World Economic Forum ranks Namibia top in gender parity
By Freeman Ya Ngulu.
Namibia ranks number 1 in Africa and number 8 in the world in terms of the 2023 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index.
The same report concludes that no country has reached full gender parity in the world. However, the top 9 countries have closed at least 80% of the gender gap (Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania).
The report measures gender parity across 4 key dimensions of Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
Sub-Sahara Africa’s parity score is the sixth-highest among the eight regions at 68.2%, ranking above Southern Asia and the Middle East and North Africa.
Namibia, Rwanda and South Africa, along with 13 other countries, have closed more than 70% of the overall gender gap. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali and Chad are the lowest-performing countries, with scores below 62%. At the current rate of progress, it will take 102 years to close the gender gap in Sub-Sahara Africa.
Sub-Sahara Africa is the lowest-ranked region in closing the gender gap on Educational Attainment, with a parity score of 86%, and only Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia have achieved full parity. Sixteen countries have achieved less than 90% parity on this subindex, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad achieving the lowest scores. The number of countries with 90% or more parity decreases with enrollment in successive levels of education.
Sub-Sahara Africa has the third-highest parity score, 97.2%, on the Health and Survival subindex, following Latin America and the Caribbean and Eurasia and Central Asia. Twenty-five countries have more than 97% parity while Niger, Liberia and Mali are the lowest-performing countries in this subindex.
