Global Gender Gap Report Ranks India at 135, Poorest in Health and Survival

India has ranked 135th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report 2022. On a scale of 0 to 1,India has scored 0.629, which is its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years.

However, India has fared more poorly in the subindex Economic Participation and Opportunity, where it ranked 143, falling behind neighboring countries such as Nepal (98), Bhutan (126), and Bangladesh (141).

The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions -- 1) Economic Participation and Opportunity, 2) Educational Attainment, 3) Health and Survival, and 4) Political Empowerment.

In the Health and Survival subindex, India was ranked 146, which is its lowest among all four subindexes. It was preceded by neighbouring nations like Nepal (109), Bhutan (125), Bangladesh (129), Afghanistan (140), and Pakistan (143).

The WEF report showed that the“prevalence of gender violence in lifetime” of women was 28.70% in India, while the maternal mortality deaths per 100,000 live births was 145. In contrast, India’s maternal mortality ratio was reported to have improved to 103 in 2017-19, from 113 in 2016-18, according to the special bulletin on MMR released by the Registrar General of India March 14, 2022. The United Nations Sustainavble Development Goals (SDG) has targeted to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030.

According to the WEF report, South Asia has one of the lowest regional gender parity scores for Health and Survival, which stood at 94.2%. “In this subindex, only Sri Lanka has closed its gender gap, while Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are among the worst-performing countries globally,” it said.

Among the other subindexes, India did comparatively well in terms of Political Empowerment with a rank of 48.

The WEF report noted that increases in the share of women in professional and technical roles were most notable in Nepal, Bangladesh and India in South Asia. In the region,India and Sri Lanka progressed on closing the gender gap in the share of women in senior positions, while Iran has regressed, it said.

Source: Gender Gap Report 2022, World Economic Forum

Among the eight regions covered in the report, South Asia ranked the lowest. The region has only closed 62.3% of the gender gap in 2022. This lack of progress since the last edition extends the wait to close the gender gap to 197 years, due to a broad stagnation in gender parity scores across most countries in the region,” the report said.

Bangladesh and Nepal led regional performance, with over 69% of their gender gaps closed. Afghanistan registered the lowest level of gender parity, at 43.5%, regionally and globally.

Overall, the global gender gap has been closed by 68.1% worldwide. “At the current rate of progress, it will take 132 years to reach full parity. This represents a slight four-year improvement compared to the 2021 estimate (136 years to parity). However, it does not compensate for the generational loss which occurred between 2020 and 2021.” the report said. It added that according to trends till 2020, the global gender gap was set to close within 100 years.