These are the 10 most gay-friendly countries

Jul 8, 2015

Arwen Armbrecht

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Gender Inequality is affecting economies, industries and global issues

Stay up to date:

Gender Inequality

The Netherlands and Spain tie for most gay-friendly country in the world, according to a new Gallup Poll. Of those asked the question ‘Is the city/area where you live a good place to live for gay and lesbian people?’ 87% of people in both nations responded ‘yes’. Europe dominates the leaderboard taking 8 out of the top ten spots. But Canada comes in third and seventh-placed Uruguay does better than Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Worldwide, 780 million people live in countries that recognize either marriage or civil union between same-sex couples as a legal right. But there is still much work to be done for the 2.8 billion people who live in countries where being gay is illegal.

To keep up with the Agenda subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Author: Donald Armbrecht writes for Agenda.

Image: Dutch born Stephan Hengst (R) kisses his husband Patrick Decker who was born in U.S. after being married by Amsterdam’s Mayor Job Cohen on an official wedding boat during the Gay Pride Canal Parade in Amsterdam. REUTERS/Paul Vreeker/United Photos

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.