WEF gender-gap report keeps India at 131; full parity still 120 years off

The World Economic Forum released the 20th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report on 16 September. Across 145 economies, 69.2 percent of the measured gap is now closed, 0.4 points more than a year earlier. At that speed the Forum says full parity is 120 years away. Iceland remains first, for the 17th year, with about 93 percent of its gap closed. Finland and Norway hold second and third. Chad sits last. Iran and Pakistan complete the bottom three.

India is 131st. Its overall score is 64.5 percent, below the global mean. The score ticked up from last year. The rank did not. Only 14 countries sit below India on a list of 145. Inside South Asia, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka all rank higher.

The four pillars of the index explain the stall. Educational attainment is India’s strongest sheet: 96.6 percent parity, with full parity in secondary and tertiary enrolment and near-parity in primary. That score is 0.5 points lower than last year. Adult literacy parity is 82.5 percent. Health and survival improved to 95.6 percent. The sex ratio at birth is still nearly a point below its 2006 reading, even after an improvement since 2017.

Economic participation is the weak line. India scored 41.2 percent, up 0.5 points from the previous edition and 3.5 points below its 2013 high of 44.6 percent. Over two decades the economic score has moved only 1.5 points. Labour-force participation parity is 44.1 percent. Estimated earned-income parity is 35.1 percent. On this pillar India ranks 143rd of 145. That is the number that keeps the country in the bottom 15 even as classrooms fill.

Political empowerment is the best rank, not the best score. India closed 24.5 percent of that gap and placed 67th in the world on the measure. The Forum’s political clock is the longest of the four: 194 years to parity at the current global pace. Economic participation is 129 years away. Education is eight.

Since 2006 India’s overall score has risen 4.3 points, almost all of it from school enrolment. That is the long story the report tells about the country. Girls now enter and stay in secondary and tertiary classrooms at the same measured rate as boys. They do not enter paid work, or stay in it, or earn, at anything like the same rate. The index does not measure unpaid care. It does measure who draws a wage and who sits in a parliament. On those two counts India remains far from the countries that bookend the table.

The global picture is not a surge. Almost every economy tracked since 2006 has moved up. The last year added 0.4 points. The Forum has now said, for several cycles, that the remaining distance is in pay, leadership and office, not in primary school. Iceland’s lead is a reminder of how slowly the other three pillars move even in small, rich states.

For Indian ministries the usable detail is the economic rank of 143 and the earned-income figure of 35.1 percent. Those are the cells that did not travel with the enrolment gains. Labour-force surveys already show female participation rising off a low base in some states and stalling in others. The Forum’s 2026 sheet says the national average has not moved enough to shift India’s place among 145 countries. The rank will not move until the pay and participation lines do.

The report is a scoreboard, not a statute. It does not bind a budget. It does set the sentence that will be quoted in Parliament and in Geneva for the next twelve months: 131st, 64.5 percent, 120 years.