Ranked 140 of 156 nations, India slips 28 spots in WEF’s international gender hole report

India has fallen 28 locations within the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, and is now one of many worst performers in South Asia, trailing behind neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar -— it’s now ranked 140 amongst 156 nations.
South Asia by the way is likely one of the worst performing areas, adopted solely by the Middle East and northern Africa, based on the report launched on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.
The report factors out that many nations have fared worse on this 12 months’s rankings in comparison with final 12 months’s, on account of financial efficiency. “Globally, the average distance completed to parity is at 68 per cent, a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide,” it states.
The gender hole in political empowerment stays the most important: ladies signify solely 26.1 per cent of some 35,500 parliament seats and simply 22.6 per cent of over 3,400 ministers worldwide, based on the report. In 81 nations, there has by no means been a girl head of state, as of January 15, 2021.
While India has declined on the political empowerment index as effectively by 13.5 proportion factors, and a decline within the variety of ladies ministers, from 23.1 per cent in 2019 to 9.1 per cent in 2021, it has nonetheless carried out comparatively effectively in comparison with different nations, rating at 51 in ladies’s participation in politics. Bangladesh is “the only country where more women have held head-of-state positions than men in the past 50 years,” says the report.
In the index of training attainment, India has been ranked at 114.
But the 2 indices the place India has fared the worst are “Health and Survival”, which incorporates the intercourse ratio, and financial participation of ladies.
The second-largest gender hole among the many 4 elements of the index is for the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex. “Only 58.3 per cent of this gap has been closed so far (globally),” it states.
The nations with the most important gender gaps in financial participation embody Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The report notes that the financial participation gender hole really widened in India by 3 % this 12 months. The share of ladies in skilled and technical roles declined additional to 29.2 per cent. The share of ladies in senior and managerial positions is also at 14.6 per cent and solely 8.9 per cent corporations within the nation have high feminine managers.
The estimated earned revenue of ladies in India is just one-fifth of males’s, which places the nation among the many backside 10 globally on this indicator, it mentioned.

But it’s within the Health and Survival index that India has fared the worst, rating at 155 — the one nation to have fared worse is China. The report factors to a skewed intercourse ratio as a significant component.

The report estimates that it’s going to take South Asia 195.4 years to shut the gender hole, whereas Western Europe will take 52.1 years.
Explained
While rating India at 155 — a spot forward of China — on the well being and survival index, the report factors to a skewed intercourse ratio as the most important issue. It says the ratio might be attributed to norms of son desire and gender-biased prenatal sex-selective practices. China and India collectively account for about 90 to 95 per cent of the estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million lacking feminine births yearly worldwide as a consequence of gender-biased prenatal intercourse selective practices, it states.