Global Gender Gap Index UPSC NOTE

 

Global Gender Gap Index

• The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes.

• Global Gender Gap Index was published by World Economic Forum (WEF).

• It compares nations' advancements toward gender parity across four key dimensions with submetrics.

• Economic Opportunity and Participation

• Academic Achievement

• Safety and Well-being

• Democratic Empowerment

• The GGG index assigns scores between 0 and 1 to each of the four sub-indices as well as the overall index, where 1 indicates full gender parity and 0 indicates total imparity.

• Since its inception in 2006, it has been the longest-running index that tracks advancements in bridging these gaps over time.

• Goals: To act as a compass for measuring improvement in the relative gaps between men and women in terms of health, education, the economy, and politics.

Picture Courtesy: The Hindu

• 
  The stakeholders in each nation are able to establish priorities that are appropriate in each unique economic, political, and cultural context thanks to this annual yardstick.

India’s rank

• India was ranked 127 among 146 countries in gender parity — up eight places from last year’s place — in the Gender Gap Report, 2023.

• The country had improved by 1.4 percentage points from 2022.

• India had closed 64.3% of the overall gender gap.

• However, it underlined that India had reached only 36.7% parity in economic participation and opportunity. 

• The country had attained parity in enrolment across all levels of education.

• In India, while there had been an uptick in parity in wages and income, the share of women in senior positions and technical roles had dropped slightly since the last edition.

• On political empowerment, India has registered 25.3% parity, with women making up 15.1% of MPs.

• Of the 117 countries with available data since 2017, 18 — including Bolivia (50.4%), India (44.4%) and France (42.3%) — have achieved women’s representation of over 40% in local governance.

• For India, the 1.9 percentage point improvement in sex ratio at birth had driven up parity after more than a decade.

• Compared with top scoring countries that register a 94.4% gender parity at birth, the indicator stands at 92.7% for India.