The FIFA Women’s World Cup is entering the single-elimination phase, and Mark Leon Goldberg is taking a look at how the teams would do if victory were decided in terms of gender equality. Here’s how he did it:
I consulted the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index for statistics on gender equality. This is an index that ranks countries by social indicators like literacy rates and child mortality. In 2010, for the first time, the Human Development Index included five gender equality indicators as part of its formula to rank countries based on their human development. These included: 1) Maternal mortality ratio; 2) The male-female ratio of people who have achieved secondary education; 3) The fertility rate of women aged 15-19 years; 4) The labor force participation rate for women; and 5) the share of women in parliament.
Anyone can visit the Human Development Index website and build their own chart using the hundreds of the indicators available. I have chosen to use those five indicators above (and give them equal weight) to develop my Gender Equality Index.
Based on those statistics, the Gender Equality Index generates scores to rank countries. The Netherlands scores highest with 0.687. Afghanistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia tie for last with a score of 0. (Next comes Yemen, with a score of 0.096). I’ve used these scores to match FIFA Women’s World Cup teams against each other, with the margin of victory represented as the difference between the two countries’ scores on the Gender Equality Index. (For example, if the Netherlands were to “play” Yemen, the Dutch would win by 0.591.)