Global Gender Gap Index 2020: WEF

• 18 Dec 2019

Why in News

India has been ranked 112^th among 153 countries in the annual Global Gender Gap Index for 2020, published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

• The WEF published its first gender gap index in 2006.
• The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 153 countries on their progress towards gender parity in four dimensions:
  
  • Economic Participation and Opportunity,
  • Educational Attainment,
  • Health and Survival and
  • Political Empowerment
• The Index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men on health, education, economy and politics. Through this annual yardstick, the stakeholders within each country are able to set priorities relevant in each specific economic, political and cultural context.
• Over the Index, the highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality).

Key Findings

• Globally, the average (population-weighted) distance completed to gender parity is at 68.6%, which is an improvement since the last edition. It will take 99.5 years to achieve full parity between men and women at the current rate of change.
• The largest gender disparity is in political empowerment. Only 25% of the 35,127 seats in parliaments around the world are occupied by women, and only 21% of the 3,343 ministers are women.
• Iceland has been the frontrunner on the Global Gender Gap Index for 11 years in a row. It has closed almost 88% of its gender gap, followed by Nordic neighbours Norway, Finland and Sweden.
• Yemen is ranked the worst (153^rd), while Iraq is 152^nd and Pakistan 151^st.

India- Specific Findings

• India has slipped to the 112^th spot from its 108^th position in the last edition. India was ranked relatively higher at 98^th place in 2006 Report.
  • India has been ranked below countries like China (106th), Sri Lanka (102^nd), Nepal (101^st), Brazil (92nd), Indonesia (85^th) and Bangladesh (50^th).
• Performance on Four Indicators: India has improved to 18^th place on political empowerment but it has slipped to 150^th on health and survival, to 149^th in terms of economic participation and opportunity and to 112^th place for educational attainment.
• Economic
  
  • Among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap (0.354) is larger than the political gender gap (0.411).
  • India is among the countries with very low women representation on company boards (13.8%), while it was even worse in China (9.7%).
• On health and survival, four large countries -- Pakistan, India, Vietnam and China -- fare badly with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.

World Economic Forum

• The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
• It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests.
• The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance.

Source: IE