Best countries for working women

Worst of the best

Singapore ranked as the worst country for working women compared to other top countries. Notably, it took the bottom spot for the average weekly working hours at 45 hours a week and for the gender pay gap. It also ranked in the bottom half of countries for maternity leave (10th place).

The United States came in second last overall, right after Australia. The United States didn’t rank in the top half for any of the metrics analysed and had some of the worst rankings for maternity leave, annual leave, the gender pay gap and the retirement savings gap.

Australia also ranked poorly in terms of women’s retirement savings, as well as maternity leave benefits. Australian women receive 18 weeks of paid maternity and parental leave, according to data from the OECD.

Sources

Finder sourced and analysed data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the amount of unpaid household hours, maternity and parental leave benefits, and the percentage of people at risk of losing their job. Data on the female participation rate in the workforce was sourced from the World Bank.

• General methodology

  To rank the best countries to live in as a working woman, we selected 16 countries commonly cited on Google results as the best countries for women. We sourced data on 10 metrics: the average participation rate in the labour force, cost of living, average gender pay gap, total female representation on boards, average difference women have saved in their retirement funds compared to men, average working hours per week, maternity leave benefits, job security and total amount of holiday leave. We scored each country on the 10 metrics, giving them a score from 1 (best score) to 16 (worst score). We then combined the scores for each country. Given there were four data points missing (two for Iceland and two for Singapore), we used a drop system whereby a country’s two worst scores were not included in their overall score. For Iceland and Singapore, the metrics with the missing data points were automatically disqualified. With the best eight scores combined, the country with the lowest total score was ranked best, while the country with the highest total score was ranked worst. Sources for the 10 metrics include the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Tech Republic, Statistics Canada, Business Insider, the Straits Times, Catalyst.org, Women’s Agenda, Scoop, Human Resources Online, the Copenhagen Post, the Irish Times, HuffPost, Kela (The Social Insurance Institution of Finland), the Singapore Ministry of Manpower, Vanguard and Prudential Financial.

• Metric-specific methodology

  • To rank the countries based on maternity leave benefits, we sourced data from the OECD on the total amount of paid maternity and parental leave in 2016. Data for Singapore was sourced from the Singapore Ministry of Manpower. In New Zealand, the maternity policy has changed in the time since the data was last updated, so we sourced data from the New Zealand Library of Congress.
  • For the average weekly working hours, we found the average working hours women complete each week as reported by the OECD, StatCan, and the Singapore Ministry of Manpower. Given there was no gender breakdown available for Singapore, we used the average for both genders.
  • Job security is based on the percentage of workers at risk of losing their job in each country.
  • To rank the countries based on household work, we sourced data from the OECD on the average amount of hours spent on household work for both men and women. We then ranked countries based on the difference between hours for men and women.
  • Holiday leave was calculated based on the minimum number of public holidays and annual leave days for each country. Given there are different amounts of holiday leave for Wales, Scotland, and England, we used the minimum amount of leave to compare against other countries.

Click here for more research. For all media enquiries, please contact:

Matt Mckenna
Head of UK communications
T: +44 20 8191 8806

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