Global Gender Gap Report 202519Among the four components of this subindex, while almost half of the economies covered in the 2025 edition have achieved full parity, large gaps between economies are concentrated primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 24 economies that have yet to close 80% of the adult literacy gap, 19 are located in this region. Thanks to the widespread implementation of at least nine years of compulsory education in most economies, gender gaps in primary and secondary school enrolment are relatively narrow, with minimal variation across economies. However, in terms of tertiary enrolment, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to hold some of the lowest scores. Notably, three economies – Chad, Guinea and Niger – have yet to achieve even 50% parity in tertiary enrolment. While the report’s primary focus is how close women are to reaching parity with men – capping the female-to-male ratio at 1 – it is noteworthy that in 109 of the economies covered in the 2025 edition, women are more likely than men to enrol in tertiary education. This includes all economies in Europe and Northern America. The gender gap in tertiary enrolment favouring women has widened in 49 economies featured in both the 2006 and 2025 editions. However, an increase in years of schooling has not necessarily translated into improved labour-market outcomes for women. Among the high-income economies covered in this edition, all have closed at least 99% of the gender gap in education, yet none have closed more than 85% of their economic gender gap. Previous Global Gender Gap Reports have highlighted the “drop-to-the-top” phenomenon, revealing persistent barriers preventing women from reaching senior leadership roles across industries and economies. This phenomenon is especially pronounced among women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. 2 In the Health and Survival subindex, economies are clustered towards the upper end, near full parity. The subindex score ranges from 93.4% in Azerbaijan to full parity in 17 economies. This subindex has remained moderately stable throughout the 19 editions due to two slowly progressing indicators: sex ratio at birth, and healthy life expectancy (Figure 1.6). For most economies covered in both the 2006 and 2025 editions, sex ratio at birth has remained largely unchanged. In Albania and Georgia, the ratio increased slightly, by 0.02 and 0.08, respectively. The largest decreases over the same period are observed in India (-0.01) and the Philippines (-0.02). In this edition, women are still projected to enjoy a longer healthy life expectancy than men in 130 out of 148 economies. However, the gender differences in healthy life expectancy have narrowed in a majority of economies with data available in both the 2006 and 2025 editions. While overall life expectancy by gender has remained more stable than healthy life expectancy, and women continue to outlive men, 3 this indicates that the proportion of women’s lives spent in full health has declined relative to men.The Political Empowerment subindex demonstrates the widest variations across economies. This year, the percentage of the Political Empowerment gap that has been closed ranges from 0.6% in Vanuatu to 95.4% in Iceland. The population-weighted global average of 22.9% is skewed toward the lower end due to the poor performance of the world’s most populous economies in this area (Figure 1.5). Out of the 148 economies covered in this edition, only nine have closed more than half of the Political Empowerment gap. The top performers in the Political Empowerment subindex closely align with the highest-ranking economies in the overall index. This is largely due to the uneven progress observed at the upper end of the Political Empowerment score distribution, in contrast to the relatively smaller range of variations across the other three subindexes. For instance, with a Political Empowerment score of 95.4%, Iceland leads the subindex, outperforming the second-ranked Finland by over 22 percentage points. Iceland also ranks first in the overall Gender Gap Index, and the only economy scoring above 90% (Table 1.3). Results of all three components of the Political Empowerment subindex – proportion of years with a female head of state over the past 50 years, share of female ministers, and the proportion of women in parliament – show the full range of variation across economies, with scores ranging from 0 to 100%. Nearly half of the economies covered in this edition have had no female head of state in the past 50 years, while only Bangladesh and Iceland have parity in this area. At the ministerial level, five European economies (Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Spain and the United Kingdom) and two from Latin America and the Caribbean (Chile and Nicaragua) have reached full gender parity. In contrast, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Vanuatu have all-male ministerial cabinets. Full parity in parliamentary representation has been achieved by Mexico, Nicaragua, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates, whereas Oman remains the only economy without any women in its national parliament this year.

GGGR 2025