ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is placed at 142 out of 146 countries, the bottom of both the regional and global ranking tables of the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, published by the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.

However, the country’s score improved by 5.1 percentage points on the economic participation and opportunities sub-index in the last decade to attain 36.2 per cent parity, though this level of parity remains one of the lowest globally, the report says.

This year, Pakistan has been placed near the bottom; only Algeria, Chad, Iran and Afghanistan are below Pakistan. Last year, Pakistan was ranked at 145 out of 146 countries in the ranking tables.

The WEF report annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions: (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment).

Current position still an improvement from previous years; WEF notes ‘broad progress’ across all indicators

In the sub-indicator of economic participation and opportunities, the country ranked 143 with labour force participation (140th), wage equality for similar work (71st), estimated earned income (137th), legislators, senior officials and managers (139th), and professional and technical workers (132nd).

In educational attainment dimension, Pakistan’s ranking in 2023 is 138th, with literacy rate (137th), enrolment in secondary education (132nd), and enrollment in tertiary education (104th). With ranking of 132nd in health and survival, the sex ratio at birth is (first) while healthy life expectancy (140th).

In the political empowerment dimension, the report ranked Pakistan at 95th, women in parliament (94th), women in ministerial positions (126th), and years with female/male head of state during last 50 years (36th).

The report notes broad progress in Pakistan across all indicators on the economic participation and opportunity sub-index, particularly in the share of women technical workers and the achievement of parity in wage equality for similar work.

Despite relatively high disparities, parity in literacy rate and enrollment in secondary and tertiary education are gradually advancing, leading to 82.5pc parity on the educational attainment sub-index.

Pakistan secured parity in sex ratio at birth, boosting sub-index parity by 1.7 percentage points since 2022. Like most other countries, Pakistan’s widest gender gap is on political empowerment (15.2pc). It has had a female head of state for 4.7 years of the last 50 years, and one-tenth of the ministers as well as one-fifth of parliamentarians are women.

Commenting on the 2023 edition of the Global Gender Gap Report, the Managing Director of World Economic Forum, Saadia Zahidi, says some parts of the world are seeing today partial recoveries while others are experiencing deterioration as new crises unfold. Global gender gaps in health and education have narrowed over the past year, yet progress on political empowerment is effectively at a standstill, and women’s economic participation has regressed rather than recovered.

The tepid progress on persistently large gaps documented in this year’s report creates an urgent case for renewed and concerted action. Accelerating progress towards gender parity will not only improve outcomes for women and girls but benefit economies and societies more widely, reviving growth, boosting innovation and increasing resilience, she said.

Key findings of the report shows that no country has yet achieved full gender parity, although the top nine countries — Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Ni­­ca­ragua, Namibia and Lithuania — have closed at least 80 per cent of their gap.

For the 146 countries covered in the 2023 index, the health and survival gender gap has closed by 96 per cent, the educational attainment gap by 95.2 per cent, economic participation and opportunity gap by 60.1 per cent, and political empowerment gap by 22.1 per cent.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2023