While the gender gap has been closed by 68.1% as of 2022, it will take 132 years to reach full parity, at this level. This, as per the Global Gender Gap Report 2022, is a slight improvement from 2021 (136 years). However, it does not compensate for the generational loss between 2020 and 2021. Going by the trends leading to 2020, when the pandemic set in, the gender gap would have closed in 100 years.
While no country has closed its gender gap completely, the top 10 economies have succeeded in closing at least 80 per cent of the gap. Iceland is the only economy which has closed more than 90 per cent of the gap (90.8 %)
Further, for the Health and Survival sub-index, the gender gap has closed by 95.8%, for Educational Attainment, by 94.4%, Economic Participation and Opportunity by 60.3% and Political Empowerment by 22%.
India, which ranks 135 among 146 countries, is the worst ranked in terms of the Health and Survival sub-index, where it is ranked last. India is also a poor performer among its neighbours, with Bangladesh (71), Nepal (96), Sri Lanka (110), Maldives (117), and Bhutan (126) performing better.
However, on the positive side, on a scale of 0-1 where 1 represents an optimal scenario, India scored 0.69 on gender parity, its seventh highest in the past 16 years. India has also advanced in closing the gender gap in the share of women as professional and technical workers (from 29.2 percent to 32.9 percent) and has recovered since 2021 in economic participation and opportunity. However, the labour force participation declined for both men (by -9.5 percentage points) and women (-3 percentage points).
Source : https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2022
