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WEF’s global gender gap report

Topics Covered: Women related issues.

WEF’s global gender gap report:

Context:

World Economic Forum has released the Global Gender Gap Report 2021.

India specific findings:

  1. Overall Ranking: India has fallen 28 places- it is now ranked 140 among 156 countries.
  2. Among Neighbours: It is now one of the worst performers in South Asia, trailing behind neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
  3. Political empowerment: India has declined on the political empowerment index as well by 13.5 percentage points.
  4. In the index of education attainment, India has been ranked at 114.
  5. India has fared the worst on “Health and Survival”, which includes the sex ratio, and economic participation of women.
  6. The estimated earned income of women in India is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.

Global Scenario:

  • For the 12th time, Iceland is the most gender-equal country in the world.
  • The top 10 most gender-equal countries include Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Rwanda, Sweden, Ireland and Switzerland.
  • Many countries have fared worse in this year’s rankings compared to last year’s, on account of economic performance.
  • The gender gap in political empowerment remains the largest: women represent only 26.1 per cent of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6 per cent of over 3,400 ministers worldwide.
  • In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of state, as of January 15, 2021.
  • Bangladesh is “the only country where more women have held head-of-state positions than men in the past 50 years.
  • The countries with the largest gender gaps in economic participation include Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

About the Global Gender Gap Report:

First published in 2006.

It benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four dimensions:

  1. Economic Participation and Opportunity,
  2. Educational Attainment,
  3. Health and Survival and
  4. Political Empowerment.

Over the Index, the highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality).

InstaLinks:

Prelims Link:

  1. About the Gender Gap Report.
  2. How are countries ranked?
  3. India’s performance.
  4. India and neighbours.
  5. Global Scenario.

Mains Link:

Comment on India’s performance in the latest Global Gender Gap Report.

Sources: the Hindu.