India Slips in Global Gender Gap Report 2025: A Key Report for UPSC Aspirants

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has released the 19th edition of the Global Gender Gap Report 2025, offering a comprehensive overview of gender parity across 148 countries. This year’s report has shown the highest annual improvement in gender parity since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the global gender gap now closed by 68.8%. 

However, despite these gains, the world remains 123 years away from achieving full gender equality if progress continues at the current pace. For UPSC aspirants, this report is especially relevant as global indices often feature in both Prelims and Mains examinations and can significantly enhance answer quality.

First presented by the World Economic Forum in 2006, the Global Gender Gap Index measures gender parity in four important areas: political empowerment, health and survival, educational attainment, and economic participation and opportunity. Complete parity is represented by an index score of 1, which goes from 0 to 1. Despite the fact that no nation has yet attained complete gender parity, the report shows growth in 11 of the 14 measures this year.
 

Among the world's highlights, Iceland has closed the gender gap by 92.6%, keeping it as the most gender-equal nation for the 16th year in a row. It is still the only nation to achieve parity at 90%. New Zealand, Finland, Norway, and the United Kingdom come after Iceland. In South Asia, Bangladesh has made a remarkable leap, jumping 75 places to rank 24th globally, becoming the region’s top performer. Nepal was placed at 125, Sri Lanka at 130, Bhutan at 119, Maldives at 138, and Pakistan ranked the lowest at 148.

India, however, has slipped two places to rank 131 out of 148 countries, compared to 129 last year. This drop comes despite a slight improvement in its overall parity score, which increased by 0.3 points to reach 64.1%. This places India among the lowest-ranked countries in the South Asian region.

In the area of Economic Participation and Opportunity, India saw some improvement, with a score of 40.7%, an increase of 0.9 percentage points. The parity in estimated income also rose marginally from 28.6% to 29.9%. The report also highlights significant progress in Educational Attainment, where India achieved a score of 97.1%, driven by rising female literacy rates and increased enrolment in higher education.

India also recorded better scores in Health and Survival, owing to improvements in the sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy. However, the report cautions that this parity exists alongside a general decline in life expectancy for both men and women, indicating a broader health challenge.

On the political front, however, India has witnessed a decline. The Political Empowerment score dropped by 0.6 points compared to last year. Female representation in Parliament decreased from 14.7% to 13.8%, and the share of women in ministerial positions also fell from 6.5% to 5.6%. This marks the second consecutive year of decline in India’s political gender parity.

The Gender Development Index (GDI), also published by UNDP, measures gender disparities in health, education, and income. For India, the female Human Development Index (HDI) value is 0.631, compared to 0.722 for males, resulting in a GDI score of 0.874.

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