Here's How Many Years It Would Take To Achieve Gender Parity Globally

According to the latest Global Gender Gap Report released in July by the World Economic Forum (WEF), women worldwide might have to wait over 150 years to achieve gender equality in different categories. The Global Gender Gap Report 2023, which assesses the quality across various sectors such as politics, economics, health, education, etc., stated that the overall gender gap closed only by a mere 0.3 per cent compared to last year.

The Global Gender Gap Report states that the world will have to wait 23 years for women to be equal to men in education. In political empowerment, women worldwide will have to wait 155 years for equal opportunities and representation. Further, it would take 153 years to close the gender gap in economic empowerment. 

WEF Gender Parity Report

India, particularly, had witnessed a partial recovery by closing 64.3 per cent of its overall gender gap. Globally, the country rose eight places and 1.4 percentage points to 127th place on the gender equality index.

India has reached a significant parity in enrollment across all levels of education. Despite this, the report shows that only 36.7% of the population has access to economic opportunity and participation.

While there were positive changes concerning equality in wage and income, the representation of women in senior positions and technical roles saw a slight decrease compared to last year, which posed a challenge for the country in terms of economic empowerment.

Politically, India has 25 per cent gender equality, and 15.1 per cent of women are represented in parliament. This marks the highest number since the inaugural edition of the report in 2006.

With regard to health and survival, India witnessed an improvement of 1.9 per cent in the sex ratio at birth, thus attaining 92.7 per cent equality.

The economic survey 2023 that was released before the Union Budget this year indicated that the country had made significant progress in promoting gender equality and has a value of 0.490 on the Gender Inequality Index (GII).

This score is an extraordinary improvement compared to the value in South Asian countries of 0.508. The score is also close to the world average of 0.465. It’s notable that India ranks 122 among 190 countries.

The WEF’s Gender Gap Index measures gender equality in 146 countries in four areas, including economic participation and opportunity, education, health and survival, and political empowerment. The gender gap has seen an overall improvement of 4.1 per cent since the WEF inducted the index in 2006.