Question-Which of the following organisation had released the ‘Global Gender Gap Index 2021” recently-
(a) WEF
(b) World Bank
(c) IMF
(d) UNDP
Ans. (a)
Related Facts-
- India has slipped 28 places to rank 140th among 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, becoming the third-worst performer in South Asia, after Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- In 2020, India had ranked 112th among 153 countries on the index.
- The report is annually published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
- The index benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions – Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment – and tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time.
- While India has declined on the political empowerment index as well by 13.5 percentage points, and a decline in the number of women ministers, from 23.1 per cent in 2019 to 9.1 per cent in 2021, it has still performed relatively well compared to other countries, ranking at 51 in women’s participation in politics. Bangladesh is “the only country where more women have held head-of-state positions than men in the past 50 years,” says the report.
- In the index of education attainment, India has been ranked at 114.
- But the two indices where India has fared the worst are “Health and Survival”, which includes the sex ratio, and economic participation of women.
- The report notes that the economic participation gender gap actually widened in India by 3 percent this year. The share of women in professional and technical roles declined further to 29.2 per cent. The share of women in senior and managerial positions also is at 14.6 per cent and only 8.9 per cent firms in the country have top female managers.
- But it is in the Health and Survival index that India has fared the worst, ranking at 155 — the only country to have fared worse is China. The report points to a skewed sex ratio as a major factor.
By-Yogesh Pratap Singh