Norway’s high global standing in gender equality should come as no surprise, given its consistently excellent rankings in world indices for prosperity and human development.

It took second place for gender development out of 144 countries last year and first place out of 188 countries in 2016, and had the highest gender-parity score out of 95 countries in 2015, according to studies by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the UN Development Programme and the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), respectively.