HALF A SKY FALLING

A World Economic Forum survey on gender gaps confirms the NFHS findings. India has miserably failed one half of its people: the women

- Kaushik Deka

India once again finds itself in an embarrassing and, more importantly, worrying position in the Gender Gap Index report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF). The 2022 report ranks India almost at the bottom, No. 135, among the 146 countries surveyed. This year's overall score was 0.629; in past years, India's gender gap score has oscillated between a low of 0.593 and high of 0.683, while top 10 countries score over 0.8.

The report calculates the gender gap between men and women in four key areas-economic opportunities, education, health and political empowerment. While India is at a decent rank of 48 in terms of political empowerment, it's at the bottom of the list in health and survival.

The WEF report reiterates the contradiction between improved social empowerment of women and their abysmal health indicators, as revealed by the fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS) published earlier this year.