Despite moving up five spots from the previous year because of improved economic participation and opportunity performance, India was placed poorly in gender parity on Wednesday, taking up 135th place.
According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual Gender Gap Report 2022, published in Geneva, Iceland continued to hold the title of the nation with the highest level of gender equality, followed by Finland, Norway, New Zealand, and Sweden.
On the list of 146 nations, just 11 are placed lower than India, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Congo, Iran, and Chad being the bottom five.
The WEF stated that the cost of living problem is projected to strike women the hardest internationally and that it will take another 132 years (compared to 136 in 2021) to close the gender gap.
The research said that Covid-19 had pushed gender parity back a generation and that a sluggish global recovery was making it worse.
According to the WEF, India continues to do poorly across the board, even if its gender gap score reached its seventh-highest level in the previous 16 years.
India's accomplishment "weighs significantly on regional rankings with a female population of about 662 million," it stated.
India has made the most notable and favorable progress in its Economic Participation and Opportunity performance since 2021. But since 2021, the proportion of men and women in the labor force has decreased.
The percentage of female lawmakers, senior officials, and managers rose from 14.6% to 17.6%, while female professional and technical workers grew from 29.2 percent to 32.9 percent.
While values for both men and women decreased, they did so more for males, resulting in an improvement in the gender parity score for projected earned income.
However, the sub index for political empowerment, where India is ranked significantly higher at 48th, showed a lowering score since fewer women have been heads of state for a decreasing percentage over the previous 50 years.
India was among the five nations with gender inequalities of more than 5% on the health and survival subindex, coming up at 146th position, with the other four being Qatar, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, and China.
However, India was placed ninth on the worldwide average for tertiary enrollment and first for prior registration in terms of gender parity.
India was ranked sixth in South Asia, behind Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. India received worse grades than Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
With the lowest ratings for all assessed gender gaps and no development since 2021 in most nations, South Asia (62.3%) has the most significant gender gap of all the regions.
The gender disparity in the area won't be closed in 197 years if things continue as they are. With advances in the proportion of women in professional and technical occupations in nations like Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, the economic gender gap has shrunk by 1.8%.
The WEF assessed one hundred forty-six economies, and just one in five were found to have closed the gap.
After the shock of job losses due to the pandemic and the ongoing insufficiency of the care infrastructure, the cost of the living problem is disproportionately affecting women, according to WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi.
"Government and business must put forth two sets of efforts in the face of a sluggish economic recovery: tailored measures to assist women's return to the workforce and women's skill development in the future sectors. Otherwise, we run the danger of irreversibly undoing the progress made in recent years and missing out on the potential economic benefits of diversity, "Added she.
At the present development rates, it will take 155 years to overcome the gender gap in political empowerment, 11 years longer than expected in 2021, and 151 years to bridge the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity.
Even if 29 nations have achieved full parity, it will still take 22 years to overcome the gender gap in educational achievement.
Even though at least 95% of the health disparities in more than 140 nations have been narrowed, general reversals in health and survival rates are possible.