We already knew from the World Economic Forum's 2011 Global Gender Gap Report that, according to criteria like health, economic and educational participation, and political empowerment, Iceland is the best place overall to be a woman right now. But what if you're a woman extremely interested in making a lot of cash and not at all interested in, say, being a journalist (the two do seem to be mutually exclusive). You're better off doing the latter in the Caribbean and the former in Luxembourg, according to an investigation conducted by the U.K newspaper The Independent.
The paper delved deeper into the WEF's data to examine where women have the most opportunity and best chances at success in specific pursuits -- the best places to be a mother, to earn money and to be a female athlete, for example. According to The Independent's analysis, the place where women do the least unpaid work -- especially compared to men -- was Denmark:
"Women in Denmark have more time for leisure, spending only 57 more minutes each day on unpaid work than men"
the paper reported.
In the last year, a debate has raged in the U.S. over how much more unpaid work women really do than men. In her bestselling 1989 book "The Second Shift," Arlie Russell Hochschild argued that women employed fulltime still went home to do the vast majority of the housework. Then, as Ruth Davis Konigsberg reported in a TIME cover story in 2011, a University of Marylang sociologist named Suzanne Bianchi found that the unpaid work gap wasn't as extreme as Hochschild had suggested.
Regardless, U.S. women have it far better than Mexican women in this department. According to The Independent, they spend four hours and 21 minutes each day doing unpaid work.
Check out The Independent to read the best places for women to live long, leave their husbands, hold political office and more, and for case studies from each category.
SLIDESHOW: The 20 Countries With The Most Gender Equality -- And The 10 With The Least
Best Places To Be A Woman
Source: 2011 Global Gender Gap Report