Context:

Recently the Global Gender Gap Index was released by the World Economic Forum. India has been one of the worst performers in South Asia and has fallen 28 places in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021.

About Global Gender Gap Index.

• The Global Gender Gap Index is released by the World Economic Forum. It was first introduced in 2006 to benchmark progress towards gender parity.
• It was the 15th edition of the Global Gender Gap Report 2021 which comes out a little late over one year after COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic
• It is an index that is designed to measure gender equality.
• The released report examines four overall areas of inequality between men and women-
  • Economic participation and opportunity
  • Educational attainment
  • Political empowerment
  • Health and survival
• It tracks the progress for the closing of the gender gaps over time.

Key global findings of the reports

• Iceland is declared as the most gender-equal country in the world for the 12th time, which is followed by Norway, Finland, and Sweden.
• The five most-improved nations in the overall index are Lithuania, Serbia, Timor-Leste, Togo, and United Arab Emirates. These countries had narrowed down their gender gaps by at least 4.4 percentage points or more.  Western Europe had remained the most progressed region with gender parity at 77.6%.  The Middle East and North Africa region again remain the area with the largest gap of 60.9%.
• Three new countries have been assessed for the first time: Afghanistan with 44.4%
• of the gender gap, rank- 156th), Guyana (72.8%, rank- 53rd), and Niger (62.9%, rank-138th). In the report, global gender gap analysis is based on the following patterns.

The observations made for India

• India has ranked 140 out of 156 countries. It has slipped to 28 places from the last year.
• Political Empowerment: India has declined on the political empowerment index as well in the number of women ministers. It has performed relatively well in women’s participation in politics and ranked 51.
• Health and survival: India secured rank 155 on this front. Its performance on Sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy has remained dismal.
• Economic Participation and Opportunity: India got ranked 151 on this end. This shows a poor labor force participation rate, inequality in wages for similar work, reduction in income, less participation as legislators, senior officials, and managers.
• Education attainment: In the index of education attainment India has ranked at 114. India has shown improvement in the literacy rate. On the enrolment front for primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education, India has performed very well.

Steps were taken by the Government to reduce the gender gap

• Health sector initiatives: ICDS (Integrated child development services, MatritvaSahyogYojana for Pregnant and lactating women, MatruVandanayojna, and JananiSurakshaYojna are some of the health sector initiatives for women.
• Gender gap reduction: STEP scheme, MGNREGA are some of the initiatives for gender gap reduction.
• Educational initiatives: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Right to Education, Kasturba Gandhi BalikaVidyalayasare some of the educational initiatives.
• Reservation in Parliament: The Women’s Reservation Bill (108th amendment) was introduced in the parliament to reserve 33% of LokSabha and VidhanSabha seats for women but the bill has yet to be passed by LokSabha.