Singapore-based research company ValueChampion published the results of a study of the safest countries in the Asia-Pacific region for women on Tuesday.
This study focuses on the healthcare, safety and opportunities for women living in 14 major countries in the region.
"To rank the countries, we used a weighted average that weighted safety the most, followed by healthcare and opportunity. The safety ranking examines legal protections and quality life of a country," wrote the company's research analyst Anastassia Evlanova.
Singapore and New Zealand are said to be the least dangerous places for women to live as they score consistently well on major global indices such as the 2018 Global Peace Index and 2018 Human Development Index.
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Australia ranks third due to comparatively less crime, the availability of healthcare and access to education, employment opportunities and legal recourse for women.
"Sexual violence and harassment against women are criminalised in all cases, meaning women have full legal options against any type of gender-specific attacks," wrote Ms Evlanova.
Yet the Philippines, Indonesia and India were in the bottom three of the list as these countries were found to have below-average access to healthcare, lax laws regarding women's safety, poor access to family planning resources and overall inequality.
"Despite government interventions and attempts to enact laws that protect women's safety, deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes either due to cultural or religious beliefs led to women fearing for their well-being more often than in other countries on our list," wrote Ms Evlanova.
In the Philippines, one in four women aged 15-49 has experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence committed by their husbands or partners, according to the 2019 National Demographic and Health Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, as quoted by a Global Sisters Report.
While in Indonesia, efforts to pass the bill on the Elimination of Sexual Violence (P-KS) in the House of Representatives has not been successful, even five years since a government commission declared Indonesia to be in an emergency of sexual violence.
Indonesian female activists form a banner reading 'Stop Sexual Harassment' during a peace rally against sexual violence on children and on women in Banda Aceh, 11/05/2016. Source: AAP
Commissioner of Indonesia's National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) Mariana Amiruddin said that her organisation supports the bill because the number instances of sexual violence against women continues to increase every year.
"Even more, sexual violence is now of a broader dimension, now in online cyberspace, also a high rate of rape of people with dissability," said Ms Amiruddinas quoted by detiknews. "So it is not in the interests of the commission, but for the benefit of the Indonesian women's community [that the bill is passed]."
India which sits in the lowest rank on the list is even said to be the world’s most dangerous country for women, according to a poll of global experts, due to the high risk of sexual violence and the percentage of women forced into slave labour.
The ValueChampion research team claimed their research indicates that the reporting of some crimes and safety measures in the nations considered may be imperfect.
"For example, we found that in every country we analysed, sexual harassment and domestic violence crimes were under-reported," wrote Ms Evlanova.
"Because of this, we do not truly know the actual number of crimes committed against women on a daily basis and thus could not take into consideration these rates in our analysis beyond empirical evidence."
