71^st BPSC Mains

Approach: State India’s 2025 rank score and the “paradox” of sectoral gains but overall decline. Discuss and organize the reasons for India’s low rank under economic, social, political, and health barriers. Give targeted, dimension-wise reforms to convert educational gains into jobs and power. End the answer by summing up the whole discussion.

Answer: India ranks 131st out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, with an overall parity score of 64.1%, marking a decline from 129th in 2024 despite gains in some sectors. This paradox underscores persistent structural barriers amid incremental progress in education and economy.

The Global Gender Gap Report assesses gender parity across 148 economies on four core dimensions: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

It uses a gender parity score (0–100%) to indicate how far a country has closed its gender gaps.

Sectoral improvements showed by India in 2025 Report:

• Estimated earned-income parity improved from 28.6% to 29.9%.
• Educational Attainment score is at ~97.1%, with improvements driven by female literacy and tertiary enrolment parity.
• Higher health parity driven by improvements in sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy indicators.

Major Factors Responsible for the Low Ranking of India

• Social Factors:
  • Patriarchal Social Structures: Deep-rooted gender norms around roles, mobility, and decision-making autonomy continue to disadvantage women in households and communities and inhibiting equality in practice.
  • Violence and Safety Issues: High levels of gender-based violence -domestic, public, and systemic - create hostile environments for women’s agency and participation. Safety concerns restrict women’s access to education, workplaces, and public leadership roles.
  • Limited Access to Leadership Roles: Women are underrepresented in senior and decision-making roles in both the corporate and public sectors which reduces women’s influence over economic policy and corporate governance.
• Economic Factors:
  • Low Female Labour-Force Engagement: India’s economic participation score remains weak at around 40.7%. Women often face informal or unstable employment with low wages, and many drop out of the workforce after education due to care responsibilities or lack of flexible work options.
  • Gender Pay Gap: Despite slight progress in income parity women still earn significantly less, reducing women’s economic bargaining power and financial independence.
  • Skills–Employment Disconnect: Many women are educated but remain unemployed because their skills do not match market needs and social norms restrict their mobility, preventing education from translating into jobs.
• Political Factors:
  • Declining Political Representation: Women’s representation in Parliament declined from 14.7% to 13.8%, while women in ministerial positions fell to 5.6%.
  • Policy and Institutional Gaps: Inadequate gender budgeting, weak enforcement of labour protections, insufficient gender-disaggregated data limit evidence-based policy design, leading to gaps in targeting the most marginalized groups in India.
• Health Related Factors:
  • Persistent Public Health Challenges: Despite improvements, issues such as maternal anaemia, limited reproductive healthcare access, and regional disparities continue to widen health gaps. Poor nutritional status and unequal healthcare access disproportionately affect women, reducing their productivity and lifespan quality.

Measures to Improve Gender Parity in India

• Economic Formalization & Care Infrastructure: The government should implement the New Labour Codes 2025–26, which advocate for equal wages, work-from-home flexibility, and mandatory crèches. Investing in the “Care Economy” (childcare and eldercare) can redistribute the burden of unpaid work.
• Political Capacity Building: Strengthening the leadership skills of women in Panchayati Raj Institutions can create a pipeline for national leadership.
• Gender Budgeting: Strengthening Gender Budget Cells across all ministries is essential to ensure that public spending is viewed through a gendered lens, particularly in infrastructure and urban mobility (e.g., safe public transport).
• STEM and Skill Development: Encouraging women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) through targeted scholarships and mentorship programs will help bridge the high-skill wage gap.

India’s performance in 2025 serves as a “warning sign” that incremental progress is insufficient in a rapidly evolving global landscape. While near-parity in Educational Attainment (97.1%) is a significant victory, the failure to translate these educational gains into economic and political power remains India’s greatest challenge. By institutionalizing gender-responsive policies and dismantling patriarchal barriers to the workforce, India can unlock a potential $770 billion addition to its GDP, transforming gender parity from a social ideal into an economic engine