India has ranked 131 out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, slipping two places from its position last year.

• India scores 64.1%, among the lowest-ranked in South Asia.

About Global Gender Gap Index

• The Global Gender Gap Report is an annual publication by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that assesses and ranks countries on how well they are closing gender-based disparities across four key dimensions: 
  • Economic Participation and Opportunity
  • Educational Attainment
  • Health and Survival
  • Political Empowerment
• Methodology: Each country receives a score between 0 and 1, where 1 = full parity.
  • Countries are ranked based on the percentage of the gender gap they have closed.
  • The focus is on outcomes, not levels of development. So a poorer country can score higher if it has greater equality.
  • Scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed, numbers rounded).
• Significance Of the Report: Tracks progress over time (year-on-year).
  • Provides a comparative framework to set priorities for policy and action.
  • Encourages nations to improve their performance and share best practices.

Global Gender Gap Report 2025 India Rank

• Economic Participation and Opportunity
  • Score improvement: Up by +0.9 percentage points to 40.7%.
  • Estimated earned income parity: Improved from 28.6% to 29.9%.
  • Labour force participation rate: Steady at 45.9%, India’s highest recorded.
• Educational Attainment
  • Overall score: 97.1%, showing near-parity.
  • Improvements in: Female literacy rates and tertiary education enrolment.
• Health and Survival: Improved parity due to better: Sex ratio at birth and Healthy life expectancy.
  • However, similar to other countries, parity in healthy life expectancy is obtained despite an overall reduction in the life expectancy of men and women.
• Political Empowerment
  • Decline in parity: Dropped by -0.6 points since 2024.
  • Women in Parliament: Declined from 14.7% to 13.8%.
  • Women in Ministerial Roles: Fell from 6.5% to 5.6%.
  • Historical comparison: Far below 2019 peak of 30% female ministers.

South Asia: Regional Comparison

• Best Performer: Bangladesh emerged as the best performer in South Asia, jumping 75 ranks to rank 24 globally.
• Others Rank: Bhutan: 119, Nepal: 125, Sri Lanka: 130, Maldives: 138, Pakistan: 148

Global Trends As Per Global Gender Gap Index, 2025

• Global Gender Gap: Global Gender Gap has closed to 68.8%, marking the strongest annual advancement since the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Yet full parity remains 123 years away at current rates.
• The 2025 Global Gender Gap Index shows that no economy has yet achieved full gender parity.
• Top 5 Global Performers: Iceland (holding the top position for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap since 2022), Finland, Norway, United Kingdom, New Zealand
• Women in top leadership roles: Despite women representing 41.2% of the global workforce, a stark leadership gap persists with women holding only 28.8% of top leadership positions.
• Regional results: Northern America leads the 2025 regional gender gap rankings, having closed 75.8% of its overall gender gap, followed by Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean,Central Asia, Eastern Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia (ranks 7th), Middle East and Northern Africa.
• Gender parity: Globally, gender parity has increased by +4.8 percentage points since 2006.
• Political Empowerment: Across the 19 editions of the index, Political Empowerment has seen by far the most improvement, with the gap narrowing by 9.0 percentage points — from 14.3% in 2006 to 23.4 % in 2025 — among the 100 economies continuously included in every edition.

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