India slips to 131st spot on WEF index as gender gap widens

India has slipped to 131st out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2025, down two spots from last year’s 129th and four places lower than its 2023 ranking.

Yet, even as its relative position declined due to stronger improvements by other economies, India’s overall gender parity score improved slightly to 64.4%, up by 0.3 points from the previous year—indicating modest progress in absolute terms.

India continues to rank 144th in the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, placing it among the bottom five globally. This reflects that Indian women still have access to less than one-third of the economic resources available to men. Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, and Egypt also remain at the bottom of this category, with Pakistan holding the lowest overall rank since the index was first introduced in 2006.

Published by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, the Global Gender Gap Report tracks and benchmarks progress in gender parity worldwide. It remains a key reference for policymakers, businesses, and civil society working to close persistent gaps in access and opportunity between men and women.

The 2025 report notes that India made incremental gains in economic participation and educational attainment, but these were outweighed by declines in political empowerment.

Female representation in Parliament has dropped to 13.8% from 14.7% last year, continuing a downward trend for the second consecutive year. Meanwhile, the proportion of women in ministerial roles has slipped from 6.5% to 5.6%, drifting further from the 2019 high of 30%. This erosion of female leadership in politics has been a major factor behind India’s overall fall in the rankings.

Still, there are some encouraging developments. India’s score in economic participation and opportunity rose by 0.9 percentage points to 40.7%, supported by a record-high female labor force participation rate of 45.9%. Estimated earned income parity also improved, rising from 28.6% to 29.9%. In education, India scored 97.1% in the attainment subindex, reflecting continued gains in female literacy and higher education enrolment, though the country remains 110th in global ranking for this metric.

The gender gap in health and survival also narrowed, with India scoring 95.4%, up from 95.1% in 2024, thanks to improvements in the sex ratio and healthy life expectancy.

Regionally, India continues to trail its South Asian peers, ranking below Bangladesh (24th), Bhutan (125th), and Sri Lanka (130th).

At the global level, Iceland, Finland, and Norway continue to lead the index, while the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the Republic of Moldova have made their way into the top ten performers.

Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, noted that the COVID-19 crisis highlighted how trade shocks affect both men and women, but with longer-lasting and harder-to-reverse consequences for women. “It will therefore be important to keep the gendered job and wage impacts of trade fragmentation and its effects on growth and prosperity at the forefront as trade policy evolves in 2025,” she said, warning that these pressures risk worsening existing disparities in earnings, assets, and wealth.