Global Gender Gap Report 2025

On 12th June 2025, the World Economic Forum released the 19th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report, revealing that the world has closed 68.8% of the gender gap across 148 countries—the strongest progress since the COVID-19 pandemic, though full parity remains 123 years away.

Key Points

WEF Index Explained: The Global Gender Gap Index, launched in 2006, benchmarks progress on gender parity across four key dimensions—Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment—scoring countries from 0 (inequality) to 1 (parity).
Improved Global Scores: The 2025 report shows improvement in 11 out of 14 indicators compared to 2024, signalling an encouraging acceleration toward gender equality.
Health and Education Lead: Health and Survival (96.2%) and Educational Attainment (95.1%) show near-full parity, while Economic Participation (61.0%) and Political Empowerment (22.9%) still lag behind significantly.
Workforce Representation: Women make up 41.2% of the global workforce, but continue to face barriers in leadership, holding only 28.8% of top executive positions globally.
Top Performers: Iceland ranks first for the 16th consecutive year with 92.6% parity, followed by Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
India's Position: India slipped two spots to rank 131 with a parity score of 64.1%, remaining among the lowest-ranked countries in South Asia despite a modest +0.3 point improvement.