(Daily News Scan - DNS English) Gender Parity Index 2020
India is ranked 112 out of 153 countries in Gender Parity Index 2020. India has moved down to 4 positions this year, with its last year’s ranking as 108th. Gender Gap Report is released by the World Economic Forum every year. The top most country this year is Iceland, the World’s most gender neutral country.
In today’s DNS we will look into Gender Gap Report
The Global Gender Gap Report is released annually and this is the 14th edition. The report benchmarks countries on the progress towards gender parity in four dimensions. These dimensions are Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and The Political Environment.
Now let us first know what is Gender Parity Index and how is it calculated. It is simply the ratio of Female to male values of a given indicator. It is calculated by dividing the female value by male value of the same indicator. GPI measures progress towards gender parity in education participation and learning opportunities available for girls in relation to those available to boys. The highest possible score is 1 (equality) and the lowest possible score is 0 (inequality).
The analysis in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 is based on - methodology integrating the latest statistics from international organizations and a survey of executives. The Report aims to assist as a compass to track the progress on relative gaps between women and men on health, education, economy and politics.
India’s has low ranking in this index slipping down to four
places from108th position last year to 112th this year. This is due to widening
disparity in terms of women’s health and survival and economic participation.
While India has gone down to 112th place for educational attainment, it has also
improved to 18th place on political empowerment; it has slipped to 150th on
health and survival, 149th in terms of economic participation and opportunity.
The first Gender Gap was released in the year 2006 and since then India’s rank has worsened on three or four metrics used for overall ranking. As per the WEF, economic opportunities for women are extremely limited in India (35.4%). It has also mentioned India among countries with very low women representation on company boards (13.8%). On health and survival in India women are not getting the same access to health as men. Low sex ratios at birth in India (91 girls for every 100 boys) were also highlighted.
According to WEF, India has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap, but still the condition of women in large fringes of India’s society is insecure and the economic gender gap runs deep. India is the only country among the 153 countries 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 income is one-fifth of the male income. On the leadership roles women account only 14 per cent.
A large difference continues in terms of literacy rate where only 2 third of the women are literate in comparison to 82% of men. The female political representation is low, women make up only 14.4 per cent of Parliament (122nd rank globally) and 23 per cent of the cabinet (69th).
Now lets us look at the rankings of other countries. Iceland remains the world’s most gender-neutral country. India ranks below countries like China (106th), Sri Lanka (102nd), Nepal (101st), Brazil (92nd), Indonesia (85th) and Bangladesh (50th). Yemen is ranked the worst on (153rd) position, while Iraq is 152nd and Pakistan 151st.
Globally, the average (population-weighted) distance completed to gender parity is at 68.6%, which is an improvement since the last edition (2018). It will take 99.5 years to achieve full parity between men and women at the current rate of change.
The largest gender disparity is in political empowerment. Only 25% of the 35,127 seats in parliaments around the world are occupied by women, and only 21% of the 3,343 ministers are women.
Iceland has been the front runner on the Global Gender Gap Index for 11 years in a row. It has closed almost 88% of its gender gap, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden.
At the current pace, gender gaps can be closed in 54 years in Western Europe, 59 years in Latin America and the Caribbean, 71.5 years in South Asia, 95 years in Sub Saharan Africa, 107 years in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 140 years in the Middle East and North Africa, 151 years in North America, and 163 years in East Asia and the Pacific.
