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Italian actress Isabella RosselliniWikimedia Commons 
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Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen (R) dances alongside a carnival queen at the Mangueria samba school in Rio de Janeiro, February 20, 2004.Reuters 
Kurds in southeastern Turkey.Reuters 
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Chinese New Year 2012: Two male folk artists dressed as Chinese traditional women dance at a Spring Festival Temple Fair on the second day of the Chinese Lunar New Year at Longtan Park in Beijing January 24, 2012.Reuters 
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India, the place where girls are worshipped, has been ranked as the 'worst place to be a woman' among the world's biggest economies, according to a global poll of experts.
The global poll conducted by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation, surveyed 370 gender specialists from across the world.
The global poll ranked Canada as the best place, excluding the European Union economic group, followed by Germany, Britain, Australia and France in the top five lists.
The United States is ranked sixth due to concerns about reproductive rights and affordable healthcare.
On the other side of the scale, Saudi Arabia - where women are banned from driving and who were deprived of the right to vote until 2011 - is ranked the second-worst after India, followed by Indonesia, South Africa and Mexico.
"Infanticide, child marriage and slavery make India the worst," the poll concluded.
"India is incredibly poor, Saudi Arabia is very rich. But there is a commonality and that is unless you have some special access to privilege, you have a very different future, depending on whether you have an extra X chromosome, or a Y chromosome," Nicholas Kristof, journalist and author commented on the poll results.
The Gender Inequality Index (GII), which looks at the reproductive health, the labour market and empowerment of women through education and politics, has also reportedly ranked Saudi Arabia and India among the absolute worst places for women.
"In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour," one of those polled was quoted as saying.
The news service questioned professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, journalists and development specialists with expertise in gender issues to grade the 19 countries in terms of the overall best and worst place to be a woman, Reuters reported.
They graded the countries of the G20 in six groups based on their quality of health, liberty from violence, their contribution in politics, about the work place opportunities, access to various resources and freedom from trafficking and slavery.
Here is the list of the countries and their ranking:
1. Canada 2. Germany 3. Britain 4. Australia 5. France 6. United States 7. Japan 8. Italy 9. Argentina 10. South Korea 11. Brazil 12. Turkey 13. Russia 14. China 15. Mexico 16. South Africa 17. Indonesia 18. Saudi Arabia 19. India
