"Any instance of women outperforming men is deemed good, regardless of how everyone in the country is actually doing.

Kay Hymowitz: Where Equal is Worse?:

Yet as the recently released 2013 entry proves, the Global Gender Gap report is a cultural more than a scientific document.

Though it makes use of hard data on men’s and women’s education, health, economic participation, and political empowerment in 133 countries, it is far from objective, as it is built on dubious assumptions about human flourishing. Any instance of women outperforming men is deemed good, regardless of how everyone in the country is actually doing. Setting aside absolute measures of wealth, education levels, longevity, and so forth, the WEF measures only the size of the gap between men and women within individual countries. All other questions about national well-being are irrelevant.