India has ranked 140 amongst 156 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2021, making it the third-worst performer in South Asia, way behind Bangladesh and Nepal. Compared to 2020 where India had ranked 112th among 153 countries, India has fallen 28 places in 2021.
This makes South Asia incidentally one of the worst-performing regions, followed only by the Middle East and northern Africa, according to the report.
The dip was mainly due to the decline in the political empowerment subindex. There was a significant decline in the number of women ministers from 23.1 percent (35,500 parliament seats) in 2019 to 9.1 percent (3400 parliamentary seats) worldwide in 2021. As per the report, there has never been a woman head of state in 81 countries as of January 15, 2021.
The report said the share of women in Parliament remained stagnant at 14.4 percent and the share of the last 50 years in which a woman has been head of the state is 15.5 years. Also, the decline in women's labor force participation rate from 24.8 percent to 22.3 percent adds up to the drivers that broaden the gender gap.
India’s gender gap on economic participation and opportunity dimension widened by 3 percent this year, leading to a 32.6 percent gap closed to date.
When it comes to neighbors, Bangladesh ranked 65, Nepal 106, Sri Lanka 116, Maldives 128, and Bhutan 130, which were above India. Pakistan was ranked 153, while Afghanistan ranked last at 156.
The report highlighted that only 29.2 percent of technical roles are held by women in India, while it was 25.3 percent in Pakistan and 19.3 percent in Afghanistan. The presence of women in senior roles is even rarer: women make up just 4.1 percent in Afghanistan, 4.9 percent in Pakistan, 10.7 percent in Bangladesh, and 14.6 percent in India.
There is only 8.9 percent of firms with female top managers in India. Only 22.3 percent of women participate in the labor market, translating to a gender gap of 72 percent.
The disparity of income between men and women in India is at 20.7 percent. This disparity goes further as women's estimated earned income is only one-fifth of men's, which puts India among the bottom 10 globally.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics.
The Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex is the second-largest gender gap among the four components of the index, only 58.3 percent of the gap has been closed so far.
The gender gap still exists in terms of literacy, one-third of women are illiterate (34.2 percent) compared to 17.6 percent of men. But on a positive note, 96.2 percent of the Educational Attainment Subindex gender gap has been closed.
World Economic Forum, based in Switzerland is an international NGO, founded on 24 January 1971. The organization is committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
It produces a range of annual economic reports: The Global Competitiveness Report, The Global Information Technology Report, Global Gender Gap Report, Global Risks Report, Global Travel, and Tourism Report, and Global Enabling Trade Report. In 2020 the forum published a report named "Nature Risk Rising."
