The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index (GGI) report for 2022 does not inspire a lot of hope for India’s 662 million female population. While the country has improved five ranks compared to last year, it is soured by the fact that India still ranks 135th in a list of 146 countries and lags those with historically huge gender gaps such as Saudi Arabia and quite a few African nations such as Egypt and Nigeria. While India’s level of attainment of a rank also depends on regional rankings, the fact that there has only been marginal improvement signals that policymakers must step up their efforts on female-centric incentives. The index takes into account four sub-indices—economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival.
The first takes into account the participation of women in the workforce as well as the pay and advantage gap. Globally, this sub-index has the second-widest dispersion, and India ranks 143rd. However, as per the India Skills Report 2021, women (51.44%) are more employable than men in India, yet their participation rate in the workforce is a paltry 33% this year. The report further elaborates that this is due to most women being employed in the informal sector, and that again, scores depend on regional variations. For example, in Pune (the city with the highest amount of employable talent), there are 78.1% employable males.
Thus, a focused approach towards reducing regional disparities is the need of the hour. Political empowerment is the sub-index where India is ranked the highest at 48. Globally, there has been no significant progress on this, and this domain has the largest gender disparity. However, according to the WEF report, India ranks quite low when the percentage of women in Parliament and ministerial positions is considered. Most significantly, the work that needs to be done at the social level is largely overshadowed by the fact that even after three decades of its inception and being passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010, the Women’s Representation Bill is yet to be passed by the Lok Sabha.
As far as education is concerned, most countries score high. However, there are regional disparities. India ranks 107th and its score has marginally worsened. The educational attainment sub-index considers enrolment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. While India is above average on this, it lags behind in literacy rate, at rank 121, calling for more efforts by the Indian government. Data collated by Open Budgets India show that regarding the Centre’s flagship scheme to address this issue—Beti Bachao Beti Padhao—for the states with available data, only Sikkim, Nagaland, and Mizoram utilised more than 88% of the funds allotted to them in 2020-21.
Finally, for the health and survival sub-index, India is placed at the very bottom. Worse still, globally, this index has seen the most egalitarian performance with the least amount of dispersion. Here, sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy is considered. If one takes anaemia—the marker of women’s health as well as female morbidity and mortality—the picture is alarming. According to the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS), as compared to 25.7% of men, 57% of women had anaemia, which means that nutrition is a huge concern. There are several other factors that must be taken into account, but overall, India is far from being a country for women.