14:22
India retained the 131st rank on the Global Gender Gap Index 2026 released by the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, with Iceland, Finland and Norway maintaining their top three slots respectively.
Only 14 countries ranked below than India on the index of 145 countries. These include Papua New Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Mali, Algeria and Congo.
Chad was the lowest-ranked country in the index, with Iran and Pakistan joining it in the bottom three.
Geneva-based WEF said that nearly every economy tracked since 2006 by the index has advanced gender parity, but noted that full parity is still 120 years away.
Globally, 69.2 per cent of the gender gap has now been closed, up by 0.4 percentage points over the last year, the WEF said. 100 per cent representing full parity.
In India, the world's most populous country with approximately 1.5 billion people, the progress towards gender parity stood at 64.5 per cent, below the global average.
While India's score improved slightly over the last year, its global ranking remained unchanged at 131st.
Overall, India's gender parity increased by 4.3 percentage points since 2006, primarily due to gains in educational attainment.
In the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, India reported a 41.2 per cent parity score, 0.5 higher than the previous edition but 3.5 percentage points lower from its best result in 2013.
Strong advances in professional and technical workers doubled parity from 26.6 per cent in 2006 to 49.9 per cent in 2026 in India. -- PTI
