NEW DELHI — India remains 131st out of 145 economies in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2026. The rank is unchanged. The overall score has risen only slightly, to 64.5% of the gender gap closed.
The report, released on 16 September, measures parity across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. Education is still India’s strongest result.
The country recorded 96.6% parity in educational attainment, including full parity in secondary and tertiary enrolment. Adult literacy parity stood at 82.5%, which pulled the education score down from the previous year.
Health and survival registered 95.6% parity. Economic participation remains the weakest area at 41.2%. Labour-force participation parity was 44.1%. Among legislators, senior officials and managers the figure was 13.1%.
Political empowerment produced India’s highest relative ranking – 67th globally – yet the country has closed only 24.5% of its political gender gap. Parliamentary representation stood at 16.1% parity; ministerial representation at 5.9%.
Since 2006 India’s overall gender-parity score has improved by 4.3 percentage points. Economic participation has gained only 1.5 points and political empowerment 1.8 points over the same period. Most of the progress has come from education.
Globally, 69.2% of the gender gap was closed in 2026. At the current pace the WEF estimates the world remains about 120 years from full parity.
Iceland ranked first, followed by Finland and Norway. After twenty editions of the index, India is still near the bottom of the table.
