India moves up 6 spots to 108 on global gender index

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India's ranking on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index has moved up six spots to 108 in 2015 from 114 in 2014. Iceland leads the ranking, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden. Among the developing economies, China ranks ahead of India at 91, while Brazil was ranked 85 out of 145 countries.

The Global Gender Gap Index is constructed on the basis of the gap between men and women in each country across four sub-indices, namely, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. On each of the sub-indices, India fares poorly with the exception of political empowerment. The jump in overall rankings over the previous year is largely because the percentage of women in ministerial positions has more than doubled from nine per cent in 2014 to 22 per cent in 2015.

According to the report, India has "improved across most sub-indices, and, in fact, is the region's most-improved country on political empowerment. Nevertheless, it has regressed on economic participation and opportunity and is the world's least-improved country on the health and survival sub-index".

On the sub-index of economic participation and opportunity which measures the gap between men and women in labour force participation, remuneration and advancement, India ranks 139 out of 145 countries.

Among the BRICS, South Africa has improved its labour force participation gap by 18 per cent, while India has widened its gap by seven per cent. On this index, India ranks behind even Saudi Arabia. India's poor performance on the index is largely due to a decrease in wage equality for similar work and less female labour force participation. This poor score places the country third-lowest in the region.

On educational attainment, which is estimated by calculating the gap between women's and men's current access to education, India ranks 125, behind countries such as Gambia, Tajikistan and Nepal.

Similarly, on health and survival India fares poorly. It ranks 143, well behind countries like Pakistan, Liberia and Mozambique. A country's performance on this index is calculated by estimating the difference between women's and men's health through the sex ratio at birth and the gap between their life expectancy.

According to the report, while India's performance on educational attainment, and health and survival scores have improved, the country ranks third-lowest in the region and third-lowest in the world on both sub-indices.

On political empowerment, India ranks higher at nine largely due to the sharp increase in women in ministerial positions. While India gets the benefit of having a woman as Prime Minister, the increase in the ratio of women to men in minister-level positions and the ratio of women to men in parliamentary positions has also helped its position.