India has ranked 131 out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, which is slipping at two places from its position last year.
According to the report released on Thursday, India is one of the lowest ranked countries in South Asia, with a equivalent score of only 64.1 percent. India was ranked 129 last year.
The global gender gap index measures gender equality in four major dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and existence, and political empowerment.
The overall performance of the Indian economy led to a complete improvement in +0.3 points.
“One of the dimensions where India enhances equality, is in economic participation and opportunity, where its score improves +.9 percentage points.
While most indicators remain the same, equivalent earned income increases from 28.6 percent to 29.9 percent, which positively affects the subindex score, ”the report states.
The score at the participation rate of the labor force remained the same (45.9 percent) as previous year – India has achieved the most till date.
In educational attainment, the report stated that India scored 97.1 percent, showing positive changes in female stocks for literacy and tertiary education enrollment, resulting in positive score for sub -signals.
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“India also records high equality in health and existence, inspired by a better score in sex ratio in birth time and healthy life expectancy,” said this.
However, equal, healthy life expectancy, similar to other countries, is obtained despite the overall decrease in the life expectancy of men and women, the report states.
“Where India records a slight decline in equality (-0.6 marks) since the final version is in political empowerment. Women’s representation in Parliament falls from 14.7 percent to 13.8 percent in 2025, reduces indicator scores for the second year in a line in 2023 levels,” said this.
Similarly, women’s stake in ministerial roles falls from 6.5 percent to 5.6 percent, which further leads to indicator scores (5.9 percent) from its highest level (30 percent in 2019).
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With a remarkable advantage in political empowerment and economic participation, Bangladesh emerged as the best artist in South Asia, 75 rank to rank 24 globally. Nepal ranks 125, Sri Lanka 130, Bhutan 119, Maldives 138 and Pakistan 148.
The report stated that the global gender interval has been closed up to 68.8 percent, marking the strongest annual progress since the Kovid -19 epidemic. According to the report, yet the full equality is 123 years away at the current rates.
Iceland leads the ranking for the 16th year, followed by Finland, Norway, United Kingdom and New Zealand.
The 19th edition of the report, which includes 148 economies, encouraged women facing speed and consistent structural obstacles worldwide.
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The progress made in this version was mainly run by significant progress in political empowerment and economic participation, while educational attainment and health and existence maintained above 95 percent.
However, despite the women representing 41.2 percent of the global workforce, a Stark leadership gap remains with women holding only 28.8 percent of the top leadership positions, the report states.
Sadia Zahidi, managing director of the World Economic Forum, said, “The time of a low growth approach combined with increased global economic uncertainty and technical and demographic changes represents a significant force for economic renewal to carry forward gender equity.”
“The evidence is clear. Economy has made decisive progress towards equality, which is making itself a position for strong, more innovative and more flexible economic progress,” Zahidi said.
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