India has moved down the ladder from its 108th position last year on the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap Report to rank below countries like China (106th), Sri Lanka (102nd), Nepal (101st), Brazil (92nd), Indonesia (85th) and Bangladesh (50th)
The WEF had published its first gender gap report in 2006, when India was ranked relatively higher at 98th place.
Since then, India's rank has worsened on three of four metrics used for the overall ranking.
While India has improved to 18th place on political empowerment, it has slipped to 150th on health and survival, to 149th in terms of economic participation and opportunity and to 112th place for educational attainment.
The WEF said economic opportunities for women are extremely limited in India (35.4 per cent), Pakistan (32.7 per cent), Yemen (27.3 per cent), Syria (24.9 per cent) and Iraq (22.7 per cent).
It also named India among countries with very low women representation on company boards (13.8 per cent), while it was even worse in China (9.7 per cent).
On health and survival, four large countries - Pakistan, India, Vietnam and China - fare badly with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men, the WEF said.
It also flagged abnormally low sex ratios at birth in India (91 girls for every 100 boys) and Pakistan (92/100).
The WEF said India has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap, but the condition of women in large fringes of India's society is precarious and the economic gender gap runs particularly deep.
Since 2006, the gap has significantly widened and India is the only country among the 153 countries studied where the economic gender gap is larger than the political one.
Only one-quarter of women, compared with 82 per cent of men, engage actively in the labour market - one of the lowest rates globally (145th). Furthermore, the female estimated earned income is mere one-fifth of the male income, again among the world's lowest (144th).
Women account for only 14 per cent of leadership roles (136th) and 30 per cent of professional and technical workers.
"Violence, forced marriage and discrimination in access to health remain pervasive. The situation and the trend are more positive in terms of gender gaps in education... But a large difference persists for literacy rate; only two-thirds of women are literate compared with 82 per cent of men," WEF said.
India ranks high on the political empowerment sub-index, largely because the country was headed by a woman for 20 of the past 50 years. But, female political representation today is low as women make up only 14.4 per cent of Parliament (122nd rank globally) and 23 per cent of the cabinet (69th), the report said.
Yemen is ranked the worst (153rd), while Iraq is 152nd and Pakistan 151st
Iceland remains the world's most gender-neutral country
Nordic countries continue to lead the way to gender parity and Iceland is followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden in the top-four. In the top-10, they are followed by Nicaragua, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Rwanda and Germany.
No comments:
Post a Comment