In News:

• The Global Gender Gap Index for 2022 has been released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
• The index ranks India at 135 out of 146 countries. In 2021, India was ranked 140 out of 156 countries.

What’s in Today’s Article:

• Global Gender Gap report – About, methodology
• News Summary

Global Gender Gap report

• The Global Gender Gap(GGG) report is published annually by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The first report was published in 2006.
  • The report also includes Global Gender Gap Index.
• The index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions. These dimensions are:
  • Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
• It also tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time.

Methodology

• 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.

News Summary

• India ranks 135 among a total of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022, published by WEF.

Key Highlights:

• Time to reach gender parity
  • As per the report, it will take another 132 years (compared to 136 years in 2021) to close the gender gap.
    • This is due to the continued disruption caused by the Covid pandemic.
  • South Asia will take the longest to reach gender parity, which is estimated to be likely in 197 years.
• Top performers
  • Although no country achieved full gender parity, the top 10 economies closed at least 80% of their gender gaps.
  • Iceland (90.8%) is leading the global ranking. It was the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.
  • Iceland is followed by Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden.
  • 
• Performance of India’s neighbours
  • India also ranks 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.

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 (135th) global gender gap score has oscillated between 0.593 and 0.683 since the index was first compiled.
• In 2022, India scored 0.629, which is its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years.
• 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).
  • However, notwithstanding its rank, its score is quite low at 0.267.
  • Some of the best ranking countries in this category score much better.
    • g., Iceland is ranked 1 with a score of 0.874 and Bangladesh is ranked 9 with a score of 0.546.
• 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.
• Here, too, India ranks a lowly 143 out of the 146 countries 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, and its score has marginally worsened since last year.
  • Health and Survival
    • This includes two metrics: the sex ratio at birth (in %) and healthy life expectancy (in years).
    • In this metric, India is ranked the last (146) among all the countries. Its score hasn’t changed from 2021 when it was ranked 155th out of 156 countries.