Women Global Gender Gap Index 2025

Context:

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has published the 19th edition of the Global Gender Gap Index for 2025, assessing 148 countries.

About the Global Gender Gap Index

• Published by: World Economic Forum (since 2006).
• Objective: Evaluates gender-based disparities in access to resources and opportunities globally.
• Scoring System: Countries are rated on a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 implies full gender parity.
• Key Dimensions:
  1. Economic Participation and Opportunity
  2. Educational Attainment
  3. Health and Survival
  4. Political Empowerment

Global Highlights (2025)

• Overall Gender Gap Closed: 68.8%
  • Fastest annual progress since the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • At the current pace, full parity may take 123 years.
• Sub-indices Performance:
  • Health and Survival: 96.2% closed
  • Educational Attainment: 95.1% closed
  • Economic Participation and Opportunity: 61.0% closed
  • Political Empowerment: 22.9% closed
• Workforce Representation: Women make up 41.2% of the global workforce.
  • However, only 28.8% occupy senior leadership roles.

Top Global Performers

• Iceland leads for the 16th consecutive year, closing 92.6% of its gender gap — the only country above the 90% mark.
• Other top performers include:
  • Finland
  • Norway
  • United Kingdom
  • New Zealand

Regional Snapshot: South Asia

• Bangladesh: Best regional performer, jumped 75 positions to rank 24th globally.
• Other South Asian rankings:
  • Bhutan: 119
  • Nepal: 125
  • Sri Lanka: 130
  • Maldives: 138
  • Pakistan: 148 (last)

India-Specific Findings

• Overall Rank: 131st out of 148, down two places from last year.
• Gender Parity Score: 64.1%, among the lowest in South Asia.

Dimension-wise Performance:

• Economic Participation and Opportunity:
  • Improved by 0.9 percentage points, reaching 40.7%.
  • Parity in estimated earned income rose from 28.6% to 29.9%.
• Educational Attainment:
  • Scored 97.1%, indicating gains in female literacy and higher education enrolment.