The Burrow
Aug 27, 2024
Women’s health has often taken a backseat to men’s health throughout history, despite evidently being equally as important. While many countries have worked to destigmatise women’s health and increase women’s access to healthcare in recent years, there still exists a ‘health gap’ between men and women globally.
As experts in health insurance, we wanted to get a picture of women’s health across the world, and which countries have the best statistics regarding women’s health. We gathered data for a range of different factors for 167 different countries around the globe.
Here are the results.
South Korea was ranked the best country for women’s health with a score of 8.50/10. South Korea had the lowest chance of premature death from a non-communicable disease (NCD) at 4%, and the lowest number of women suffering from ill-weight and anaemia (14.4%). South Korea also had the second-highest average healthy life expectancy for women at 74.7 years.
Behind South Korea with a difference of 0.01 between the scores is Singapore, which scored 8.49/10. It had the third-lowest chance of premature death from NCDs at 7%, and the third-lowest percentage of women with ill mental health (2.1% of the total female population). Like South Korea, Singapore has the second-highest average healthy life expectancy for women at 74.7 years.
Japan is a nation renowned for healthy lifestyles and was ranked the third-healthiest nation for women at 7.87/10. Japan had the highest healthy average life expectancy at 75.5 years and the lowest number of women with ill mental health at 1.9%. Areas that held Japan back from having a higher score overall was a higher per capita rate of female specific cancers (breast cancer, cervical cancer and ovarian cancer) at 58.9 per 100,000, and a higher percentage of women with unmet contraceptive needs (12% of women aged 15-49).
The table below shows the scores and data for the top 20 countries in the index, based on their overall index score.
| Ranking | Country name | Average healthy life expectancy (years) | Chance of premature death due to NCD | Percentage of female population with ill mental health | Maternal death rate per 100,000 births | Women’s cancers per capita | Universal Health Cover Index score | Percentage of women with ill weight/anaemia | Percentage of women aged 15-49 with an unmet contraceptive need | Index score |
| 1 | South Korea | 74.7 | 4% | 2.4% | 12 | 40.3 | 89 | 14.4% | 6% | 8.50 |
| 2 | Singapore | 74.7 | 7% | 2.1% | 8 | 51.8 | 89 | 15.2% | 6% | 8.49 |
| 3 | Japan | 75.5 | 6% | 1.9% | 3 | 58.9 | 83 | 16.0% | 12% | 7.87 |
| 4 | China | 70.0 | 11% | 2.5% | 29 | 27.4 | 81 | 16.2% | 4% | 7.79 |
| 5 | Slovenia | 72.5 | 8% | 2.9% | 0 | 63.1 | 84 | 23.9% | 4% | 7.71 |
| 6 | Finland | 72.0 | 7% | 3.5% | 4 | 71.2 | 86 | 19.1% | 3% | 7.53 |
| 7 | Slovakia | 70.8 | 10% | 2.7% | 2 | 56.0 | 82 | 23.6% | 5% | 7.50 |
| 8 | Thailand | 70.6 | 11% | 2.6% | 37 | 31.9 | 82 | 21.7% | 4% | 7.47 |
| 9 | Poland | 71.3 | 12% | 2.2% | 3 | 56.7 | 82 | 24.1% | 6% | 7.39 |
| 10 | Canada | 72.0 | 8% | 3.4% | 8 | 63.6 | 91 | 22.5% | 3% | 7.38 |
| 11 | Switzerland | 72.8 | 6% | 4.7% | 7 | 57.2 | 86 | 19.1% | 4% | 7.34 |
| 12 | Czech Republic | 70.6 | 10% | 2.7% | 5 | 57.0 | 84 | 24.9% | 4% | 7.32 |
| 13 | Austria | 71.9 | 8% | 4.2% | 2 | 51.8 | 85 | 19.8% | 5% | 7.30 |
| 14 | Norway | 71.6 | 7% | 4.3% | 4 | 65.3 | 87 | 20.3% | 3% | 7.20 |
| 15 | Iceland | 72.3 | 7% | 3.6% | 3 | 48.9 | 89 | 19.3% | * | 7.19 |
| 16 | Estonia | 71.7 | 9% | 2.9% | 8 | 53.5 | 79 | 23.8% | 5% | 7.18 |
| 17 | Vietnam | 68.3 | * | 2.0% | 43 | 20.7 | 68 | 18.3% | 4% | 7.16 |
| 18 | Sweden | 72.1 | 7% | 4.1% | 7 | 57.1 | 85 | 19.9% | 6% | 7.12 |
| 19 | Denmark | 71.4 | 9% | 3.8% | 2 | 69.0 | 82 | 19.7% | 5% | 7.01 |
| 20 | Belgium | 71.3 | 8% | 3.7% | 5 | 71.5 | 86 | 20.7% | 6% | 7.00 |
*Data was missing for this country in that particular data set. For the full list of all 167 countries, click here.
Australia was ranked 29th out of 167 with a score of 6.80/10. Australia did well in terms of chance of premature death from NCDs (a 7% chance), a low maternal death rate of two per 100,000 live births (the third-best in the world, tying with Denmark, Austria, Belarus and Japan), and a high Universal Health Cover Index score of 87/100, the fourth-best score for this factor.
While Australia had some good scores in other categories, the nation did not do well regarding women’s mental health and women’s cancers. Australia had the fifth-highest percentage of women with ill mental health (4.6% of all women), and the 17th highest per capita rate of women with female specific cancers (62.7 per 100,000).
It is possible that some women are being misdiagnosed or are going unreported in the datasets, and there are a variety of different reasons for this. There are socio-cultural and economic factors that will differ between countries, and these can affect women’s ability to prevent negative health conditions, have health conditions diagnosed, and access necessary treatment.
For example, there was a clear trend where the top performing countries on the index all had high incidence rates of women’s cancers, while the worst performing countries had the lowest rate of women’s cancers. This is likely due to better healthcare, awareness and testing making these cancers appear more prominent than nations that have the resources to identify case numbers more accurately.
Misdiagnoses do happen and research reveals that it overwhelmingly affects women more than men.1 Despite improvements in many countries recently when it comes to supporting women’s medical concerns, this issue has been around for centuries and still impacts many women all across the world.
For women wanting more options when it comes to their health care, Compare the Market’s Executive General Manager of Health Insurance, Steven Spicer, said health insurance can provide more choice and a range of benefits they might not have access to beforehand.
“With an appropriate level of hospital cover, you can avoid public waiting lists for surgery, have your choice of available doctor and specialist for inpatient admissions, and have greater control over when and where you receive treatment,” Mr Spicer said.
“Depending on your policy inclusions, you can claim a benefit on a range of surgeries and inpatient hospital treatments or allied health services outside the hospital such as optical, dental, physio and more.”
To calculate the index, we gathered 14 data points for 167 difference countries. Each country was given a score between 0 and 10 for each data point, with countries that performed better in that category receiving a higher score. Once this was done for all data points, these scores were averaged to create a final index score for each country.
The data points for anxiety, depression and eating disorders were averaged together to create one data point. This was also done for breast cancer, cervical cancer and ovarian cancer, and for the percentage of underweight women, overweight women and women with anaemia.
For countries where data was not available for a particular factor, an average figure was taken from all other countries.
The way these data points were scored and sourced are detailed below.
Additional sources: