The U.S. ranked No. 27 in gender equality, according to the Global Gender Gap Report released last week.Published last Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, the report looks at four areas — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment and health and survival.The term “gender gap” refers to “the disparities between men and women in achieving particular outcomes,” said Jessica Ketcham Weber, Women’s and Gender Studies Program Coordinator. Though the United States climbed four spots since last year, from 31 to 27, it is still below Cuba, Mozambique and Lesotho, among 24 others. Improvements across the board have helped the country rise in the ranks. In educational attainment, the United States ranked No. 76 in 2007 and is now No. 1. It also went from ranking No. 69 in 2007 to No. 56 in political empowerment. The United States is now No. 12 in economic participation and opportunity and No. 37 in health and survival. Because countries are so close in education scores, a small improvement can result in a much higher ranking, the report states. The U.S. made the most improvement in the ratio of women enrolled in primary education compared to men. In 2007, the U.S. was in 106th place, with 90 percent of women enrolled, while this year, 93 percent of women are enrolled in primary education.”We lose the most points in health and political empowerment,” said Challen Nicklen, visiting assistant professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.The lack of a universal health care system may contribute to the lower health and survival ranking, Nicklen said, while the “winner takes all” method of elections may result in the lower political empowerment score.The U.S. has a political score of .140 while Norway, the top ranked country, has a score of .533. Since the scores are presented as ratios, the closer the score is to one, the smaller the gender gap is. “The report only compares politics on a national level,” Nicklen said. In the U.S., more women may be involved in local politics, but because of the way scoring is conducted, this involvement is not reflected in the final statistics.The Nordic countries — Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark — have consistently been ranked in the top 10 since the report’s first publication in 2006.Nicklen said other countries may do better in the political category because of the way their electoral systems work. They may have quotas or other mechanisms to allow more political positions to go to women.”I think that probably plays a big part in getting women into office,” Nicklen said. The 130 countries surveyed represented 90 percent of the world’s population, the report states.The report reflects access to resources and opportunites within individual countries rather than raw figures so that a country’s gender gap is independent of its development level. The comparative data is the most useful aspect of the Gender Gap Report, Weber said. “Our infant mortality rate … might not seem too horrific — 7 per 1000 live births,” she said. “But we’re ranked 34th in the world.” The U.S. has steadily dropped on this list since 1960 when it had the 12th lowest infant mortality rate, Weber said. Overall, the countries have closed 97 percent of the gap on health, 95 percent of the gap on educational attainment, and yet only 62 percent of the economic gap and 16 percent of the political gap. Education has seen the highest overall improvement — 24 countries have fully closed the gap compared with 15 countries in 2007. A fully closed educational gap is reported if the country has an educational attainment score of 1 and equal amounts of men and women are enrolled in primary, secondary and tertiary education in the country.—-Contact Olga Kourilova at [email protected]