Gender Equality is Still a Distant Goal

Going by the WEF's Global Gender Gap Report 2022, which ranked India at 135th position in the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), the country has miles to go in ensuring equal opportunity and equal pay for women despite impressive economic growth.

- Sumitha Nandan

Saadia Zahidi, the widely respected and accepted Managing Director of the multilateral agency, the World Economic Forum (WEF), wrote in the preface of the just published Global Gender Gap Report 2022 that accelerating (gender) parity must be a core part of the public and private agenda going forward. She wrote: “In 2022, amid multi-layered and compounding crises including the rising cost of living, the ongoing pandemic, the climate emergency and large-scale conflict and displacement, the progress towards gender parity is stalling. As leaders tackle a growing series of economic and political shocks, the risk of reversal is intensifying. Not only are millions of women and girls losing out on access and opportunity at present, this halt in progress towards parity is a catastrophe for the future of our economies, societies and communities.”

One could only agree with her arguments which stand to everybody’s reason. Despite making large scale economic progress, and in many cases women breaking the glass ceilings by making it to the top and gatecrashing into hitherto mail bastions, a lot more needs to be done in achieving gender parity in many economies. It is true that we may find women heading many corporations, powerful organisations and even nations, but the lot of the women living at the bottom of the pyramid has hardly changed over the years.