A Number of High-Income Countries Make List of Worst Places to be a Girl Lucy Clarke-Billings - Newsweek
go to original October 11, 2016

The United States has made a “shocking” entry in a list of the best and worst countries to live if you are a girl due to a lack of gender parity in government and a terrible mortality rate for women of color.

Despite being the world’s biggest economy, the U.S. ranked 32 out of 144 countries in the Girls’ Opportunity Index - a report published by leading charity Save the Children.

The country came in lower than Algeria and Kazakhstan, and 17 places behind the U.K.

A number of high-income countries have performed considerably worse than might be expected. Australia, for example, came in at 21, contrasting significantly with its position in number 2 in the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI).

CEO and president of Save the Children, Carolyn Miles, tells Newsweek the results are largely down to the country’s low proportion of female MPs and relatively high adolescent fertility rate. Maternal mortality figures also made it impossible for the U.S. to rank any higher.

“One of the most shocking aspects of this report is the discovery that some of the developed countries have the worst cases of women being underrepresented in government,” she explained.



Read the rest at Newsweek

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