While New Zealand enjoys the 5th place among the Scandinavian countries dominating the top group, it is a shame that Japan is stuck at the 94th place near the bottom along with Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
As New Zealand is in the final count down to the Rugby World Cup 2011, let's look at how those teams compete in this regard:
Rankings of Equality between men and women in The Global Gender Gap Report 2010 for the RWC 2011 Teams:
1 New Zealand 5
2 Ireland 6
3 South Africa 12
4 England/Scotland/Wales 15 (as United Kingdom)
7 USA 19
8 Canada 20
9 Australia 23
10 Namibia 25
11 Argentine 29
12 Russia 45
13 France 46
14 Romania 67
15 Italy 74
16 Georgia 88
17 Japan 94
18 Fiji 108
-- Samoa (no data)
-- Tonga (no data)
It looks like that the greater a country has equality between men and women, the stronger its rugby team is.
Ray Murakami
