U.N. Study Finds World Gender Gap

Women are overworked, underpaid and under-appreciated even in the most egalitarian nations, according to a study released Thursday.

For the sixth year in a row, the U.N. Human Development Report ranked the world’s countries on an index based on such criteria as life expectancy, education and income. This year, the researchers introduced gender equality as a factor.

“The male community is going to hate us,” said Mahbub ul Haq, a former Pakistani finance minister and a leader of the team that wrote the report--and a man.

“It came out, in country after country, that women do 53% of the total work and men do 47%--some paid, some unpaid, some direct, some indirect, some in the market, some in the household,” he said.

Scandinavian countries received the highest ratings on the gender-related scale, which included as factors women’s participation in economic and political decision-making. Sweden was first, followed by Finland, Norway and Denmark. The United States was fifth. At the bottom were Mali, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan.

Sweden, at 0.92, scored best on the gender-development index, in which 1.00 indicated total gender equality. Afghanistan--at the bottom--rated a 0.169.