About Global Gender Gap Index 2026:
- It is an annual index designed to measure gender equality.
- It is released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
- It benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (subindexes): Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
- Since launching in 2006, it is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time.
- Global Gender Gap Index 2026 Highlights:
- Globally, 2 percent of the gender gap has now been closed, up by 0.4 percentage points over the last year.
- Iceland is still the world’s number one, with 93 percent of its gender gap closed.
- Finland and Norway follow with 87.2 percent and 85.7 percent, respectively.
- Namibia is fourth, followed by the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia, Germany, and Ireland.
- Australia cracked the top 10 for the first time.
- Across the 143 economies covered in both the 2025 and 2026 editions, the overall score increased by 0.4 percentage points.
- Education recorded the largest increase year on year, rising from 95.3 percent to 96.9 percent.
- Economic participation score increased from 61.3 percent to 61.7 percent, and health and survival improved from 96.1 percent to 96.2 percent.
- Political empowerment, however, moved in the opposite direction, sliding down from 22.5 percent to 22.1 percent.
- India stands at 131st spot, with 5 percent.
- Only 14 countries ranked below India on the index of 145 countries. These include Papua New Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Mali, Algeria, and Congo.
- Chad was the lowest-ranked country in the index, with Iran and Pakistan joining it in the bottom three.
- Overall, India's gender parity increased by 4.3 percentage points since 2006, primarily due to gains in educational attainment.
- In the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, India reported a2 percent parity score, 0.5 higher than the previous edition but 3.5 percentage points lower from its best result in 2013.
