Description

Copyright infringement not intended

Picture Courtesy: THENEWSMINUTE

Context:

The World Economic Forum recently published the 19th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report for 2025.

About the Global Gender Gap Index

It assesses how close countries are to achieving gender parity (equality between men and women). It assesses gender parity across four key dimensions:

Economic Participation and Opportunity => This includes labor force participation, wage equality for similar work, and estimated earned income.
Educational Attainment => This covers literacy rates and enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.
Health and Survival => This dimension is measured through the sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy.
Political Empowerment => This looks at the representation of women in parliament, ministerial positions, and the number of years with a female head of state.

Scores range from 0 to 1, where 1 signifies full gender parity. The index helps countries identify areas for policy intervention and prioritize efforts to close gender gaps.

Iceland continues to hold the top position, followed by Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

India's Performance

India ranks 131st out of 148 countries, a slip of two places from 129th in 2024.

India's overall gender parity score shows a slight improvement of 0.3% points, reaching 64.4%.

The report suggests that the relative decline in ranking is due to the better performance of other countries.

In the South Asian region, India is ranked fifth, behind Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

Key Dimensions	Performance Highlights
Economic Participation and Opportunity	- Economic participation improved marginally by 0.9% to 40.7%. - Parity in estimated earned income rose. - Labour-force participation remains at 45.9%, India's highest ever.
Educational Attainment	- India scored 97.1%, indicating positive shifts in female shares for literacy and tertiary education enrolment.
Health and Survival	- Higher gender parity driven by improved sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy. - However, parity achieved despite a reduction in both male and female life expectancy.
Political Empowerment	- Slight drop in score (-0.6 points). - Female representation in parliament fell from 14.7% to 13.8%. - Women in ministerial roles dropped from 6.5% to 5.6%.