The 10 best countries to live in if you're a woman and want to go to school, get a job, and be politically empowered

Scandinavian countries take top positions, while the US ranks 43rd in the World Economic Forum's list of most gender-equal countries in 2023.Travelpix Ltd/Getty Images

• The World Economic Forum, or WEF, released its Global Gender Gap Report 2023 in June.
• The report compares gender gaps across countries in areas such as economic opportunities and educational attainment.

Although no country has fully closed its gender gap, Scandinavian countries are taking the lead, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2023.

The report, which was published in June, looked at gender parity across 146 countries, per the World Economic Forum, or WEF. The study found that the global gender gap has closed by 68.4% — up by 0.3% from last year's 68.1%.

The Global Gender Gap Report compares countries' gender gap in four different areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. According to the WEF, the data is computed using the latest statistics from international organizations as well as surveys.

Methodology-wise, each of the four subindexes is computed as a weighted average of their underlying data indicators. The average of each subindex score is then used to calculate the overall Global Gender Gap Index score.

"Global gender gaps in health and education have narrowed over the past year, yet progress on political empowerment is effectively at a standstill, and women's economic participation has regressed rather than recovered," Saadia Zahidi, managing director at WEF, said in the report.

At the current rate of progress, it will take 162 years to close the gender gap in political empowerment and 169 years to close the economic participation and opportunity gender gap, per the report.

Here are the top 10 countries with the smallest gender gap. The US ranked 43rd.