According to the report, women in the U.S., the world's richest nation, do not do as well overall as women in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The maternity leave offered by the U.S. puts the nation in "league with Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea."
The World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Index report finds Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Finland have done the best job at narrowing the economic gender gap.
The study measured the gender gap in “equal pay for equal work, access to the labor market, representation of women in politics, access to education and access to reproductive health care.”
Sweden ranks number 1 among the 58 nations studied.
“The report noted that Nordic countries are characterized by strong liberal societies, government transparency, welfare systems and wide access for women to education, and political and work opportunities.
The report covered 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and 28 emerging ones. New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia rounded out the top 10, while India, Mexico, Brazil, Greece and Venezuela completed the bottom 10. France was ranked 13th, the United States 17th.”
Inadequate maternity leave, along with the absence of maternity-leave benefits, subsidized childcare and economic opportunity were judged to be responsible for the poor showing of the U.S. The U.S. also compared poorly in the areas of teen pregnancy and maternal mortality.
Even in the days when many Americans viewed their government as very liberal, the nation lagged far behind other wealthy countries in the provision of social support for women's vital social contribution of caregiving work.
There’s still no reason to believe that replacing the Republican regime with a Democratic regime will change the dismal fact that the caregiving work that falls to women is devalued in the U.S. to such an extent that it is viewed as not really “work” at all.
