Malta ranked 34th best country for women in 2019 liveability index

Malta has been ranked the 34th best country to live in for women overall, and the second best when it comes to women’s health, according to a liveability index.

The 2019 Women’s Liveability Index - which analysed data from 100 countries relating to infrastructure, inequality, legislation and work balance to determine the best places from women to live in - placed Norway in the top spot.

The study was carried out by Nestpick, an aggregator search engine for long-term furnished apartment rentals and rooms, which also carries out studies about what makes certain cities or countries better for different demographics.

It ranked Malta 34th out of 100 overall, with a total score of 7.036 out of 10.

The ranking for Malta. Where scores are out of 10, higher scores are better. (Source: https://www.nestpick.com/womens-liveability-index-2019/)

The country rankings are based on a number of individually-scored categories examining: the number of women working at various levels; safety, health and education infrastructure; the pay gap; women’s legislation, abortion legality, maternity leave length, and the year women’s suffrage was introduced; as well as living standards.

Norway was rated the most liveable country for women, with high safety, health and educational scores, high overall living standards and the strongest equality legislation.

Sweden and Canada came second and third respectively, with Sweden ranking third overall for women in work and Canada placing first overall in the category related to the safety, health and education infrastructure for women.

Malta with second highest health score

Malta managed to obtain the second highest women's health infrastructure score - 9.51 - out of all the countries surveyed. Only Norway managed a better score, with 9.56.

Moreover, Malta also managed a top 15 place when it comes to the overall infrastructure category - which Canada topped - obtaining a rank of 11th.

The top 20 most liveable countries for women according to the index. (Source: https://www.nestpick.com/womens-liveability-index-2019/)

The index’s categories included factors such as domestic violence rates, female life expectancy, contraceptive prevalence and female literary rates. Female sanitary product tax rates, human trafficking and divorce laws are also factored in.

As part of the research, female journalists from the 100 countries were polled asking how they would rate life for women in their country, as well as which factors are most important to them.

Safety, education and health were overwhelmingly voted as the most significant, so, to reflect this, the final weighting of the index was scored to give them more importance.