Which Countries Have the Best Women's Rights?
The discussion of women's rights is an important topic for Thunder Times (especially since we are a club of mostly women, literacy girl power ✊) and that raises the question: What countries have the best women’s rights? And where does Cambodia rank on the list?
To find the answer to this question I scoured several websites and ran into an issue: there's no definitive answer for “Which country has the best women's rights?”. This is because there’s no one definition of “women’s rights”. The phrase "women's rights” is an umbrella term that encompasses many factors, for example; voting rights, marriage rights, pay gaps, opportunities available, marriage rights, and land rights.
So what would you base the research off? The country with the most gender equality? A country where women have more rights than men? For this specification I decided to base my initial research off of overall gender equality, as I thought this would give the best idea for “women’s rights” under the umbrella term.
According to World Population Review, as of 2025, the top 5 countries for overall gender equality are;
- Iceland
- Finland
- Norway
- United Kingdom
- New Zealand
Now, some things to consider when looking at this list: firstly the list would be different if you use a different definition of women’s rights, secondly, these sorts of lists are forever changing and may be different in person than the data you get in a graph.
The World Population Review bases their ranking off these factors: “This report measures the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment, then gives each country a ranking between 0.000 (or 0%, the lowest possible gender equality) and 1.000 (100%, the highest possible gender equality).”
But what about Cambodia?
Now, it was a little more difficult to exactly place Cambodia on the list but, out of 146 countries ranked, Cambodia was the 43rd WORST country, putting it in position 103rd, with a score of 0.682.
Iceland, the country with the highest ranked gender equality, has a score of 0.926, which is honestly quite disappointing as even in 2025 (the year the ranking was based off), there is still not a single country with 100% gender equality. Meanwhile Finland, the second highest ranked country, has a score of 0.879, which is a relatively steep drop from first for an issue that has been fought for for decades.
So when will the gender gap finally close? According to World Population Review’s 2023 data, they predicted that it will take 131 years to close the gender gap worldwide. The measured category that has the largest gender gap (still as of 2023) appears in Political Empowerment, with only 22.1% of the gap closed. So if you want to help shorten that 131 year estimate then you know what to do ladies, get into politics.
Now to close off this women’s rights spiel, I offer some other related facts and stats:
- New Zealand was the first country to fully legalise women’s rights to vote, which happened in 1893.
- As of 2025, only three surveyed countries (Afganistan, Eritrea, and Vatican City) still don't allow women to vote, however, all other surveyed countries do allow women to vote (yippee).
- As of 2023, a majority of countries allow women the same rights to remarry as men, unfortunately Cambodia is not one of these countries.
- The UN’s universal declaration of human rights recognises the equality of men and women.
- This is the graph for Women’s Civil Liberties across the world as of 2024. Women’s Civil Liberties are measured based on the extent of women who are free from forced labour, have property rights, access to the justice system, and enjoy freedom of movement.
