The relationship between democracy and inequality between the
sexes  ON SEPTEMBER 25th Saudi Arabia, the world's seventh
least-democratic country according to the Economist Intelligence
Unit, our sister company, announced that from 2015 it would
allow women to vote and stand in municipal elections. Women have
a particularly hard time in Saudi Arabia, which was the last
country with some elections to deny women the vote. They must
seek permission from a male guardian (often their husband or
father, but sometimes their son) before they work, travel and
marry, and they are not allowed to drive. Charting the
relationship between democracy and the level of inequality
between sexes (measured by the UN's gender-inequality index)
reveals a strong relationship between the two (an of 46%). But
those expecting a woman's lot to improve now some democratic
concessions have been made should look at the outliers: in both
India and Papua New Guinea, countries with high levels of
democracy, inequality between the sexes remain