India climbs eight places to 127 in global gender index: WEF report

Source: The post is based on the article “India climbs eight places to 127 in global gender index: WEF report” published in The Hindu on 22ndJune 2023

What is the News?

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has released the Gender Gap Report, 2023.

What is the Global Gender Gap Report, 2023?

The Global Gender Gap Report has been released annually by the World Economic Forum (WEF) since 2006.

It measures gender parity in 146 countries and across four areas: 1) economic participation and opportunity 2) educational attainment 3) health and survival and 4) political empowerment.

What are the key findings of the report?

Globally: Iceland topped the ranking for the 14th consecutive year with 91.2% of its overall gender gap closed. It is also the only country with a score which is above 90%.

– The overall gender gap closed by a mere 0.3% compared to the previous year. The world would take 131 years to close the overall gender gap between men and women at the current rate of progress.

– In terms of overall gender parity, the Southern Asian region ranked second-lowest of the eight regions with 63.4%.

– The last five countries on the list – Pakistan (57.5%), Iran (57.5%), Algeria (57.3%), Chad (57%), and Afghanistan (40.5%) – have scored below 60 per cent.

India: India was ranked 127 among 146 countries in gender parity — up eight places from 2022. India was ranked 135 in 2022. 

– India had closed 64.3% of the overall gender gap. The country had improved by 1.4 percentage points from then, marking a partial recovery towards its 2020 parity level.

– However, the report underlined that India had reached only 36.7% parity in economic participation and opportunity. The country had attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education.

– In India, while there had been an uptick in parity in wages and income, the share of women in senior positions and technical roles had dropped slightly since the last edition, the report said.

– On political empowerment, India has registered 25.3% parity, with women making up 15.1% of MPs.

– Of the 117 countries with available data since 2017, 18 — including Bolivia (50.4%), India (44.4%) and France (42.3%) — have achieved women’s representation of over 40% in local governance.