Canada

Canada consistently ranks in the top five of the nearly 200 countries evaluated by the United Nations Development Index and Gender Development Index. As of 2001, one in five Canadian women was born abroad; 58 percent of new arrivals come from Asia and the Middle East. Most Canadian women (82 percent) claim French or English, the country's official languages, as their native tongue. The next most popular language is Chinese (3 percent). As in other developed countries, birth rates have plummeted since the 1950s, divorce rates have gone up, and substantially more women are likely to have a university degree. Today, women make up 57 percent of full-time university students-up 20 percent since the 1970s. Compared with men, however, women are still less likely to ...