Sri Lanka’s rank slips to 112 on Global Gender Gap Index WEF says gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years

By Lahiru Pothmulla   

Sri Lanka’s rank on the Global Gender Gap Index-2020 has slipped to 112 from the previous 110, the latest report issued by the World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday said.   
Sri Lanka’s score this year, is 0.680. The score of a country towards 0.00 means imparity while the score towards 1.00 meant parity.   

Accordingly, Iceland has topped the list as the most gender-equal country in the world out of 153 countries for the 11th consecutive year with a higher score of 0.877.   
Iceland was followed by Norway, Finland, Sweden, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Rwanda and Germany which is at the 10th place.   
Neighbouring Nepal ranked at 101, India 112, Maldives 123, Bhutan 131 and Pakistan at 151.   

Bangladesh at 50, is the country with the highest performance from the South Asian region.   

The country at the bottom of the list with the least gender-equality is Yemen.   

The four key subcategories of the Global Gender Gap Index are Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.   
“The methodology of the index has remained stable since its original conception in 2006, providing a basis for robust cross-country and time-series analysis,” the index report said.   
On the Political Empowerment sub-index, the report said South Asia has performed better.   

“This performance is also helped by the fact that Bangladesh (1st), India (4th), and Sri Lanka (9th) are among the 10 countries with most years with a female head of State in the past 50 years. Bangladesh is the only country in the world where that number exceeds the number of years with a male head of state,” it said.   

However, it also said that 85 out of the 153 countries covered by the report has never had a female head of state over the past 50 years.   

Meanwhile, the WEF said that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years.   

“None of us will see gender parity in our lifetime, and nor likely will many of our children. That’s the sobering finding of the Global Gender Gap Report 2020, which reveals that gender parity will not be attained for 99.5 years,” it said.