Social Justice
Global Gender Gap Report 2025
- 13 Jun 2025
- 10 min read
For Prelims: Global Gender Gap Report 2025, WEF, Global Gender Gap Index, Gender Parity, Local Governance
For Mains: Issues of Gender Inequality in Different Sectors, Key Factors Related to Gender Inequality, Measures To be Taken to Gender Parity.
Why in News?
India ranked 131st out of 148 countries in the Global Gender Gap Report 2025 by the World Economic Forum, down from 129th in 2024, with a gender parity score of 64.1%,
- The report comprehensively evaluated gender parity across 148 countries.
What is the Global Gender Gap Index?
- About: Published annually since 2006, it is the longest-standing global index for assessing gender equality, measuring countries' progress in closing gender gaps across 4 key dimensions:
- Economic Participation and Opportunity
- Educational Attainment
- Health & Survival
- Political Empowerment
- Rating Mechanism: Each dimension is scored on a scale from 0 to 1, where 1 represents full gender parity and 0 denotes complete inequality.
- The index aims to act as a strategic benchmarking tool, enabling countries to assess and compare gender disparities.
- Objectives: To act as a guiding tool for tracking progress on gender gaps in health, education, economy, and politics.
- This annual benchmark helps stakeholders in each country set priorities suited to their specific economic, political, and cultural contexts.
What are the Key Findings of the Global Gender Gap Report 2025?
- India Performance:
- In subindices, India shows gains in Economic Participation (40.7%) with improvement in income parity from 28.6% to 29.9%, and Educational Attainment at a high 97.1%, indicating near-parity in literacy and tertiary education enrolment.
- Health and Survival improved with better sex ratio and life expectancy. However, Political Empowerment fell by 0.6 points, with women’s representation in Parliament down from 14.7% to 13.8% and ministerial representation fell from 6.5% to 5.6%.
- South Asia's Performance: Bhutan (119), Nepal (125), and Sri Lanka (130) ranked better than India.
- Bangladesh is the region’s top performer, rising 75 places to 24th globally, driven by gains in political empowerment and Pakistan remains the lowest globally, ranked 148th.
- Global Trends: Top 5 countries in Global Gender Gap Index 2025 were Iceland (for the 16th consecutive year), Finland, Norway, UK and New Zealand.
- The global gender gap has closed by 68.8%, marking the strongest post Covid-19-pandemic progress, yet full parity is still 123 years away at the current rate.
What are the Key Strides of India in Bridging the Gender Gap?
- Policy and Legislative Reforms: India has enacted progressive policies, including the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam (2023), reserving seats for women in legislatures, boosting gender-sensitive governance.
- Education and Skill Development: Programs like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Vigyan Jyoti have improved girls' access to education, especially in STEM.
- Female Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education rose from 42.5% (2017-18) to 46.3% (2022-23).
- Economic Participation: Female labor force participation increased from 23.3% (2017-18) to 41.7% (2023-24). Schemes like Stand-Up India and Mahila e-Haat promote women entrepreneurship.
- Shifting Social Norms: Changing societal attitudes and gender-neutral portrayals in media have enabled greater acceptance of women in leadership and non-traditional roles.
- Financial Inclusion: Over 28 crore women have Jan Dhan accounts, enhancing autonomy. Schemes like PMJDY and Stand-Up India support financial independence and entrepreneurship.
- Health and Reproductive Rights: Initiatives like PM Matru Vandana Yojana and National Health Mission (NHM) have improved maternal care.
- Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) dropped from 174 (2013-15) to 97 (2018-20), indicating better health outcomes for women.
What are the Major Challenges Contributing to the Gender Gap in India?
- Low Female Labor Force Participation: India’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate is just 41.7% (PLFS 2023–24), with most women in informal and undervalued roles, especially in agriculture.
- Patriarchal norms, unsafe workplaces, and lack of childcare support continue to restrict women’s access to formal, secure employment.
- Education and Literacy Disparities: Female literacy stands at around 65% vs 82% for males (Census 2011), a 17% point gap.
- Nearly 40% of girls aged 15–18 are out of school, with 23 million dropping out due to menstruation-related stigma and lack of facilities. The Education Parity Index declined to 0.964 in 2024, reversing earlier progress.
- Economic Participation and Wage Inequality: Women spend nearly 289 minutes/day on unpaid domestic work, 3 times more than men and earn only around 73% of male wages on average, with lower parity in sectors like tech (as low as 60%).
- The Economic Survey 2022–23 estimated the value of women’s unpaid care work at Rs 22.7 lakh crore, roughly 7.5% of India’s GDP.
- Despite its massive economic contribution, this work remains invisible in labour statistics, undervaluing women’s time and restricting their participation in paid employment.
- Also, only 17% of Chief-roles and 20% of board positions in corporate India are held by women.
- The Economic Survey 2022–23 estimated the value of women’s unpaid care work at Rs 22.7 lakh crore, roughly 7.5% of India’s GDP.
- Implementation Gaps in Schemes: While multiple government schemes target gender equity, poor awareness, weak last-mile delivery, and lack of gender-sensitive monitoring hinder their real impact, especially in rural and marginalised populations.
What are the Key Initiatives of Government of India to Reduce Gender Gap?
- Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
- Mahila Shakti Kendra
- Mahila Police Volunteers
- Rashtriya Mahila Kosh
- Political Reservation: The government has reserved 33% of the seats in Panchayati Raj Institutions for women.
- The Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, has also reserved one-third of all seats for women in Lok Sabha, State legislative assemblies, and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, including those reserved for SCs and STs.
- Female Entrepreneurship: To promote female entrepreneurship, the Government has initiated Programmes like Stand-Up India and Mahila-e-Haat (an online marketing platform to support women entrepreneurs/SHGs/NGOs), Entrepreneurship and Skill Development Programme (ESSDP).
What Measures can India Adopt to Strengthen Gender Parity in India?
- Strengthening Enforcement of Protection Laws: Strengthen enforcement of gender-related laws (e.g., POCSO, Domestic Violence Act), and expand the reach of One-Stop Centres and Nirbhaya Fund to support survivors of violence and abuse.
- Enhancing Economic Inclusion: There is a need to boost female labour force participation through workplace reforms (crèches, maternity benefits, hiring incentives), while recognizing unpaid care work through time-use surveys and social security coverage for domestic workers.
- Education, Skilling and Digital Access: Ensure girls’ retention in school via scholarships and menstrual hygiene support.
- Promote participation in STEM and vocational training under Digital India and Skill India and bridge the digital gender divide through PMGDISHA and mobile access in Aspirational Districts.
- Health, Nutrition & Safety Infrastructure: Expand reproductive and maternal healthcare via NHM, combat malnutrition under POSHAN Abhiyaan, and ensure gender-responsive infrastructure- safe transport, street lighting, CCTV, and women’s help desks, to improve mobility and public safety.
- Inclusive Governance & Data-Driven Policy: Empower grassroots leadership by building capacities of elected women representatives in PRIs.
- Strengthen gender budgeting, activate Gender Budget Cells across ministries, and ensure regular collection of sex-disaggregated data for targeted policy interventions.
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Drishti Mains Question: Critically examine India’s declining rank in the Global Gender Gap Index 2025. Identify key challenges and suggest measures to promote gender parity. |
UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Question (PYQ)
Prelims:
Q. Which of the following gives ‘Global Gender Gap Index’ ranking to the countries of the world? (2017)
(a) World Economic Forum
(b) UN Human Rights Council
(c) UN Women
(d) World Health Organization
Ans: (a)
Mains:
Q. Discuss the desirability of greater representation to women in the higher judiciary to ensure diversity, equity and inclusiveness. (2021)
