Pakistan ranked 127 out of 130 countries in this year's Global Gender Gap ranking, says a report of World Economic Forum released through the Competitiveness Support Fund (CSF) here on Wednesday. The report provides a comprehensive framework for assessing and comparing global gender gaps in 92 per cent of the world's population this year.
The report identifies gaps in most socio-economic areas of the country. Pakistan ranks 117th, in both women's literacy rate and workforce population; in healthy life expectancy, it ranked 115th; enrolment in primary education it ranked 110th, in wage equality for similar work it ranked 60th, while in years of female head of state, it ranked at number 5.
According to the GGGR 2008, published each year by the World Economic Forum, the social and economic empowerment of women is still very low and they are still struggling for their livelihood and survival.
There are three basic underlying concepts of the GGG Report; it ranks countries according to gender equality rather than women empowerment; focuses on measuring gaps rather than levels and measuring those gaps in outcome variables rather than input variables. Pakistan has ranked poorly in almost all categories. However it has fared well in empowering women politically as it ranks 50th out of 130 countries.
Norway leads the world in closing the gender gap, followed by Finland, Sweden and Iceland. Germany (11), United Kingdom (13) and Spain (17) slipped down the ranking, but remained in the top 20 slot. Many countries like Netherlands (9), Latvia (10), and Sri Lanka (12) and France (15) made significant gains.