- In the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2023, India climbed eight places to 127th out of 146 nations.
- Improvement in India’s ranking beginning in 2022, with a partial recovery to parity levels by 2020.
What exactly is the Global Gender Gap Report?
- The Global Gender Gap (GGG) Report is a metric for measuring gender equality.
- The World Economic Forum originally released it in 2006.
Key Analysis Topics:
- Economic involvement and opportunity: Looks at wage levels, workforce engagement, and access to high-skilled jobs.
- Educational achievement measures both genders’ access to basic and higher education.
- Political empowerment is a measure of women’s representation in decision-making processes.
- Health and survival: Takes into consideration life expectancy and the sex ratio, while accounting for variances in death rates.
- The GGG index assigns a score between 0 and 1 to each of the four sub-indices as well as the overall index, with 1 representing full gender parity and 0 representing complete imparity.
- It is the longest-running index, having been tracking progress towards closing these inequalities since its debut in 2006.
India’s Position and Progress
- India was ranked 135 in 2022, a gain of 1.4 percentage points from its 2020 parity level.
- India has closed 64.3% of the global gender gap, demonstrating success in a variety of categories.
- However, India’s economic participation and opportunity attained only 36.7% parity.
- Enrollment in India has reached parity at all levels of schooling.
Regional Context and Comparison
- Pakistan was ranked 142, Bangladesh was ranked 59, China was ranked 107, Nepal was ranked 116, Sri Lanka was ranked 115, and Bhutan was ranked 103.
- Iceland remains the most gender-equal country, with the gender gap reduced by more than 90%.
- Southern Asia has the second-lowest gender parity of the eight regions, with 63.4%.
India’s Challenges and Areas of Concern:
- Despite some progress in wage equity, women’s presence in senior and technical jobs has fallen.
- Political empowerment in India was 25.3%, with women constituting 15.1% of MPs.
- Notably, 18 countries, including India, have achieved women’s representation in local government of more than 40%.
- Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani emphasised the importance of women’s participation in local government organisations, which was recognised by the WEF.
- After more than a decade, India’s sex ratio at birth improved by 1.9 percentage points, contributing to increasing parity.
Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-climbs-eight-places-to-127-in-global-gender-index-says-wef-report/articleshow/101162655.cms#:~:text=The%20report%20stated%2C%20%22For%20the,gap%20by%2022.1%20per%20cent.%22