Global Gender Gap Index Report 2025, Key Highlights

Global Gender Gap Index Report 2025, Key Highlights and India’s Performance

Explore the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2025, benchmarking gender parity across 148 economies. Check here India's performance in Global Gender Gap Index report 2025.

Table of Contents

Context: Recently, the Global Gender Gap Index Report 2025 was released by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Global Gender Gap Index Report 2025

Published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
India ranks 131st out of 148 countries, slipping two places from 129th in 2024.
Parity Score: 64.1 %, placing India among the lowest in South Asia.

India’s Performance by Dimension

Economic Participation and Opportunity

Score increased by 0.9 percentage points to 7%.
Female earned income parity improved from 6% to 29.9%.
Labour force participation remains stagnant at 9%.

Educational Attainment

Achieved near parity with a score of 1%.
Driven by improved female literacy and higher tertiary enrolment.

Health and Survival

Improved parity in sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy.
Overall decline in life expectancy offsets meaningful gains.

Political Empowerment

Parliamentary representation of women fell to 8% (from 14.7%).
Women in ministerial roles dropped to 6% (from 6.5%).
Marks the second year of decline; far from 2019 peak of 30%.

Regional Comparison (South Asia)

Bangladesh: Best performer, ranks 24th
Nepal (125), Bhutan (119), Sri Lanka (130) – all ahead of India.
Only Maldives (138) and Pakistan (148) rank lower than India.
Top 5 Countries:
1. Iceland (1st for 16th year)
2. Finland
3. Norway
4. United Kingdom
5. New Zealand
Global gender gap closed to 68.8%, strongest progress since the pandemic.
At the current rate, full parity will take 123 years.
Women make up 41.2% of the workforce but hold only 8% of leadership roles.

Global Gender Gap Index

The Global Gender Gap Index evaluates countries based on gender-based disparities across four key areas:

Economic Participation and Opportunity
Educational Attainment
Health and Survival
Political Empowerment

This index measures how wide or narrow the gender gaps are in these dimensions and monitors each country’s progress toward achieving gender equality over time.

What is World Economic Forum?

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization focused on Public-Private Cooperation.
Founded: January 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a German engineer and economist.
Purpose: Brings together leaders from politics, business, culture, and civil society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
The WEF does not hold any independent decision-making power.
Headquarters: Cologny, Geneva, Switzerland.