The World Economic Forum has assured that soon, a ‘Skills and Gender Parity Accelerator’ will be established in India to focus on and build public-private initiatives to prepare the country’s workforce for the future of work, develop the Indian digital and green economy and also ensure that women are equipped with the skills required for the new economy.
India has sought to include women’s participation in panchayats and other local governance in the Global Gender Gap Report. Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smiriti Irani has managed to convince the World Economic Forum (WEF) to take into account India’s gender budget as well while computing the Global Gender Gap Report.
These suggested changes in the parameters of the report will help improve India’s position in the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report.
According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the WEF has assured that the Forum will attempt to improve data collection and other benchmarks so that women’s participation in local governance and their role in making political decisions is evaluated in a way that is comparable worldwide. Assurance has also been given by the Forum that the positive outcomes of India’s gender budgeting process will be projected on the WEF digital platform.
In 2022, India was in 135th position in the list of 146 countries in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Index. In 2021, it was in the 140th position on the list of 156 countries. In 2020, India ranked 112 among 153 countries. This poor performance has been because the participation of more than 1.4 million women panchayat leaders has been unfairly not taken into account.
While preparing the Global Gender Gap index, the participation of women in politics, education, health and economics is taken into account. The number of positions held by women, the tenure of women as president or prime minister is also taken into account.
