Armenia ranks 71 in the newest Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum.

The report examines the following:

1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

Although Armenia gave women the right to vote in 1918, 2 years before the United States, and 99% of Armenia’s women are literate (as opposed to 100% of men), the percentage of women in the parliament is 5 today.

Female adult unemployment rate is 5% higher from men’s in Armenia.  The most interesting fact is the decrease of women educators as the level of educational institution increases:

Percentage of female teachers, primary education…………………………76Percentage of female teachers, secondary education……………………..56Percentage of female teachers, tertiary education…………………………41

The Report on Armenia is available through a .pdf document at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/albania_to_dominican_republic.pdf. Apparently women in authoritarian Azerbaijan are better off – with a rank of 59, but not so much in (until yesterday) democratic Georgia – 67.

The United States ranked 31 in the Report, Turkey ranked 121 while Iran ranked 118. Russia ranked 45. For the ranking list, see http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/rankings2007.xls.

Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. All countries in the top 20 made progress relative to their scores last year – some more so than others. Latvia (13) and Lithuania (14) made the biggest advances among the top 20, gaining six and seven places respectively. The Report covers a total of 128 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s population.