Australia continues to be a top ten country for women

A new report shows that Australia is ranked in the top ten countries across the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) gender indicators.

The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women’s Issues, the Hon Julie Bishop MP today welcomed the update on progress towards gender equality in the UNDP’s Human Development Report, 2006, “Beyond scarcity; Power, poverty and the global water crisis“, released recently in Cape Town, South Africa

“The Human Development Report is an annual publication of the UNDP and contains human development indicators from 175 UN member countries in the areas of human development, health, knowledge, access to and preservation of resources, personal security, gender and labour rights,” Minister Bishop said.

“Australia was ranked at third in the world on the Gender-related Development Index (GDI), which measures gender inequalities in relation to four components—life expectancy, adult literacy, school enrolment and income earnings.

“On the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) which gauges economic and political opportunities, measured by comparing wo

men and men’s shares of administrative and managerial positions, professional and technical jobs, parliamentary seats and gross domestic product for each woman, Australia was ranked eighth.

“For the past five years, Australia has maintained a top ten ranking across these indicators, which demonstrates that by the UN’s own independent measurement, Australian women are doing very well,” Minister Bishop said.

GDI:  Australia was ranked second in 2005, third in 2004, fourth in 2003, first in 2002 and second in 2001.

GEM: Australia was ranked seventh in 2005, eighth in 2004, fourth in 2003, tenth in 2002 and ninth in 2001.