Denmark Is The World’s Best Country For Women

Metrics assessing women’s safety, inclusion, and access to justice vary greatly by country and region.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Julia Wendling ranked the top 10 nations for women, using the 2023 Women Peace and Security Index scores from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

Countries are given an index score out of 1.0 that is derived based on the following components:

Inclusion: education, employment, financial inclusion, cell phone use, parliamentary representation

Justice: absence of legal discrimination, access to justice, maternal mortality ratio, son bias

Safety: intimate partner violence, community safety, political violence targeting women, and proximity to conflict

Which Are the Best Countries for Women? 

All of the top 10 countries for women received index scores above 0.9, significantly higher than the global average of 0.65. Nine of them are located in Europe, with New Zealand (#10) representing the only regional outlier.

The highest-ranked country was Denmark, which scored particularly well across inclusion (such as financial inclusion and parliamentary representation) and justice (such as absence of legal discrimination and access to justice) metrics. Its Scandinavian peers—Sweden (#3) and Norway (#7)—followed closely behind.

Overall, the group of best countries for women feature low maternal mortality, high education rates, and a lack of political violence against women and proximity to conflict.

Other Takeaways 

Canada (#17), the UK (#26), and the U.S. (#37) all rank relatively high but didn’t make the top 10 list. Lower rankings for parliamentary representation, maternal mortality, and community safety dragged the score for the U.S. down to lower than European counterparts.

If you found this interesting, check out this visualization that looks at the countries with the most gender-equal pay among OECD countries.