India ranks 131st in global gender gap index; Iceland leads

New Delhi: India has retained the 131st position among 145 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2026 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday.

Iceland, Finland and Norway retained the top three positions, respectively. Only 14 countries ranked below India. They included Papua New Guinea, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Mali, Algeria and Congo.

Chad was ranked the lowest, with Iran and Pakistan completing the bottom three.

The Geneva-based WEF said nearly every economy tracked since 2006 had made progress towards gender parity. However, it said full parity remained 120 years away.

Globally, 69.2% of the gender gap has been closed, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over the previous year. A score of 100% represents full parity.

India's overall gender parity score stood at 64.5%, below the global average. While the country's score improved slightly from the previous year, its ranking remained unchanged at 131st.

India's overall gender parity has increased by 4.3 percentage points since 2006, mainly due to gains in educational attainment.

In the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, India recorded a parity score of 41.2%, up 0.5 percentage points from the previous edition. However, this remained 3.5 percentage points below its best score, recorded in 2013.

Parity among professional and technical workers almost doubled from 26.6% in 2006 to 49.9% in 2026. Representation among legislators, senior officials and managers also improved by 10 percentage points since 2006, but remained relatively low at 13.1%.

Labour-force participation parity saw only a marginal improvement over the past two decades, reaching 44.1% in 2026.

India recorded a 96.6% parity score in Educational Attainment, although this was 0.5 percentage points lower than last year.

In Health and Survival, India's score improved to 95.6%.

The WEF said India's sex ratio at birth had remained nearly one percentage point lower than its 2006 level despite an upward trend since 2017.

Political Empowerment was India's highest-ranked subindex in 2026. The country had closed 24.5% of the gender gap and ranked 67th globally.

India's parity score for the head-of-state indicator stood at 42.9% in 2006. It increased to 72.3% during the index's first decade, reflecting several years of female leadership within its rolling 50-year reference period.

However, the score has declined since 2021 and stood at 40.7% in 2026.

In Parliament, India had closed 16.1% of the gender gap in 2026, an overall improvement of seven percentage points since 2006.

At the ministerial level, parity improved from 3.5% in 2006 to 5.9% in 2026. However, this remained well below India's highest score of 30% in 2019.

Globally, political empowerment recorded the largest gains since 2006, but the WEF said the trend had been reversing since 2016. The share of economies led by a woman peaked in 2022 but has since fallen back to 2016 levels.

The report also highlighted women's underrepresentation in positions with significant economic and political influence. Women hold 19.1% of chief executive officer roles, while only one in 10 ministerial portfolios held by women is considered highly influential.

Women also accounted for fewer than one in five AI engineers and remained underrepresented at every level of AI firms, the WEF said.

Southern Asia was the lowest-scoring region for economic participation and opportunity.

In its 20th year, the Global Gender Gap Index assessed 145 economies across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

“Twenty years of data show that gender parity is achievable. Economies at every income level have made progress, so the barrier is not a lack of resources,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum.

She said parity was a foundation for growth and competitiveness but was “not inevitable”, adding that governments and employers needed to learn from policies that work and implement them faster.

Namibia climbed four places to fourth, becoming the highest-ranked country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The UK was fifth, followed by New Zealand, Sweden, Australia, Germany and Ireland.

Australia entered the top 10 for the first time. Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden have appeared in the top 10 in every edition since 2006.

Iceland was the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap, at 93%.