Hmm. Yeah you are right. The more I read about, the more it is clear that the Social progress ranking is a big fat lie.
Aside from access to education and work opportunities, the laws around woman's rights in UAE are horrible.
I have gone on to Social Progress index's website to try to determine where the discrepancy is and the statement:
$1:
Earlier this year, the Social Progress Index ranked the UAE No. 1 in the world for treating women with respect and equality.
is extremely deceptive.
The ranking is based on how bad they used to be compared to how bad they are now so, for example, the U.S. is ranked 35th and China is 8th.
My bad for not investigating further but I am going to have to put some blame on the author of this for a highly deceptive stat.