India Gets Poor 101st Rank On Global Gender Gap Index

Philippines has moved up to 5th place, while Ireland has slipped one position to sixth rank. They are followed by New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland and Nicaragua in the top ten.

Other major countries on the list include Germany at 14th, South Africa at 17th, UK at 23rd, Russia at 61st, Brazil at 62nd and China at 69th. Those ranked lowest include Pakistan at 135th and Yemen at 136th.

The countries that are ranked below India also include Japan (105th), UAE (109th), Republic of Korea (111th), Bahrain (112th) and Qatar (115th).

About India, WEF said that India continues to struggle to demonstrate solid progress towards gender parity.

Its economic participation and opportunity score has actually gone down in the past twelve months, although it has done well on political empowerment front.

"This is largely down to the number of years it has had a female head of state and for the other two indicators – women in parliament and women in ministerial positions -- it ranks 106 and 100 respectively," it said.

While no country has reached parity in terms of years with a female head of state, India has managed to get top rank for this indicator, whereas 65 per cent of countries have never had a female head of state over the past 50 years.

India's ninth position on political empowerment front is also its best-ever rank for this sub-index, where it was ranked 17th in 2012 and its lowest score was 25th in 2008.

The overall ranking of 101st is also its highest in the past seven years. India had ranked better at 98th position in the WEF's inaugural Gender Gap Index in 2006.