Singapore ranked 4th in the Index of Women's Advancement

Australia outranked 14 markets in Asia/Pacfic with an overall score of 83.8.

According to the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Women's Advancement, Eleven of the 14 markets have been seeing increases in their overall Index scores for the last three years at least, with India and Korea, despite their overall low scores relative to the other Asia/Pacific markets, showing growth since 2006.

The MasterCard Worldwide Index of Women’s Advancement is part of a sustained effort by MasterCard to measure the socioeconomic level of women in relation to men across Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa. This year, it has been refreshed and updated to be a more inclusive, robust indicator of women’s advancement across the region.

Singapore had an overall score of 76.8, a few points higher than Hong Kong which scored 71.2.

Singapore is seen as an encouraging location for women business or government leaders. Across the 14 Asia/Pacific markets, Philippines was the only market that had achieved gender parity in business or government leadership. New Zealand (76.6), Australia (74.1), and Singapore (67.0) also had a reasonably high proportion of women to men in business/government leadership positions, while Japan (14.6), Korea (18.9) and China (24.1) scores especially low in this category.