About Global Gender Gap Index:
- It is an annual index designed to measure gender equality.
- It benchmarks gender-based gaps in four areas: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.
- It is released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
- It is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006.
- Highlights of 2024 Report
- India’s gender parity score stands at just 64.1 per cent, placing it among the lowest-ranked countries in the South Asian region.
- In educational attainment, India scored 97.1%, reflecting gains in female literacy and tertiary education enrolment.
- One dimension where India increases parity is in Economic Participation and Opportunity, where its score improves by 0.9 per cent to 40.7 percent.
- India also records higher parity in health and survival, driven by improved scores in sex ratio at birth and in healthy life expectancy.
- India recorded a slight drop in political empowerment, with parity dropping by 0.6 points since the previous edition. Female representation in Parliament fell from 14.7 percent to 13.8 percent in 2025
- Iceland retains the world’s most gender-equal economy for the 16th consecutive year, closing 92.6% of the gender gap – the only economy to reach 90% parity.
- European countries account for eight of the top ten rankings; Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have all been in the top ten since 2006.
- The bottom 10 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2025—led by Pakistan, Sudan, Chad, and Iran—continue to show the widest gender disparities globally.
