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India has fallen 28 places in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021
Key findings
- It is now one of the worst performers in South Asia, trailing behind neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar -— it is now ranked 140 among 156 countries.
- South Asia incidentally is one of the worst performing regions, followed only by the Middle East and northern Africa, according to the report.
- The report points out that many countries have fared worse in this year’s rankings compared to last year’s, on account of economic performance.
- In the index of education attainment, India has been ranked at 114.
Political empowerment index
- The gender gap in political empowerment remains the largest: women represent only 26.1 per cent of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6 per cent of over 3,400 ministers worldwide
- While India has declined on the political empowerment index as well by 13.5 percentage points, and a decline in the number of women ministers, from 23.1 per cent in 2019 to 9.1 per cent in 2021, it has still performed relatively well compared to other countries, ranking at 51 in women’s participation in politics. Bangladesh is “the only country where more women have held head-of-state positions than men in the past 50 years,
Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex
- The second-largest gender gap among the four components of the index is for the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex. “Only 58.3 per cent of this gap has been closed so far (globally)
- The countries with the largest gender gaps in economic participation include Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
- The report notes that the economic participation gender gap actually widened in India by 3 percent this year.
Health and Survival index
India has fared the worst, ranking at 155 — the only country to have fared worse is China
The report estimates that it will take South Asia 195.4 years to close the gender gap, while Western Europe will take 52.1 years.
Source: Indian Express
