The Global Gender Gap Index annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions: 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 economies’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time.

This year, the 18th edition of the Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across 146 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 101 countries 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 0-100 scale and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed). Cross-country comparisons support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.

Key findings:

• The 2024 Global Gender Gap Index shows that while no country has achieved full gender parity, 97% of the economies included in this edition have closed more than 60% of their gap, compared to 85% in 2006.
• Iceland (93.5%) is again ranked 1st and has been leading the index for a decade and a half. It also continues to be the only economy to have closed over 90% of its gender gap. Out of the remaining nine economies in the top 10, eight have closed over 80% of their gap.
• Since 2006, subindexes have shifted at different paces, based on the constant sample of 101 countries. Overall, the most significant shift occurs in Political Empowerment, where parity has jumped a total of 8.3 percentage points to 22.8% over the past 18 editions.
• Data shows that women’s workforce representation remains below men’s across nearly every industry and economy, with women accounting for 42% of the global workforce and 31.7% of senior leaders.