Women globally have to wait 131 years to achieve gender parity says WEF report — see where India ranks

Notably, India had reached parity in enrollment across all levels of education. However, the report indicated that the country achieved only 36.7 percent parity in economic participation and opportunity.

While there were positive strides in wage and income parity, the representation of women in senior positions and technical roles slightly declined since the last year, posing challenges for India's progress in economic empowerment.

On the political front, India registered 25.3 percent gender parity, with women representing 15.1 percent of parliamentarians, marking the highest representation since the inaugural 2006 edition of the report.

In terms of health and survival, India saw improvement with a 1.9 percentage point increase in the sex ratio at birth, reaching 92.7 percent parity.

The Economic Survey 2023, released before this year's Union Budget, also highlighted that India had made significant progress in promoting gender equality, and has a value of 0.490 on the Gender Inequality Index (GII),  This score is a remarkable improvement compared to the South Asian region's average value of 0.508 and is close to the world average of 0.465, and has got India a rank of 122 among over 190 countries.

The WEF’s Gender Gap Index measures gender parity in 146 countries and across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. Overall parity has improved by 4.1 percentage points since the WEF launched the index in 2006.