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Global Gender Gap Report 2018

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December 26, 2018

Why in news?

The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 was recently released by the World Economic Forum.

What is the report on?

  • The report maps the performance of different countries on an index that evaluates the parity among men and women.
  • Gender gap is measured across four key pillars -
  1. economic opportunity
  2. political empowerment
  3. educational attainment
  4. health and survival

What are the highlights?

  • India has been ranked 108th in World Economic Forum (WEF) gender gap index, same as 2017.
  • Growth - Being in 72nd place, India recorded improvement in wage equality for similar work.
  • It has also closed its tertiary education enrolment gender gap for the first time in 2018.
  • It has managed to keep its primary and secondary gaps closed for the third year running.
  • India is also one of the countries that has done well on the political empowerment of women, ranking 20th.
  • Shortfalls - Gender gaps have worsened for India in 2 categories - health and survival, economic participation and opportunity.
  • India ranks 142nd out of 149 countries in the economic opportunity and participation subindex.
  • India needs to make improvements ranging from women’s participation to getting more women into senior and professional roles.
  • India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival.
  • It remains the world’s least-improved country on this subindex over the past decade.
  • In fact, India actually widens the gender gap on this subindex this year.
  • India has the second-largest artificial intelligence (AI) workforce, but it has one of the largest AI gender gaps, with only 22% of roles filled by women.

What is the global scenario?

  • The global list was topped by Iceland, having closed more than 85% of its overall gender gap.
  • Iceland holds the top spot in the index for the 10th consecutive year.
  • Nordic countries dominated the top slots with Norway, Sweden and Finland in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places respectively.
  • Other countries in the top-10 include Nicaragua, Rwanda, New Zealand, the Philippines, Ireland and Namibia.
  • South Asia was the second-lowest ranking region in the index, with only 65% of its gender gap now closed.
  • India is slightly ahead of the regional average having closed 66% gap.
  • Overall, the world has closed 68% of its gender gap i.e. there is still a 32% average gender gap that remains to be closed.
  • But this gender gap extends to over 77% when it comes to political empowerment and over 44% in relation to economic participation.
  • At the current rate of change, the world will take 108 years to close the overall gender gap.
  • Also, it would take 202 years to bring about parity in the workplace.

What does it imply?

  • Overall, political empowerment and economic participation are the two categories with maximum divergence in gender parity scores.
  • The economies that will succeed in the fourth industrial revolution will be those that are best able to harness all their available talent.
  • So proactive measures that support gender parity and social inclusion and address historical imbalances are therefore essential.

 

Source: Financial Express, Business Standard

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