Bangladesh continues to outperform South Asian neighbours in closing gender gap

According to World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2022, Bangladesh is most gender-equal among South Asian countries.

Globally, Bangladesh has ranked 71 as per the gender gap report. Among the eight regions covered in the report, South Asia ranks the lowest, with only 62.3 percent of gender gap closed in 2022.

This lack of progress since the last edition extends the wait to close the gender gap to 197 years, due to a broad stagnation in gender parity scores across most countries in the region.

In Bangladesh, women this year experienced a decline in overall gender parity, as reflected in a lower gender gap score and index ranking compared to 2021. The change is in part the product of slightly lower country performance on educational attainment (-0.028 decrease in score), a subindex with high concentration of scores near parity.

The report states that South Asian nations' places in the regional ranking for this year were unchanged from those for 2021.

Nepal presently ranks second among South Asian nations for gender parity, with 69.2 percent and has been ranked 96th in the list.

With 67 percent of its gender gap bridged, Sri Lanka ranks third among performers in the region. On the index, it is positioned at 110. The Maldives comes in at number 117, and Bhutan comes in at number 126.

India's position on the index is 135th, third from the bottom in the region.

Pakistan ranks 145th – second-worst in the region, and Afghanistan performs worst in the world as well as in South Asia.