NEW DELHI: India has been ranked 131 out of 148 countries on the Global Gender Gap Index 2025 with an overall gender parity score of 64.4%, a relative drop from 2024, when the country was placed at 129 out of 146 nations. This has been attributed to “performance of other economies”, even as the Indian economy’s overall performance improved in absolute terms by +0.3 points.The report released by the World Economic Forum on Thursday also showed that India has recorded a slight drop in parity (-0.6 points) since the last edition as far as “political empowerment” was concerned.Data showed that female representation in Parliament fell from 14.7% to 13.8% in 2025, lowering the indicator score for the second year in a row below 2023 levels. Similarly, the share of women in ministerial roles fell from 6.5% to 5.6%, moving the indicator score (5.9%) further away this year from its highest level of 30% in 2019.The index annually measures gender parity across four key dimensions — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Globally no economy has yet achieved full gender parity. The global gender gap score in 2025 for all 148 economies in the index closed at 68.8%.Globally, the second-largest gap to bridge is in “economic participation and opportunity”. Among the 148 economies covered in the 2025 edition, the score for this subindex varies from 31.3% in Sudan to 87.3% in Botswana.In this dimension, India has increased parity where its score has improved by + 0.9 percentage points. However, it figures in the bottom five countries of this subindex — Sudan, Pakistan (34.7%), Iran (34.9%), Egypt (40.6%) and India (40.7%).“These countries are marked by extremely low estimated earned-income ratios, with women accessing less than one-third of economic resources available to men. They also show minimal gender parity in senior workplace roles, with females-to-males ratios not exceeding 0.4, and labour-force participation rates reflecting less than half parity between women and men,” the report said.The report, however, shows that parity in estimated earned income in India has also increased from 28.6% to 29.9%. Scores in labour-force participation rate remains the same (45.9%), duplicating India’s highest level achieved to date, it said.In terms of educational attainment, India scores 97.1%, reflecting positive shifts in female shares for literacy and tertiary education enrolment, which result in positive score improvements for the subindex as a whole.India also recorded higher parity in health and survival, driven by improved scores in sex ratio at birth and in healthy life expectancy. However, similar to other countries, parity in the latter is obtained despite an overall reduction in men’s and women’s life expectancy.Iceland (92.6%) continues to lead the index, holding the top position for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap since 2022. India’s neighbours — Bangladesh is ranked 24, China 103, Bhutan 119, Nepal 125, Sri Lanka 130, Pakistan last at 148.For most economies covered in both the 2006 and 2025 editions, sex ratio at birth has remained largely unchanged. In Albania and Georgia, the ratio increased slightly, by 0.02 and 0.08, respectively. The largest decreases over the same period are observed in India (-0.01) and the Philippines (-0.02).