Pakistan slips to last on WEF Gender Gap Report

KARACHI: Pakistan ranks last among 148 countries on the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025. Released on Wednesday, the report gave Pakistan a gender parity score of 56.7 per cent, a 0.3 per cent decline from the score it received in 2024. A score of 100 per cent indicates gender parity.

This year’s results are a second consecutive drop from the nation’s best score of 57.7 per cent, achieved in 2023. To assign countries their gender parity score, the Global Gender Gap Index annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (subindexes): ‘Economic Participation and Opportunity’, ‘Educational Attainment’, ‘Health and Survival’ and ‘Political Empowerment’. Though coming last, Pakistan has not fallen far, dropping just three spots from last year’s rank of 145th. Iceland stands on top of the list, while Bangladesh got the highest rank out of the seven countries in the ‘Southern Asia’ region, at 24th. India placed 131st globally and fifth in the region.

Since launching in 2006, it has been the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts to close gaps across these dimensions and move towards gender parity over time. Despite the recent drops and its bottom ranking on this year’s report, Pakistan has closed +2.3 of its gender gap since 2006. The sole subindex advance

e registered by Pakistan in this year’s edition is ‘Educational Attainment’, bumping educational parity upwards by +1.5 percentage points to reach 85.1 per cent. The report argues that part of the shift is driven by an increase in female literacy rates (from 46.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent). However, parity has also risen because male enrolment shares have dropped in tertiary education, increasing the relative balance between men and women but lowering educational reach overall. Pakistan ranks 137th out of 148 countries on the ‘Educational Attainment’ subindex, and its highest subindex rank, 118th, is in ‘Political Empowerment’. However, Pakistan’s score on ‘Political Empowerment’ has dropped from 12.2 per cent in 2024 to 11 per cent for this year. Despite a rise in parity in parliament, the country was listed among those with all-male ministerial cabinets. The country’s highest score is on the ‘Health and Survival’ subindex at 95.9 per cent, and it attained a score of 34.7 per cent on ‘Economic Participation and Opportunity’. The report says that income disparity in Pakistan has increased slightly since the last edition (+.02 points), as has perceived wage inequality (+4 percentage points). Overall, the report finds that there is still a combined global average gender gap of over 30 per cent across the four areas that it covers. The global gender gap score in 2025 for all 148 economies included in this edition of the index stands at 68.8 per cent, rising slightly from 68.4 per cent in 2024. In her comments on this year’s report, WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi says that it “arrives at a decisive moment, with the world in flux. Technological breakthroughs, geopolitical conflict, and economic uncertainty are creating unprecedented challenges as well as bringing new opportunities. Amid such change, gender parity is both a principle and a strategy.” According to the managing director, “Economies that tap into the full spectrum of their talent and human capital are best positioned to navigate an era of transformation and accelerate productivity and prosperity. Yet most economies are not fully leveraging this pathway for growth”.