Women, Thinking About Relocating?

In honor of International Women’s Day, Foreign Policy has a roundup of five surprisingly good places to be a woman.  The Philippines, Spain, South Africa/Lesotho, Latvia, and Cuba all make their list.

While it may be hard to believe that women fare well in the very same country that hosted a “Blonde Weekend” back in 2009, Latvian women are excelling professionally: “As of 2010, women constituted 71 percent of the Baltic state’s university graduates, 50 percent of its Supreme Court judges, and 45 percent of those employed in its research and development sector. Latvia’s first female president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, oversaw Latvia’s entrance into the European Union in 2004.”

The Philippines’ record on gender equality is particularly impressive of late:

Not only does the Philippines appear eighth overall on WEF’s list, but it ranks first in “educational attainment” and “health and survival” and was the only Asian country to close the gender gap in those categories in 2011. Just this week, the country’s Senate passed a bill aimed at ending gender discrimination in the workplace. A 2009 “Magna Carta of Women” promises that the state will “provide the necessary mechanisms to enforce and guarantee the realization of women’s rights.

The “list” in question is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report of 2011.  The United States is ranked 17th.