India 135th in gender parity; last in health: WEF

Representative Image

India was on Wednesday ranked low, at 135th place, in terms of gender parity, despite an improvement of five places since last year on better performance in areas of economic participation and opportunity. As per the annual Gender Gap Report 2022 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) released in Geneva. Only 11 countries are ranked below India on the index of 146 nations, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo, Iran and Chad being the worst five.

Iceland retained its place as the world's most gender-equal country, followed by Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden. On the health and survival subindex, India ranked the lowest at 146th place and figured among the five countries with gender gaps larger than 5 per cent; the other four being Qatar, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and China.

Within South Asia, India was ranked the sixth best on overall score after Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan. Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan scored worse than India. The WEF warned that the cost of living crisis is expected to hit women hardest globally with a widening gender gap in the labour force. South Asia has the largest gender gap of all regions, and at the current pace, it will take 197 years to close the gender gap in the region.

The report added that COVID-19 has set gender parity back by a generation and a weak recovery was making it worse globally. "With a female population of approximately 662 million, India's level of attainment weighs heavily on regional rankings," the WEF said.

WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi said, "In face of a weak recovery, government and business must make two sets of efforts: targeted policies to support women's return to the workforce and women's talent development in the industries of the future. Otherwise, we risk eroding the gains of the last decades permanently and losing out on the future economic returns of diversity," she added.

146
No of nations surveyed

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever