Every year, CEOWORLD magazine announces its Best Countries for Women list. This year, the list has placed Saudi Arabia as the number one country in the region for women. Coming in second is Oman, followed by Jordan, and in fourth place the United Arab Emirates. Qatar, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt, and Bahrain followed in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th in the Arab world. The list was based on a survey that involved nearly 256,700 women around the world.
Saudi Arabia has been making strides over the last three years to greatly improve the lives and expand the rights of women across the country. These many reforms and initiatives include such the rescinding age-old bans on female motorists and women in public sports arenas, introducing anti-harassment laws, which has involved the swift arrests of offenders, and providing women with various support initiatives such as monetary compensation paid to divorced women and subsidized daycare and transportation for working moms.
According the CEOWORLD magazine’s website, producing the Best Countries for Women list involved giving 156 countries scores across nine attributes: gender equality; percentage of legislative seats held by women; sense of security (females 15 years and older who report feeling safe while walking alone at night); income equality; care about human rights; women empowerment; average years of education among women; women age 25 and older who are engaged in paid work; and women’s inclusion in society.
Women's rights. A cultural explosion. An economical boom. Saudi Arabia is flourishing with MBS as crown prince.https://t.co/ulfLImFe0N
— About Her (@AboutHerOFCL) June 22, 2020
Each country was then assigned an equally-weighted score across these nine attributes in order to produce the women-focused ranking. Globally, the survey placed Scandinavian countries on the top of the list, with Sweden ranked the best country in the world, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place respectively.
Women will now be taking more leadership positions in the Saudi judicial system.https://t.co/FJtN04USfu
— About Her (@AboutHerOFCL) June 3, 2020
Indeed, eight out of the top 10 countries for women in this year’s list are in Europe, including Finland (ranked 6th), Switzerland (7th), France (9th), and Germany (10th). In 5th was Canada and 8th place went to New Zealand.
