Today is the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day and the New York Times Economix blog has a good article up about which countries are the best for women.
Surprise, surprise, no matter which way you slice the stats, the United States doesn’t make it in the top ten most gender-equitable counties. The blog gives a rundown of four major studies that calculate women’s equality and well-being based on factors like life expectancy, literacy, earnings, and political participation. Depending on what factors you look at, we rank anywhere from 13th to 65th compared to all the countries in the world.
Who comes out on top every time? Those Scandanavians: Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.
One of the big things holding us back: Adolescent fertility rate. For a variety of reasons (terrible sex ed, poverty, restrictive abortion laws and stigma) we have a teenage birth rate in the United States on par with Thailand, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. Fuckin’ Kyrgyzstan! And still the debate in our country is stalled at whether or not to fund Planned Parenthood, rather than addressing the fact that, yes, women’s health in our nation is in crisis.
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