n News: The Global Gender Gap Index for 2022 was released by the World Economic Forum.
Global Gender Gap Index
It benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions
Economic Participation and Opportunity,
Educational Attainment,
Health and Survival, and
Political Empowerment
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
Ranking
Although no country achieved full gender parity, the top 10 economies closed at least 80% of their gender gaps, with Iceland (90.8%) leading the global ranking.
Iceland is followed by Finland (86%, 2nd), Norway (84.5%, 3rd), New Zealand (84.1%, 4th), Sweden (82.2%, 5th), Rwanda (81.1%, 6th), Nicaragua (81%, 7th), Namibia (80.7%, 8th), Ireland (80.4%, 9th) and Germany (80.1%, 10th).
India was ranked at 135 out of 146 countries
India’s Performance
India has approximately 662 million (or 66.2 crore) women.
In 2022, India’s overall score has improved from 0.625 (in 2021) to 0.629.
India’s score of 0.629 is its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years.
India ranked poorly among its neighbours and is behind Bangladesh (71), Nepal (96), Sri Lanka (110), Maldives (117) and Bhutan (126).
Only Iran (143), Pakistan (145) and Afghanistan (146) perform worse than India in south Asia.
How India stands on different sub-indices:
Political Empowerment
This includes metrics such as the percentage of women in Parliament, the percentage of women in ministerial positions etc.
Of all the sub-indices, this is where India ranks the highest (48th out of 146).
Economic Participation and Opportunity
This includes metrics such as the percentage of women who are part of the labour force, wage equality for similar work, earned income etc
India ranks a lowly 143 out of the 146 countries in contention even though its score has improved over 2021 from 0.326 to 0.350.
Educational Attainment
This sub-index includes metrics such as literacy rate and the enrolment rates in primary, secondary and tertiary education. Here India ranks 107th out of 146.
Health and Survival
This includes two metrics: the sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy. In this metric, India is ranked the last (146) among all the countries.
