN countries, the Philippines is way ahead of its neighboring nations, with Singapore, Laos and Thailand lagging behind at 59th, 60th and 61st place, respectively.
WEF said the Philippines is also the only country from the Asia-Pacific region that has closed both the educational attainment and health and survival gender gaps.
However, the country dropped eight places to 24 in economic participation, and seven notches down to 17th place in politics.
WEF said the Philippines is part of the top 10 on wage equality for similar work and legislators, senior officials and managers indicators, noting that the country "was led by a female head of state for 16 of the last 50 years."
Cory Aquino was president from 1986 to 1992, while Gloria Macapagal Arroyo served as president from 2001 to 2010.
WEF also noted that since 2008, the Philippines has seen an improvement in its overall score, except in 2014, which was due "to a decrease in the Health and Survival and Political Empowerment subindex scores."
The Philippines is also the second best country after Norway on the ability of women to rise to positions of enterprise leadership indicator, and the country with the highest percentage of firms with female participation in ownership.
The Philippines ranked fifth in last year’s WEF index.
This year, the Nordic countries of Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark remained the world’s most gender equal nations.
WEF said that while women are rapidly closing the gender gap with men, inequality at work will likely remain until 2095, adding that in the past nine years, the global gender gap in the workplace barely narrowed.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
