Norway, Iceland Tops for Gender Equality, U.S. Behind Canada

Fighting for gender equality isn't just a matter of charity or earning a gold star as a good human being, it's better for countries' development and economies overall. 

Gender equality for countries is correlated with the Human Development Index and the Global Competitiveness Index. Countries with more gender equality tend to be more developed, more productive and have better economies. 

Still, many countries – the United States, included – have a lot further to go on gender equality, according to a new report from The World Economic Forum that ranked countries by gender gaps. Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden top the list for most equal. The U.S. is No. 20 for gender equality, just below Canada and several spots above the United Kingdom.

On the map, the higher the score, the more equality. A score of 1 means complete equality. 

A country's score is based on wage equality, literary rate, life expectancy, differences in labor force participation and gender of legislators, senior officials and managers, among other variables.

Although the U.S. scores for education and health are high (close to 1), the country scores lower on the economy (about 0.8). A horrible rating in politics (about 0.2) brings down the U.S.'s overall score. The United States has never had a female president, one of the measures in the study, and rates of women in government are low. For the score in "women in parliament," the U.S. ranks 83 out of 142 countries.

Between 2006 and 2014, the U.S.'s overall score improved 6 percent, largely driven by an increase in "women in ministerial positions."

China ranked 87 this year. The distribution looks similar to that of the U.S. China has high equality in health and education, falters some in the economy and has terrible equality scores in politics. 

India is toward the bottom of the rankings at No. 114. Unlike the United States and China, India scores highest on health, then education and its economy and politics rankings are lower, but fairly equal. The country ranks first for the years with a female head of state in the last 50 years. 

Although the rankings include a good amount of information, there are more underlying measures that are not included in this specific ranking. For example, the gender chore gap isn't included on the country pages, but it affects labor force participation. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis of the World Economic Forum data had India, Mexico, Turkey and Japan as the countries with the highest gender chore gap. In the U.S., women spend an average of 87.1 more minutes a day on housework than their male counterparts.