New Delhi, Mar 14: India stands at rank 108 among 193 countries, with a score of 0.437, according to Gender Inequality Index (GII) 2022 released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The index was released on March 13 by UNDP in their Human Development Report 2023-2024. India stood at rank 122 out of 191 countries with a score of 0.490 in Gender Inequality Index 2021. This shows a significant jump of 14 ranks on GII 2022 vis-a-vis GII 2021.
Over the last 10 years, India's rank in GII has become consistently better, indicating progressive improvement in achieving gender equality in the country. In 2014, this rank was 127, which has now become 108.
“This is an outcome of the decisive agenda set by the government for ensuring women's empowerment through policy initiatives aimed at their long-term socio-economic and political development. Government initiatives have spanned across women's lifecycles including large scale initiatives for girls' education, skill development, entrepreneurship facilitation and safety in the workplace,” as per the Ministry of Women and Child Development release.
Policies and legislation in these areas have been driving the government's ‘women-led development' agenda.
According to UNDP, GII is a composite metric of gender inequality using three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market. A low GII value indicates low inequality between women and men, and vice-versa.
GII reflects gender-based disadvantage in three dimensions — reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market — for as many countries as data of reasonable quality allow. It shows the loss in potential human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in these dimensions. It ranges from 0, where women and men fare equally, to 1, where one gender fares as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions.
