Pakistan was classified by the Fund between 148 countries of the Gender Grap Grap Global Report of Gender Gender of the World Forum (WEF), with 56.7 percent gender parity, the highest since 2006, emerged on Thursday.
The annual report compared the current state and the evolution of gender parity in four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational achievement, health and survival, and political empowerment.
In the last report, Pakistan has qualified under Sudan, (57pc, 147º), Chad (57.1pc, 146º), Iran (58.3pc, 145º), Guinea (59.5pc, 144th), Democratic Republic of the Congo (60.1pc, 143rd), Niger (61.3pc, 142nd), Algor (61.4pc, 141st) and Mali (61.7pc, 140th).
Occupying the lower range of the index, Pakistan saw its general parity score from last year’s edition, from 57pc to 56.7pc, according to the report. In general, Pakistan has closed +2.3 of his gender gap since 2006.
However, the results of this year were a second consecutive fall of the best score of the 57.7pc economy, achieved in 2023. Pakistan’s parity in economic participation and the opportunity has decreased by 1.3 percentage points, according to the report.
While economic representation indicators have not changed, the disparity of income in Pakistan has increased slightly since the last edition (0.02 points), as well as salary inequality (4 percentage points).
The only advance of the subscript registered by Pakistan in this year’s edition was “educational achievement”, increasing the educational parity up 1.5 percentage points to reach 85.1 percent.
The change was partly driven by an increase in female literacy rates (from 46.5pc to 48.5pc). However, parity has also increased because male registration actions have fallen into tertiary education, increasing the relative balance between men and women, but reducing the educational scope in general.
The report says that Pakistan’s economy had seen the political parity of 12.2pc fall in 2024 to 11pc in 2025.
While parity in Parliament increased by 1.2 percentage points, the ministerial representation of women fell from 5.9pc in 2024 to zero in 2025 and with it the general sub-indice score, the report added.
Pakistan was among countries such as Azerbaijan, Hungary, Saudi Arabia and Vanuatu that have ministerial cabinets for men.
When commenting on the 2025 edition of the report, the managing director of the World Economic Forum, Saadia Zahidi, said that the report “arrives at a decisive moment with the world in flow such as technological advances, geopolitical conflicts and economic uncertainty is creating unprecedented challenges and providing new opportunities.
“In the midst of this change, gender parity is both a principle and a strategy,” he said, adding that “the economies that take advantage of the complete spectrum of their talent and human capital are better positioned to navigate an era of transformation and accelerate productivity and prosperity.”
Zahidi said that most economies were not completely taking advantage of this road for growth.
The report found that there was still an combined global average gender gap of more than 30 percent in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational achievement and health and survival, he added.
The global Gender Gap score in 2025 for the 148 economies included in this edition of the index is found at 68.8pc. The global gender gap closed at 0.3 percentage points in 2025, from 68.4pc in 2024 to 68.8pct in 2025.
Based on the collective speed of the progress of these 100 economies, it will have been reaching full parity for 123 years, according to the report.
The 2025 global gender gap index shows that no economy has still achieved total gender parity. Iceland (92.6pc) continues to lead the global gender gap index, maintaining the higher position for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy that has closed more than 90PC of its gender gap since 2022.
Each of the 10 classified economies has closed at least 80 percent of its gender gaps, the only economies that do so. Worldwide, gender parity has increased by 4.8 percentage points since 2006.
