GLOBAL
GENDER INDEX - REPORTS AND INDICES
News:
India climbs eight places to 127 in global gender index, says
WEF report
What's
in the news?
●
India was ranked at 127 out of 146 countries in terms of gender parity — an
improvement of eight places from last year, according to the annual Gender Gap
Report, 2023 of the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Key
takeaways:
●
India was ranked 135 in the report’s 2022
edition.
Findings
of the report:
1.
Top performers:
●
While no country has yet achieved full
gender parity, the top nine countries have closed at least 80 per cent of their
gap.
●
Iceland
is the most gender-equal country in the world for the 14th consecutive year and
the only one to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap, according to the
report.
2.
India's neighbours:
●
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.
3.
Top political empowerers:
●
Out of the 117 countries with available
data since 2017, 18 countries — including Bolivia (50.4%), India (44.4%) and
France (42.3 %) have achieved women’s
representation of over 40% in local governance
4.
Skewed sex ratio:
●
The report said that for Vietnam,
Azerbaijan, India and China, the relatively low overall rankings on the Health
and Survival sub-index is explained by skewed sex ratios at birth.
5.
South Asia specific:
●
Overall, the Southern Asian region has
achieved 63.4% gender parity, the
second-lowest of the eight regions.
●
The score in South Asia has risen by 1.1
percentage points since the last edition on the basis of the constant sample of
countries covered since 2006.
●
The improvement is partially attributable
to the rise in scores of populous countries such as India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh
India
specific findings:
Economic
Empowerment:
1.
Gender gap in economic participation:
●
It had closed 64.3% of the overall gender
gap but had reached only 36.7% parity in economic participation.
2. Wages and Incomes:
●
In India, there had been uptick in parity
in wages and income.
3.
Decline in women taking senior positions:
●
The share of women in senior positions and
technical roles had dropped slightly since the last edition.
Educational
Empowerment:
1.
Gender parity in enrolment of education:
●
The report said that the country had
attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education.
Political
Empowerment:
1.
Improvement in political empowerment:
●
On political empowerment, India has registered
25.3% parity, with women representing 15.1% of parliamentarians - the highest
for the country since the inaugural report in 2006.
●
India has achieved women’s representation
of over 40% in local governance (44.4%).
Health
Empowerment:
1.
Improvement in sex ratio:
●
For India, the 1.9 percentage point
improvement in sex ratio at birth had driven up parity after more than a decade
of slow progress.
2.
Improvement in gender parity at birth:
●
Compared with top scoring countries that
register a 94.4% gender parity at birth, the indicator stands at 92.7% for
India (albeit an improvement over the last edition) and below 90% for Vietnam,
China and Azerbaijan.
Go
back to basics:
Global
Gender Gap Index:
●
It is released by the World Economic Forum.
Dimensions:
●
The Global Gender Gap index benchmarks the
current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions such as
○
Economic Participation and Opportunity
○
Educational Attainment
○
Health and Survival
○
Political Empowerment
●
According to the WEF it is the
longest-standing index, which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over
time since its inception in 2006.
●
On each of the four sub-indices as well as
on the overall index the GGG index provides scores between 0 and 1, where 1
shows full gender parity and 0 is complete imparity.
●
The cross-country comparisons aim to
support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.