GENDER GAP INDEX 2022

Despite an improvement of five places since last year in areas of economic participation and opportunity, India ranked 135 among a total of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022, which is released by the World Economic Forum. In 2021 India’s rank was 140 among the 156 countries.

India’s Position

• The country is the worst performer in the world in the health and survival sub-index in which it is ranked 146.
• The index shows that it will now take 132 years to reach gender parity, with the gap reducing only by 4 years since 2021 and the gender gap closing by 60.1%.
• The country has scored 0.629, on a scale range of 0 to 1, which is its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years.
• Women have borne the brunt of the recession, widely dubbed as the 'secession', largely because they work in sectors that were most impacted, such as retail and hospitality.

• India is now one of the worst performers in South Asia, as its rank is 135 among 146 countries.
• The WEF pointed out that the gender gap score recorded its seventh-highest level in the last 16 years, but it continues to rank among the worst performers on various parameters.

India ranks poorly among its neighbours and is behind Bangladesh (71), Nepal (96), Sri Lanka (110), Maldives (117), and Bhutan (126), only the performance of Iran (143), Pakistan (145) and Afghanistan (146) are much worse than India’s.

Economic participation and opportunity

• The report noted that the share of women as professional and technical workers grew from 29.2 percent to 32.9 percent.

• The report also states that the gender parity score for estimated earned income improved; while values for both men and women diminished, they declined more for men.
• The overall rank of India in the economic and participation and opportunity is 143

Political Empowerment

• In 2022 India improved its rank to 48 from 51 in political empowerment but showed a declining score due to the diminishing share of years women have served as head of state for the past 50 years.
• The report also highlighted that the share of women legislators, senior officials, and managers increased from 14.6 per cent to 17.6 per cent.

Education attainment

• In the index of education attainment, India has been ranked 107 positions.
• However, India was ranked the top globally in terms of gender parity for primary education enrolment and tertiary education enrolment and at eighth place for the position of head of state.

Health and Survival Index

• India has the worst ranking at 146 and figures among the five countries with gender gaps larger than 5 per cent -- the other four being Qatar, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and China.

Global scenario

• The global gender gap has been closed by 68.1%, among the 146 countries covered by the 2022 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 95.8% were as Educational Attainment by 94.4% with Economic Participation and Opportunity by 60.3%, and Political Empowerment by 22%.
• Iceland (1^st) remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap. Other countries such as Finland (86%, 2nd), Norway (84.5%, 3rd), and Sweden (82.2%, 5th) feature in the top 5 position
• South Asia is one of the worst performing regions followed by North Africa and the middle east.