Recently, India ranks 131st in the Global Gender Gap Report 2025, reflecting stalled progress in achieving gender parity.

India’s Stalling Progress on Gender Parity

• Need for Parity: India’s progress, and indeed its future, hinges on achieving gender parity; without it, the nation risks falling further behind.
• Global Gender Gap Report 2025: The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 ranks India a “dismal” 131st out of 148 countries.
• Lagging Behind Peers: India’s ranking places it below every other BRICS nation and behind most of its South Asian neighbours (specifically, below Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, but above Maldives, Bhutan, and Pakistan).
• Pace of Progress: The decline in rank is not primarily due to India’s regression, but rather because other countries are closing their gender gaps at a faster pace, highlighting the need for India to accelerate its catch-up efforts.

India’s Progress in Gender Parity

• Educational Attainment: There have been visible gains in education, with women’s educational attainment approaching parity at 97.1%.
• Political Visibility: India’s political empowerment score is higher than China’s and close to Brazil’s.
• Panchayati Raj Institutions: Thanks to the panchayati raj laws mandating 33% women’s representation, women now have 45% participation in these grassroots institutions, contributing significantly to deepening democracy.
• Parliamentary Representation: While a positive trend, women account for only 14% of members in Parliament, which is sadly the highest it’s ever been, but still low compared to the global average of 27.6% in 2023.

Gender Disparity in Economic Sphere

• Bottom Five Globally: Poor economic participation is a major factor dragging India down to among the world’s bottom five nations in this category.
• Impact of High Unemployment: In a scenario of high unemployment, men tend to secure more jobs.
• Declining Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR): The historical female labour force participation rate has declined considerably over the past decade, according to the World Bank.
• Low Contribution to GDP: Women contribute less than 20% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
• Significant Wage Gap: Women earn under a third of what men do.
• Limited Decision-Making Roles: Women hold only a sliver of decision-making roles in the economy.

Economic Implications of Gender Disparity

• Economic Liability: This is not merely a gender issue but a critical economic one.
• Potential GDP Boost: The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that achieving gender parity in employment could add a substantial $770 billion to India’s GDP by 2025.
• Slow Pace to Parity: At current rates, achieving gender parity in employment could take another 135 years, making it a massive missed opportunity.
• Call for Policy Shift: This stark reality should alarm policymakers into signaling a radical and urgent shift in national priorities to privilege women’s participation for economic progress.

Role of State in Bringing Gender Parity

• PM’s Vision: The Prime Minister has repeatedly acknowledged that India’s progress depends on women-led development, signaling a high-level recognition of its importance.
• Beyond Recognition: However, this recognition is merely a beginning; genuine progress requires maximizing policy and practice to ensure women’s equal participation across economic, political, and social spheres, involving both the state and the private sector.
• State’s Primary Responsibility: While everyone has a role, the State bears the primary responsibility to lead and showcase this transformation.
• Hesitant Commitment: Despite the rhetoric, the current commitment appears hesitant. While the pace of inclusion has accelerated in recent years, this inclusion is often “reluctantly conceded,” suggesting a lack of wholehearted embrace.

Representation of Women in Key Institutions

• Civil Services Uptick: Women comprised an encouraging 41% of recent recruits to the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and 38% to the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). However, their overall representation across both services remains unclear.
• Defence and Security Bastions: These sectors remain difficult to breach, with less than 3% women in the armed forces and 12% across all police forces. (Based on search results, women make up only 8% of police officers nationally, and 12% in IPS).
• Apex Institutions Lagging: Even institutions mandated to ensure equality struggle with commitment:
  • Supreme Court: After briefly having four women out of 33 judges in 2021, the Supreme Court is now back to just one.
• National Human Rights Commission (NHRC): The NHRC has never had more than one substantive woman member at a time throughout its history, with its law only requiring “at least one woman.”
• Judiciary: Women constitute 38% of subordinate court judges but only 14% in High Courts.
• Police: Women make up just 8% at the officer level across the police force.
• Private Sector: While women hold a respectable percentage of middle management positions, fewer than 2% of India’s Fortune 500 companies are led by women.
• 33% Comfort Zone: The national discourse often remains stuck at a ceiling of 33% representation, implying that the demand for true equal space (50-60%) is somehow impertinent. 
  • This comfort level with 33% reflects a “grudging acceptance” and a “settled comfort with unfairness.”
• Reluctance to Reconfigure Spaces: The slow, incremental pace of inclusion, often termed “progress,” actually masks a deeper reluctance to genuinely reconfigure institutional spaces to fully accommodate women.

Pathways to Inclusion

• Self-Help Groups (SHGs): The expansion of women-led SHGs, targeted savings schemes, and access to low-interest credit have started to transform the economic landscape.
• State-Backed Programs: Programs, from Kerala to Uttar Pradesh, have successfully transitioned lakhs of rural women from subsistence activities to full-fledged enterprises.
• Women’s Reservation Bill: Political inclusion is poised for a significant jump, pending the census and delimitation required to activate the long-promised 33% reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies (expected by 2029 Lok Sabha elections).
• Panchayat Feeder Line: With millions of women already serving as panchayat representatives (45% participation in panchayati raj institutions), a strong feeder line for higher political offices already exists.
• International Example: The UK Labour party’s insistence on all-women shortlists successfully boosted female representation from under 10% to over 30% within two decades, demonstrating the effectiveness of such policies.

Systemic Barriers to Gender Parity

• Patriarchal Cultures and Biases: Stubborn patriarchal cultures and inherited procedures actively block inclusion, as systems often reflect and carry societal values and biases.
• Assumption of Male Neutrality: Institutions frequently assume male-dominated environments are neutral, fair, and meritocratic.
• “Seeking Indulgences” vs. “Tokenism”: When women advocate for their social and biological realities, it’s often dismissed as seeking “indulgences.” 
  • Conversely, a man’s merit is assumed, while a woman’s presence is frequently attributed to tokenism or reservation. This refusal to acknowledge fundamental differences hinders women’s ascent.

Way Forward

• Institutional Evolution: The onus for change lies squarely on institutions, which must evolve urgently and intentionally.
• Reforming Deficits: This evolution requires reforming today’s existing deficits and actively creating environments that truly include women.

Conclusion

Inclusion must be full, not partial; permanent, not temporary. It should not be a concession but rather a recompense for a long-denied fundamental right.

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