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The World Economic Forum's annual Global Gender Gap report for this year has shown India at a dismal 120th position behind Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and China and only slightly ahead of Pakistan. India, in fact, has dropped six positions from the 114th spot that it held in the last such survey.
The gender gap report looks at the closing of the disparities in terms of health, education, economic status and political participation between men and women.
Predictably enough the four Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland grabbed the top four slots in the survey. However, it is not all gloom for the world, with the overall figures showing a closing of the gender gap in three out of four parameters.
Globally, educationally the gap between men and women has closed from 91.55 per cent last year to 91.60 per cent this year, in economic terms the gap has narrowed from 55.78 per cent to 57.3 per cent and in political participation too there is a narrowing of the gap from 14.07 per cent to 14.75 per cent. Only in health and sex ratio has the gap widened from 96.25 per cent in 2006 to 95.85 this year.
India, of course, trails far behind the global top scores. In economic terms the gap is 39.8 per cent, while educationally Indian women trail at least 81.9 per cent behind the men, in terms of health the gap is at a huge 93.1 per cent, while political participation gap lies at 22.7 per cent.
"The Global Gender Gap Report quantifies the challenge: it shows that the highest ranking country has closed a little over 80 per cent of its gender gap, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45 per cent of its gender gap," said Saadia Zahidi, head of the WEF's women leadership programme.
"By providing a comprehensible framework for assessing and comparing global gender gaps and by revealing those countries that, regardless of the overall level of resources available, are role models in dividing these resources equitably between women and men, we are expectant that this report serves as a catalyst for greater awareness as well as greater exchange between policy-makers," she added.
