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Many of the world’s happiest countries are also the best for women, research
shows—here’s why
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Closing The Gap


MANY OF THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST COUNTRIES ARE ALSO THE BEST FOR WOMEN, RESEARCH
SHOWS—HERE’S WHY

Published Tue, Mar 12 20242:41 PM EDTUpdated Thu, Mar 14 20244:01 PM EDT
Morgan Smith@thewordsmithm
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Krysta Alexa, an American expat raising two kids in Bergen, Norway’s
second-largest city, says Norway provides “a lot of support” to help women
balance motherhood and career.
Photo: Krysta Alexa

Some of the world’s happiest countries are also the most gender-equal. 

Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and New Zealand all appear in the top 10 of two
key rankings: The World Happiness Report’s annual list of the happiest countries
in the world and the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which
ranks the world’s most gender-equal countries.



While neither report has been updated since 2023, these countries have been
leading the world toward achieving gender equality and boosting residents’
happiness for years, ranking high on both lists since at least 2018. 

The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the organization behind the
World Happiness Report, uses six factors to score countries’ happiness: social
support, income, health, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption. 

The WEF compares countries’ gender gaps across four dimensions: economic
opportunities; educational attainment; health and survival; and political
empowerment. 

It’s no coincidence that the world’s happiest countries also champion gender
equality socially and economically. Residents and workplace experts in these
countries say that positive attitudes toward gender equality contribute to the
overall well-being of its inhabitants.




HOW NORDIC COUNTRIES USE SOCIAL POLICIES TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND
HAPPINESS 

In its research, the WEF establishes a clear correlation between social
policies, families’ happiness and women’s career advancement. 

The Nordic countries — Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Norway — have some of the
most generous paid leave policies for parents in the world. 

In Norway, new parents are entitled to a total of 49 weeks of leave at full pay
or 59 weeks at 80% pay. Of these, 15 weeks are reserved for the mother, 15 weeks
are reserved for the father, and the remaining 19 weeks can be shared between
them as they see fit.

Krysta Alexa, an American expat raising two kids in Bergen, Norway’s
second-largest city, is currently on maternity leave with her newborn son (for
privacy reasons, she declined to share her last name and the names of her
children). 

“Here, I feel like I can have it all, I can balance having a career and being a
mother,” the 32-year-old, who works in project management, explains. “In other
countries, you might have to sideline your career and stay at home with your
children because of the costs associated with child care, but in Norway, there
is clear support to make your professional life flexible around family.” 



Access to affordable child care in some of these countries is another resource
Nordic residents credit with boosting women’s and families’ well-being.

“The burden of being a working mother is made a lot lighter in Sweden as
compared to the U.S.,” says Linda Akeson McGurk, a Swedish-American writer
raising her two daughters in southwest Sweden. McGurk lived in the U.S. for 15
years before moving back to Sweden with her kids in 2018. 

As a single mom, McGurk was worried about finding after-school care for her
daughters in Sweden, given how expensive — and in some cases, competitive — it
was for them in the U.S. 

But the 45-year-old says she was “pleasantly surprised” at how easy it was to
find affordable child care, thanks to the government-subsidized after-school
programs Sweden offers for students and their families.

Such policies’ positive impact on women and families can’t be overstated. In
Norway, increased federal financing for daycare has prompted more mothers to
return to the workforce, while Sweden has one of the highest percentages of
mothers in the workforce of the 38 countries counted by the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“All of these different components of social welfare help lighten the load of
parenthood and diminish the gap between genders,” says McGurk. “That makes it a
lot easier to hold on to a career, and a life overall, that you’re happy with.”




PROGRESS ON EQUAL PAY COULD MEAN HAPPIER EMPLOYEES

Some of the happiest countries in the world have introduced measures to shrink
the gender wage gap. Workplace experts say such efforts could help workers there
feel more secure and satisfied in their careers.

In August, New Zealand’s government introduced legislation to require large
businesses to report the state of their gender pay gaps in a bid to make
workplaces more equitable, Bloomberg reports. While it’s unclear when, or if,
such legislation might pass, New Zealand already has one of the smallest gender
wage gaps in the world, standing at about 14%, according to the WEF.

Six years ago, Iceland introduced a policy that requires organizations with more
than 25 employees to prove that they pay men and women in the same roles
equally.

While the WEF pegs the wage gap between men and women in Iceland at 21%, other
sources, including the OECD, put the gap at closer to 10%.

If companies show they pay their employees equally regardless of gender, they
receive a certification. Beginning in 2020, certification became a requirement
for employers with 25 or more workers, and companies without certification incur
a daily fine, according to Ines Wagner, an affiliated research professor at the
Institute for Social Research in Oslo, Norway. 

Wagner studied the impact of Iceland’s pay transparency policy on workers’
well-being and found that both employees and managers reported higher job
satisfaction and trust in the workplace after its implementation. 

“People are generally happier in their jobs if they feel that they are being
paid fairly,” Wagner, who is also a research professor at the University of Oslo
in Norway and a JFK Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies at
Harvard University, points out. “These policies also set a precedent of
encouraging employees to advocate for themselves and collaborate to create a
healthier, more equitable work environment.”

There are other strategies these countries are using to advance equity in
workplaces. Finland, Iceland and Sweden offer free college tuition to their
citizens, which can help give people more equal access to high-paid work
opportunities, says Claudia Bernhard-Oettel, a professor of organizational
psychology at Sweden’s Stockholm University.

“Research has shown that the happiest countries are often the countries where
the gap between the richest and poorest is the smallest,” she explains. “The
countries that rank high on both happiness and gender equality have managed to
build up a country where people feel that they can succeed and are supported in
their educational or professional pursuits.”

To be clear, the happiest countries — even the best countries for women — are
far from perfect. In Iceland, for example, tens of thousands of women
participated in a one-day strike in October to protest the ongoing gender pay
gap and gender-based violence Icelandic women face. 

Adds Bernhard-Oettel: “Even if we are further ahead than other countries when it
comes to gender equality and happiness, there is still a lot of work to be
done.” 

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect Ines Wagner’s current job
title at the Institute for Social Research.

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