Bangladesh is more gender-neutral than India, an annual survey showed on Tuesday.
As per the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Report, Bangladesh has been ranked the 50th gender-neutral country among a total of 153 countries.
However, India has been ranked 112th in terms of the gender gap by the WEF, say media reports.
According to the annual survey, Bangladesh is the only country in the world where women have had a longer tenure than men at the helm of the state over the past 50 years.
The WEF report says Bangladesh has enough possibility to strengthen the basic rights of women and improve their economic and political prospects.
But there are only 8% of women in the cabinet and only 20% in the Parliament.
The report said Bangladesh’s achievement “in the top 50 and regional leadership should not hide the fact that there is considerable room to bolster basic rights of women and improve their economic and political prospects”.
India, which had been ranked 108th in terms of gender gap last year, has now slipped four places down amid widening disparity in terms of women’s health and survival and economic participation.
It also flagged abnormally low sex ratios at birth in India (91 girls for every 100 boys).
As per the report, Indian women account for only 14 pc of leadership roles and 30 pc of professional and technical workers.
In the economic sphere, as of 2018, 38 percent of adult women were part of the labour force (up from 34% in 2017), compared with 84% of men.
The WEF report also said only one in 10 leadership roles is occupied by a woman (139th), and the estimated average annual income of women is 40% that of the men.
According to the WEF report, the top five gender-neutral countries in the world are – 1. Iceland, 2. Norway, 3. Finland, 4. Sweden and 5. Nicaragua.