India ranked 95th out of a total 129 countries in the first-ever SDG Gender Index, which measures strides made in achieving gender commitments against internationally set targets.
The index has been developed by Equal Measures 2030, which is a partnership among global and regional organisations from the civil society and the development and private sectors. It includes The African Women’s Development and Communication Network, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Women’s Health Coalition and Plan International.
The index finds that no country has fully achieved the promise of gender equality and that the global average score of 65.7 out of 100 is “poor”. This means that almost 1.4 billion, or 40%, of the world’s girls and women live in countries failing on gender equality and another 1.4 billion live in countries that barely pass.
Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Slovenia, Germany, Canada, Ireland, and Australia rank as the top 10 countries in the index, while the bottom 10 comprise Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Yemen, Congo, DR Congo and Chad.
The SDG Gender Index includes 51 indicators across 14 of the 17 official Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The indicators include those that are gender specific, as well as those that are not but have an effect on girls and women.
The overall index scores are based on a scale of 0–100. A score of 100 indicates the achievement of gender equality in relation to the underlying indicators. A score of 50 would indicate that a country is about halfway to meeting its goal.
India’s score of 56.2 means that it is among 43 countries that fall in the ‘very poor’ category.
India scores the highest in health (79.9), followed by hunger (76.2) and energy ( 71.8). Among the SDGs, on which the country performs poorly are patnerships (18.3), industry, infrastructure and innovation (38.1) and climate (43.4).
