India improves gender parity ranking

New Delhi: India ranks 127 out of 146 countries in terms of gender parity, as per the World Economic Forum's annual Gender Gap Report, 2023. The present ranking is an improvement of 1.4 percentage points and eight positions since last year when the WEF ranked India 135 out of 146 countries in its 2022 report.

India has closed 64.3 per cent of the overall gender gap, the report said. However, it underlined that India has reached only 36.7 per cent parity on economic participation and opportunity. The country has attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education, it said.

The report said that while India has attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education it has reached only 36.7% parity on economic participation and opportunity. While on the one hand, there are upticks in parity in wages and income, on the other hand, the shares of women in senior positions and technical roles have dropped slightly since the last edition.

On political empowerment, the report said, India has registered 25.3% parity, with women representing 15.1% of parliamentarians, the highest for India since the inaugural 2006 edition of the WEF report. On the health and survival index, the improvement in the sex ratio at birth by 1.9 percentage points to 92.7% has driven up parity after more than a decade of slow progress.

The index ranked India's neighbours Pakistan at 142, Bangladesh at 59, China at 107, Nepal at 116, Sri Lanka at 115 and Bhutan at 103.

According to the 2023 Global Gender Gap Index, no country has yet achieved full gender parity, although the top nine countries -- Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania -- have closed at least 80% of their gap. For the 14th year running, Iceland (91.2%) takes the top position. It also continues to be the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.

Southern Asia has achieved 63.4% gender parity, the second-lowest score of the eight regions. The score has risen by 1.1 percentage points since the last edition, which can be partially attributed to the rise in scores of populous countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the report said. Along with Bhutan, these are the countries in Southern Asia that have seen an improvement of 0.5 percentage points or more in their scores since the last edition.

Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka are the best-performing countries in the region, while Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan are at the bottom of both the regional and global ranking tables.

Ranking fifth out of eight regions, Southern Asia has closed 96% of the gender gap on the Educational Attainment subindex. India, Sri Lanka and Maldives have the highest regional parity scores, while. Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan have achieved less than 95% parity. Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and India are either at parity or close to parity in enrolment in secondary education. Southern Asia has the second-lowest regional parity score on the Health and Survival subindex, at 95.3%. Based on the constant sample of countries covered by the index since 2006, that is a 1.1 percentage-point improvement since the last edition. Pakistan, India, the Maldives and Nepal have improved by varying degrees. All four countries have bettered their sex ratios at birth, with Pakistan and India making the most improvement. No country except Sri Lanka has attained full parity in healthy life expectancy.

Out of the 117 countries with available data since 2017, 18 countries - including Bolivia (50.4 per cent), India (44.4 per cent) and France (42.3 per cent) - have achieved women's representation of over 40 per cent in local governance. For India, the 1.9 percentage point improvement in the sex ratio at birth has driven up parity after more than a decade of slow progress, the report said.

However, it also said that for Vietnam, Azerbaijan, India and China, the relatively low overall rankings on the Health and Survival sub-index are explained by skewed sex ratios at birth. In terms of the share of women in ministerial positions, 75 countries have 20 per cent or fewer female ministers. Populous countries such as India, Turkey and China have less than seven per cent of women ministers while those like Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon have none.