Women across the world may have to wait for another 131 years to achieve full gender equality with men, the latest Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) recently has said. The report, titled “Global Gender Gap Report 2023,” assesses equality in various sectors, including the economy, politics, health, and education and highlights the slow progress being made towards achieving gender parity globally.
In the case of India, the report indicated a partial recovery in gender parity. India managed to close 64.3 percent of its overall gender gap, reflecting an improvement of eight positions and 1.4 percentage points compared to the previous year. However, India still ranks 127th on the global index, highlighting the challenges the country faces in achieving gender equality.
One positive aspect highlighted by the report was India’s achievement of gender parity in enrolment across all levels of education. This is a significant milestone for the country. However, the report also pointed out that India only achieved 36.7 percent parity in economic participation and opportunity. Although there were positive strides in wage and income parity, the representation of women in senior positions and technical roles saw a slight decline since the previous year, posing obstacles to India’s progress in economic empowerment.
On the political front, India registered 25.3 percent gender parity, with women representing 15.1 percent of parliamentarians. This marks the highest representation of women in parliament since the inaugural 2006 edition of the report. In terms of health and survival, India saw improvement with a 1.9 percentage point increase in the sex ratio at birth, reaching 92.7 percent parity.
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Other big takeaways
According to the World Economic Forum report:
– At the current rate of progress, it will take 131 years to reach full parity.
– Gender equality recovers to pre-pandemic levels but pace of progress has slowed
– Gender parity in economic participation and opportunity drops from 2022 levels, while political empowerment makes only slight gains
– Iceland remains the most gender-equal country, followed by Norway, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden
– The global gender gap score in 2023 for all 146 countries included in this edition stands at 68.4% closed.
– At the current rate of progress over the 2006-2023 span, it will take 162 years to close the Political Empowerment gender gap, 169 years for the Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap, and 16 years for the Educational Attainment gender gap. The time to close the Health and Survival gender gap remains undefined.
According to the report, the overall gender gap closed by a mere 0.3 percent compared to the previous year. This incremental progress indicates that gender equality may not be fully realized until the year 2154. The WEF’s Gender Gap Index, which measures gender parity in 146 countries, has shown an overall improvement of 4.1 percentage points since its inception in 2006.