Context: World economic forum has released the 2018 gender gap index.

About Global gender gap report:

It is published annually by the world economic forum since 2006. Global gender gap index is a part of this which measures gender equality across four pillars– they are economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival.

Performance of various countries:

Iceland has been ranked as Number 1. It is followed by Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Other countries in top 10 include Nicaragua, Rwanda, New Zealand, Philippines, Ireland and Namibia.
As per the report, at the current speed it will take about 108 years to close the overall gender gap in the world. And after 202 years there will be parity in the workplace in the world at the current rate of change.
Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and finally Yemen showed the biggest overall gender gaps of the countries surveyed.

Performance of India:

• India has been ranked at 108.
• It has recorded improvement in wage equality for similar work and has fully closed its tertiary education gender gap for the first time.
• It ranks 142nd out of 149 countries in the economic opportunity and participation subindex.
• India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country on this subindex over the past decade.
• India has slightly improved in WEF’s wage equality for similar work indicator, where it stood at 72nd place. The country has also closed its tertiary education enrolment gap for the first time in 2018 and has managed to keep its primary and secondary gaps closed for the third year running.
• Interestingly, India has the second-largest artificial intelligence (AI) workforce but one of the largest AI gender gaps, with only 22% of roles filled by women.

Way ahead for India:

India needs to get more women into senior and professional roles to make more improvement in the rankings.