The World Economic Forum released its Global Gender Gap Report 2021 recently, and India stands at a dismal 140 of the 156 countries. The country has slipped 28 places, and is the third worst performer in South Asia.
As per the report, India has closed 62.5 per cent of its gender gap till date. However, last year, the country had ranked 112th among 153 countries.
Most of the decline was seen in the political empowerment subindex, where India went down by 3.5 percentage points, with a significant decline in the number of women ministers. “Among the drivers of this decline is a decrease in women's labour force participation rate, which fell from 24.8 per cent to 22.3 per cent. In addition, the share of women in professional and technical roles declined further to 29.2 per cent. The share of women in senior and managerial positions also remains low: only 14.6 per cent of these positions are held by women and there are only 8.9 per cent firms with female top managers,” the report said.
Further, according to the estimates, earned income of women is only one-fifth of men's; this also puts the country among the bottom 10 globally on this indicator.
To talk of India’s neighbours, Bangladesh ranked 65, Nepal 106, Pakistan 153, Afghanistan 156, Bhutan 130 and Sri Lanka 116.