The Global Gender Gap Report 2022 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) was released in Geneva in July 2022. It was the 16th edition of the annual publication of the Global Gender Gap Report.
About Global Gender Gap Index:
The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 to benchmark progress towards gender parity and compare countries’ gender gaps across four dimensions:
- Economic Participation and Opportunity
- Educational Attainment
- Health and Survival
- Political Empowerment
The Global Gender Gap Index measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed).
India's performance in the Global Gender Gap Report 2022:
India was ranked 135th place in terms of gender parity, despite an improvement of five places since last year on better performance in areas of economic participation and opportunity.
According to the four key dimensions of the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, India ranks 146th in health and survival, 143rd in economic participation and opportunity, 107th in educational attainment and 48th in political empowerment.
» Within South Asia, India was ranked the sixth best on overall score after Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan. Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan scored worse than India.
» Only 11 countries are ranked below India on the index of 146 nations, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo, Iran and Chad being the worst-five.
India’s Neighboring Countries Ranking:
Bangladesh (71st), Nepal (96th), Sri Lanka (110th), Bhutan (126th), Pakistan (145)
Highlights of the Global Gender Gap Report 2022:
» The Global Gender Gap Index 2022 benchmarks 146 countries, providing a basis for robust crosscountry analysis. The cross-country comparisons aim to support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.
» In 2022, the global gender gap has been closed by 68.1%. At the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to reach full parity.
» Across the 146 countries covered by the 2022 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 95.8%, Educational Attainment by 94.4%, Economic Participation and Opportunity by 60.3% and Political Empowerment by 22%.
» Although no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top 10 economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps, with Iceland (90.8%) leading the global ranking.
- Iceland remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.
- Other Scandinavian countries such as Finland (86%, 2nd), Norway (84.5%, 3rd), New Zealand (84.1%, 4th) and Sweden (82.2%, 5th) feature in the top 5.
- Afghanistan (43.5%, 146th) is the worst-performing country in the gender gap report.
» Comparing this year’s results against last year’s by examining the 145 countries covered in both the 2021 and 2022 editions shows that the overall gender parity score rose from 67.9% to 68.1%.
» The Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex also increased from 58.7% to 60.3%, as did the Health and Survival subindex from 95.7% to 95.8%. The Educational Attainment subindex fell from 95.2% to 94.4% while Political Empowerment remained the same, at 22%.