
India's slipped 13 spots from its last year's ranking of 101 on the
Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum. India is part of the 20
worst-performing countries on the labour force participation, estimated
earned income, literacy rate and sex ratio at birth indicators.
On the other hand, India is among the top 20 best-performing countries on the political empowerment subindex.
The
index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a
framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and
tracking their progress. The index benchmarks national gender gaps on
economic, political, education and health criteria.
On the
criteria of economic participation and opportunity, India was ranked
134. Its female to male ratio in labour force participation was 0.36.
The disparity in estimated earned income was high with females earning
USD 1980 compared to USD 8087 earned by their male counterparts.
On
educational attainment, India ranked 126 with female to male ratio in
literacy rate at 0.68. India was the second-lowest performing country on
health and survival, ranking 141 just ahead of Armenia.
However
on political empowerment subindex, India ranked an impressive 15. It is
the highest-ranked country on the years with female head of state (over
the past 50 years) indicator.
There is also some evidence from
India to suggest that women in local government roles make decisions
with better outcomes for communities than men do when charged with
budget decisions.
They also appear to be more competent
representatives than men, obtaining more resources for their
constituencies despite having significantly lower education and relevant
labour market experience.
The report said that India has the
highest difference between women and men on the average minutes spent
per day on unpaid work—a difference of 300 minutes.
It is also
among the countries with the highest difference in the female and male
percentage of total R&D personnel. India has one of the lowest
percentages of firms with female participation in ownership.
India
had experienced improvement of its overall score since 2010, when it
had ranked 112. It had ranked 105 in 2012 and 101 last year but saw a
decrease in 2014 due to a drop in scores on the economic participation
and opportunity and educational attainment subindexes.
India performed better than countries like UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Jordan.
Iceland,
which has had a female head of state in 20 of the past 50 years, ranked
number 1 on WEF's index. Iceland has taken the top spot on the index
consecutively since 2009. The country was followed by its Nordic
neighbours: Finland ranked 2, Norway (3), Sweden (4) and Denmark (5). US
is ranked 20, putting it behind countries like Canada, South Africa and
France, but ahead of other developed countries like the United Kingdom
and Australia.
The report said that no country in the world has
fully closed the gender gap, but all five of the Nordic countries have
closed more than 80 percent of it. Yemen, the lowest ranking country has
closed just over 50 percent of the gender gap.
At 141, Pakistan was the second lowest ranking country, scoring poorly on all the four parametres.
In
2014, 25 countries fully closed the gap in Educational Attainment (same
as last year). Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen, Guinea and Chad hold the last
five spots on this subindex, with Yemen and Chad having closed less than
70 percent of their education gender gap. In total, there are 22
countries where women still have less than 90 percent of the education
outcomes that men have.
While eight countries—Bahamas, Belize,
Brazil, France, Guyana, Latvia, Namibia, and the Philippines have fully
closed the gap on both the health and education subindexes, no country
has closed either the economic participation gap or the political
empowerment gap.
On the Economic Participation and Opportunity
subindex, 14 countries have closed more than 80 percent of gap,
including from from Sub-Saharan Africa and five from Europe and Central
Asia.
Burundi, Norway, Malawi, the United States and the Bahamas occupy the top five spots on the subindex.