According to the report the reason behind India’s poor performance can be put down to two indicators, namely health and survival and Economic Participation and Opportunities for women.
Health and Survival: In this category India is ranked at 141 and is still in the bottom four. The reason behind it is the poor sex ratio at birth, as still most Indians show a strong preference for sons.
Economic Participation and Opportunities for women: In this category, India’s rank is 139, which is down from 136 of last year. According to the report the reason behind this drop in ranking is because on an average, a woman working in India gets paid only 60 per cent of what her male counterpart earns for similar work.
While women account for over a third of labour force participation their share of daily unpaid work (household chores, etc.) is 65 per cent, however, for men it is only 11 per cent. Only 13 per cent of senior officials, managers and legislators are women, across the sectors.
Apart from the above mentioned reasons other reason for the bad performance listed in the report includes “widening of its gender gaps in political empowerment as well as in healthy life expectancy and basic literacy.”
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Top 10 countries on the Global
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Achievements: India has achieved success in fully closing both its primary and secondary education enrolment gender gaps and is very near to closing its tertiary education gender gap. However, the overall literacy rate still shows disparity between the men (80 per cent) and women (59 per cent).
