Global Gender Gap Report

India has improved its ranking to 108th position among 145 countries in the global gender gap index prepared by the World Economic Forum.

• India rank in this report: India this year improves on its 114th position in 2014 mainly on the back of stronger representation of women in political leadership. "Having more than doubled the number of women in ministerial positions (from 9 percent to 22 percent), the country is now the most improved country in the region. But country's record in economic participation and opportunity declined.
• Among the BRICS grouping, India has the lowest rank, while South Africa is on top at the 17th position, followed by Russia (75), Brazil (85) and China (91).
• Iceland has once again topped the rankings followed by Norway and Finland at second and third spots, respectively. Last year, India was ranked 114 among 142 countries.

About Global Gender gap Report

The Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006 by the World Economic Forum. The 2014 report covers 144 major and emerging economies. The Global Gender Gap Index is an index designed to measure gender equality. The report examines four critical areas of inequality between men and women in 130 economies around the globe, over 93% of the world’s population:

• Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment.
• Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education.
• Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures.
• Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio. In this case parity is not assumed, there are assumed to be less female births than male (944 female for every 1,000 males), and men are assumed to die younger. Provided that women live at least six percent longer than men parity is assumed, if it is less than six percent it counts as a gender gap

Evaluation of Global Gender gap Report:

• Ten years of measuring the Global Gender Gap has helped us understand how lack of progress is damaging to global economic growth, and given us insights into how practical measures can support growth and improve quality of life for women worldwide.
• Equality in terms of Health and Survival has actually gone down overall worldwide since 2006, while educational equality has slipped further in 22% of the 109 countries.
• Since 2006, an extra quarter of a billion women have entered the labour force. Over the course of this time, the economic gender gap has closed by three percentage points from 56% to 59%. Extrapolating this means that we will only close this gap completely in2133 – or in 118 years’ time.
• And yet, the annual pay for women only now equals the amount men were earning ten years ago. The direct economic impact of this imbalance is that we are losing great amounts of talent from the global workforce – which in turn is impacting our ability to generate sustainable growth and job creation. 
• More women than men are enrolling at university in 97 countries, women make up the majority of skilled workers in only 68 countries and the majority of leaders in only four.
• The biggest progress towards closing the gender gap has been in the political world, although here, much more needs to be done. Nevertheless, positive interventions such as well-implemented quotas for a defined period of time for example have been proven to be effective in creating momentum which has led to improvements elsewhere. Similar measures are now being adopted in company boardrooms.

By: Vishal