Gender Gap Report, 2023: ‘World Economic Forum’
Recently the World Economic Forum (WEF) has released the annual Gender Gap Report, 2023.
Key Findings of the Index
India ranks 127 out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality. There has been an improvement of eight places from last year.
India was ranked 135th in the 2022 edition of the report. The country has improved by 1.4 percentage points and eight places since the last edition, indicating partial improvement towards the 2020 parity level.
India has achieved equality in enrollment at all levels of education.
India has reduced the overall gender gap by 64.3%. However, it was pointed out that India has reached only 36.7% equality level on economic participation and opportunity.
India’s neighbors Pakistan at 142nd, Bangladesh at 59th, China at 107th, Nepal at 116th, Sri Lanka at 115th and Bhutan at 103rd rank in the index.
According to the 2023 Global Gender Gap Index, no country has yet achieved full gender equality. However, the top nine countries (Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania) have closed at least 80% of their gender gap.
According to the report, it will take 131 years to reach full gender parity at the current rate of closing the gender gap.
For the 14th year in a row, Iceland (91.2%) holds the top spot. It remains the only country to have reduced its gender inequality gap by more than 90%. The global top five includes three other Nordic countries- Norway (87.9%, 2nd), Finland (86.3%, 3rd) and Sweden (81.5%, 5th) – a country in the East Asia and Pacific region – New Zealand (85.6%, 4th).
The report noted that in India, while pay and income equality has increased, the share of women in senior positions and technical roles has declined slightly since the last census.
India has recorded 25.3% equality in terms of political empowerment, with women representing 15.1% of parliamentarians. This is the highest for the country since the first gender gap report was released in 2006.
The Global Gender Gap Index annually measures the current status and development of gender equality across four key dimensions (economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment).
Source – The Hindu
