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.
