Mumbai, December 17: India ranks 112th on the overall Global Gender Gap Index. However, the country has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap (score of 66.9 per cent) said a recent report by World Economic Forum (WEF). That said, India has slipped four places down as compared to the previous edition. The condition of women in large fringes of India’s society is precarious says ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2020’ by World Economic Forum. Since the year 2006, the gap has significantly wider as the gender gap runs particularly deep in the countries like India.
Among the 153 countries taken into consideration for study, the report pointed out that the India is the only country where the economic gender gap is larger than the political gender gap. Also in terms of labour market -— working or looking for work, only one-quarter of women as compared with 82 per cent of men is currently actively engaged. That is the one of the lowest participation rates in the world (145th). The report also estimated that the female earned income just a mere one-fifth of male income, which is again the lowest (144th) in the world. Talking about leadership, women accounted for just 14 per cent of leadership roles (136th) and 30 per cent of professional and technical workers.
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In a country like India, violence and forced marriage and discrimination in access to health remain still pervasive, due to which India ranks a low 150th on the Health and Survival sub-index (94.4). On the positive terms, the trend in terms of gender gap in education is much better, as the share of women attending school is systematically larger compared to the share of men. However there is a large difference in terms of literacy rate. “Only two-thirds of women are literate compared with 82 per cent of men. Yet the gap has been narrowing in the past decade, because the literacy rate has significantly increased among women (66 per cent) and slightly decreased among men to 79 per cent,” pointed out the report.
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