India ranks 135 among a total of 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022 and is the worst performer in the world in the “health and survival” sub-index where it is ranked 146.
The Global Gender Report 2022, which includes the Gender Gap Index, says it will now take 132 years to reach gender parity, with the gap reducing only by four years since 2021 and the gender gap closed by 68.1%. But this does not compensate for the generational loss between 2020 and 2021 as the trends leading up to 2020 showed that the gender gap was set to close within 100 years. South Asia will take the longest to reach gender parity, which is estimated to be likely in 197 years.
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.
In 2021, India ranked 140 out of a total 156 countries on the index.
4 key dimensions
The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across four key dimensions or sub-indices — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. It measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale, which can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity or the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed.
India ranks 146 in health and survival, 143 in economic participation and opportunity, 107 in educational attainment and 48th in political empowerment.
The report notes that India’s score of 0.629 was its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years. India also “recovered” ground since 2021 in economic participation and opportunity though the report goes on to add that the labour force participation shrunk for both men (by -9.5 percentage points) and women (-3 percentage points). The gender parity score for estimated earned income improved because even though the values for both men and women diminished, the decline was more for men. India recorded a declining score on political empowerment due to the diminishing share of years women have served as head of state for the past 50 years, says the report.
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The top 10
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 was the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap. Other Scandinavian countries such as Finland (86%, 2nd), Norway (84.5%, 3rd) and Sweden (82.2%, 5th) are in the top five, with other European countries such as Ireland (80.4%) and Germany (80.1%) in ninth and tenth positions, respectively. Sub-Saharan African countries Rwanda (81.1%, 6th) and Namibia (80.7%, 8th), along with one Latin American country, Nicaragua (81%, 7th), and one country from east Asia and the Pacific, New Zealand (84.1%, 4th), also take positions in the top 10.
