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As the rest of the world strives for gender parity, India continues to face significant challenges in achieving equality country-wide. Ranking 129 on the Global Gender Gap Index, the multifaceted issues contributing to this are clear, as are its implications for the nation’s socioeconomic progress.
Despite the fact that gender equality is now deemed a cornerstone of societal progress, India continues to grapple with persistent disparities.
This was made evident by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2024 Global Gender Gap Index, which paints a complex picture of both progress and regression.
Ranking 129th out of 146 countries, India has dropped down two places from last year.
This has prompted an investigation into the factors that have influenced this decline, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The paradox of progress and regression
India’s performance on the Global Gender Gap Index presents a paradox.
While the country has successfully closed 64.1 per cent of its overall gender gap – a mild improvement from the last few years – it’s witnessed a decline in educational attainment and political empowerment.
This regression overshadows the marginal gains made in economic participation and opportunity, drawing attention to the intricacies of gender equality issues in the world’s largest democracy.
The educational landscape in India best reflects this complexity.
Raking first globally in gender parity for secondary education enrolment, this remarkable achievement demonstrates the nation’s progress in guaranteeing equal access to basic education.
This success is dampened by lower rankings in other educational categories (105th in tertiary enrolment, 124th in literacy rate, and 89th in primary enrolment), however, which are to blame for India’s plummet from 26th to 112th place in the educational attainment subindex and which highlights how urgently a renewed focus on comprehensive educational equality is needed.
And it isn’t solely within education that India’s performance is so varied.
Politically, the country is leading the charge, ranking 10th globally in the number of years with parity between female and male heads of state over the last half-century.
This is unsurprising, given India’s history of women in politics. Yet women’s representation at the federal level remains a concern, with only 6.9 per cent in ministerial positions and 17.2 per cent in parliament.
It’s for this reason that India ranked 65th in the political empowerment subindex, which suggests that there is still a great deal of work to be done to bolster women’s participation in governance at all levels.
Economic disparity
The most striking example of India’s gender gap is within its economy.
142nd in the economic parity and opportunity subindex, the country has maintained its status as one of the lowest ranking globally, made worse by the sobering statistic that Indian women earn just Rs. 39.8 (38p) for every Rs. 100 (95p) earned by men.
