Every year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) measures 149 countries on their progress towards gender parity across four categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. In 2018, the United States ranked No. 51 out of the 149 countries measured, but that wasn’t the headline that made waves. In June 2019, the WEF released a shocking new finding: At the current rate of change, it will take the United States 208 years to close the gender gap. (emphasis added)

It’s important to note that the WEF is not measuring women’s empowerment by country; it’s measuring gender parity, which is to say the gap between men and women. While the US has actually seen improvement in three of the four categories over the last dozen years, it has declined in one key category: health and survival. One reason is that the maternal mortality rate is worse in the United States than any other developed country. Another is that the healthy life expectancy for both women and men has declined in the last 12 years, but the […]