FAQ
Is there a gender gap in Bhutan's happiness?
Yes, and it is statistically significant. The 2022 Gross National Happiness Survey — the first to disaggregate the index by gender at the level of significance — scored Bhutanese men at 0.814 on the GNH Index versus 0.762 for women, against a national 0.781. That 0.052-point gap (about 6.4% in relative terms) is flagged as highly significant (p < 0.001). The country that pioneered measuring wellbeing now has clear data that, by its own measure, half its population is less well.
The gap is not a quirk of one measure. Within the GNH Index’s nine domains, women score lower on education (fewer mean years of schooling), time use (more unpaid domestic and care work), living standards (lower asset ownership), knowledge, and trust in government performance. They score equal or higher on health, community vitality, cultural participation, spirituality, and ecology.
That spread is the point. The 0.052-point gap maps onto known structural inequalities — schooling, asset ownership, unpaid care, civic participation — rather than any single domain. A wellbeing index built to capture more than income has, for the first time, measured the gap precisely. The full breakdown is in Paradox #45.