Bangladesh jumps 25 notches to 47th in gender parity: WEF

Bangladesh has jumped 25 notches to 47th place in the Global Gender Gap ranking, according to the World Economic Forum.

According to the study, Bangladesh has managed to close just under 72 percent of the gender gap.

Bangladesh scored 0.719 (with complete parity at 1) on the gender parity index and was ranked the highest among the South Asian nations. Maldives came second in the region at 106, with India at 108, Sri Lanka 109, Nepal 111, Bhutan 124 and Pakistan 143.

“Bangladesh (47) further consolidates its position as the region’s top performer and climbs several spots this year, recording progress across all dimensions of the Economic Opportunity and Participation subindex,” it said.

The South Asia region, however, is the second-lowest scoring in the 2017 Global Gender Gap Index, performing better than the Middle East and North Africa and worse than Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions. The average remaining gender gap in South Asia is 34 percent.

Gender parity in Bangladesh has improved among legislators, senior officials, managers, professionals and technical workers and in terms of earned income and wage equality.

There has, however, been a slight widening of the healthy life expectancy gender gap, the report said.

Bangladesh’s strongest category was political empowerment, where the country ranked 7th among 155 countries. It performed worst in economic participation and opportunity, in which it currently ranks 129th.

The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time.

Bangladesh had come in 91st place in the 115 countries analysed in the first report.

The World Economic Forum reported that in 2017 the speed with which the gap was decreasing has fallen for the first time since 2006.

Last year the World Economic Forum estimated that, if 2016 trends continued, the gender gap would disappear in 83 years. This year’s report says closing the gender gap could take 100 years if current trends continued.