GGGR 2025

Global Gender Gap Report 20255Key findings The Global Gender Gap Index annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (subindexes): Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. Since launching in 2006, it is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time. This year, the 19th edition of the Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across 148 economies, providing a basis for the analysis of gender parity developments across two-thirds of the world’s economies. Further, the index examines a subset of 100 economies that have been included in every edition of the index since 2006, offering a broad country sample for longitudinal and trend analysis. The Global Gender Gap Index measures scores on a 0-1 scale, and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed, numbers rounded). Cross-economy comparisons support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps. Key findings include the index results in 2025, trend analysis of the trajectory towards parity and in-depth examination of historical and emerging patterns through new metrics, partnerships and contextual data. Global results and time to parity The global gender gap score in 2025 for all 148 economies included in this edition of the index stands at 68.8% closed. Looking at the constant set of 145 economies included in both this year’s and last year’s editions, the global gender gap closed by +0.3 percentage points in 2025, from 68.4% in 2024 to 68.8% in 2025. When considering the constant set of 100 economies covered continuously since the 2006 edition, the gap has narrowed by 0.4 percentage points, from 68.6% in 2024 to 69.0% in 2025. Based on the collective speed of progress of those 100 economies, it will take 123 years to reach full parity globally. In addition: – The 2025 Global Gender Gap Index shows that no economy has yet achieved full gender parity. Iceland (92.6%) continues to lead the Global Gender Gap Index, holding the top position for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap since 2022. –In this edition, each of the top 10 ranked economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps, the only economies to do so. European economies dominate the top 10, occupying eight of the spots. Among them, Iceland (92.6%, 1st), Finland (87.9%, 2nd), Norway (86.3%, 3rd), and Sweden (81.7%, 6th), have consistently ranked in the top 10 in every edition since 2006. Compared to the 2024 edition, the United Kingdom (83.8%, 4th) and the Republic of Moldova (81.3%, 7th) moved up in the rankings from last year to join the top 10. Germany (80.3%, 9th) and Ireland (80.1%, 10th) are also among the top 10 this year, marking their 7th and 18th appearances, respectively. New Zealand (82.7%, 5th) and Namibia (81.1%, 8th) have held the two remaining spots in the top 10 since 2021. – At the aggregate level, high-income economies have closed 74.3% of their gender gap – slightly higher than the averages observed in lower-income groups: 69.6% among upper-middle-income, 66.0% among lower-middle-income, and 66.4% among low-income economies. However, the top performers among lower-income economies have closed a greater share of their gender gaps than over half of the economies in the high-income group. –The pathway to full gender parity varies across the four subindexes. Among the 148 economies covered in the 2025 index, the Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 96.2%, 1 the Educational Attainment gap by 95.1%, the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap by 61.0%, and the Political Empowerment gap by 22.9%. – To date, the greatest progress towards gender parity has been observed in the areas of Economic Participation and Opportunity as well as Political Empowerment. Yet, these two dimensions continue to have the largest remaining gaps to close. Across the 19 editions of the index, Political Empowerment has seen by far the most improvement, with the gap narrowing by 9.0 percentage points — from 14.3% in 2006 to 23.4 % in 2025 — among the 100 economies continuously included in every edition. At the same time, at the current pace it will still take 162 years to fully close this gap. Similarly, the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap has narrowed by +5.6 percentage points over the same period, from 55.1% in 2006 to 60.7% in 2025, with full parity projected to take another 135 years if current trends persist. Global Gender Gap Report 2025 June 2025