Our index of the climate for working women now includes paternity leave
IT IS still common to see headlines announcing the first woman to occupy some important post or other. Asako Suzuki has just been appointed the first female board member at Honda, a Japanese carmaker. In January the Irish central bank appointed its first female deputy governor. And of course Hillary Clinton could become America’s first female president. But such milestones may not be much of a guide to the opportunities women have to make progress in the workplace.
So, in 2013, we created a “glass-ceiling index”, ranking countries by how good it is to be a working woman in each of them, to be published each year to mark International Women’s Day (March 8th). Our index now covers 29 countries; our website has a full, interactive version of the adjacent chart. Besides taking into account such things as women’s access to higher education, their labour-force participation, pay, business-school applications, representation in senior management and the cost of child care, this year we have added a new indicator: as well as measuring maternity-leave rights, we now include paternity leave.
The Economist