Dutch emancipation policy stagnating; 28th on Global Gender Gap Index for 3rd year

The Netherlands’ emancipation policy is stagnating, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Index. The Netherlands is in 28th place for the third consecutive year, with its overall score on gender equality falling slightly compared to last year.

The Netherlands has managed to close 77.5 percent of its gender gap, a slight decline of 0.2 percent compared to last year. This year, the Philippines, Serbia, and Mozambique ranked just above the Netherlands. The Dutch scored slightly better than Estonia and Latvia.

The Netherlands was tied for first with 27 other countries for educational attainment. The country has attained gender parity in literacy and enrolment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.

Its second-best score was on political empowerment, in 23rd place. The WEF noted that the Netherlands was one of only eight European countries that achieved parity at a Ministerial level, but women are still underrepresented in other levels of politics. This is the category where the Netherlands still has to do the most work, with only 44.3 percent of the political empowerment gap closed.

Our country ranked 74th on economic participation and opportunity. The Netherlands scored slightly better here than last year, but the small improvements were insignificant compared to major steps taken by Scandinavian countries, Ireland, and Spain. The Netherlands did pretty well in the labor force participation category (27th with 87.9% of the gap closed), but women are still very underrepresented in top positions (99th place with 39.7 percent of the gap closed).

The Netherlands' worst ranking was when it comes to gender equality in health and survival, coming in 126th place. The gap here isn’t very large and the same as last year, with 96.2 percent of the gap closed. But other countries showed improvement, so the Netherlands dropped two spots from last year’s 124th place.

Regionally, the Netherlands ranked 18th out of 40 European countries, scoring worse than France, Albania, and Serbia.

Dutch labor union FNV said that the Netherlands has fallen behind in progressively addressing lingering issues related to gender equality because it was ahead of the pack early on. “Because we think we have arranged everything well, our emancipation policy lags behind other countries,” a spokesperson told ANP.

“We do not comply with European guidelines, particularly in the areas of childcare and leave arrangements. The Netherlands is resisting because we still think we are doing so well.”