Global Gender Gap Report, 2021

The Global Gender Gap report was published by World Economic Forum in April 2021. It benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity on the basis of the following framework-

Fig. Global Gender Gap Framework

A score of 1 depicts highest level of equality and the 0 depicts highest inequality.

India related Findings

India has closed 62.5% of its gender gap and ranks 140th among 156 countries in the Gender Gap Index.

• Political Empowerment: Most of the decline has occurred in terms of Political Empowerment. It is due to the decline in the share of women among ministers which was only 9.1% in 2021. Also, the share of women in parliament remains stagnant at 14.4%.
• Economic Participation and Opportunity: Decline has also taken place in terms of the Economic Participation and Opportunity. There is decrease in women’s labour force participation rate (only 22.3%). Share of women in professional and technical was only 29.2%. The share of women in senior and managerial positions was only 14.6% of these positions.
• Income of Women: Women’s estimated earned income is only one-fifth of men’s, which puts India among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.
• Health and Survival: Discrimination persists against women, reflected in Wide sex ratio at birth, due to high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Also, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.
• Educational Attainment: Educational Attainment gender gap has been significantly closed, with parity achieved in primary, secondary and tertiary education.