Editorial 1 : Costs of inequality
Introduction: The 2024 edition of the Global Gender Gap Index places India at 129 out of the 146 countries it surveyed. This puts India at the 18th position from the bottom. For comparison, of the 156 countries included in 2021, India was at the 17th position from the bottom. Thus, overall, India’s ranking has remained in the bottom 20 over years.
About Global Gender Gap Index
- The Global Gender Gap index, first introduced in 2006, is a précis measure.
- It is a combination of four different sub-indices — economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment — each summarising multiple indicators.
- The index lies between 0 and 1, with 1 denoting complete parity.
- It is important to note that this index focuses on gender gaps, that is, the focus is on the position of women relative to men (gender equality), rather than to their absolute position.
- The idea is to track changes in gender gaps both over time and across countries.
- It should not be seen as a comprehensive treatise on gender equality, but as a useful pointer or a highlighter of key summary statistics that can be reliably measured and tracked.
- The value of the overall index as well as subindices shows how much of the gap has been closed.
Tracking India’s performance since 2006
- The Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) developed an interactive tracker which allows readers to see the change in India’s position over time since 2006, and relative to other countries separately for each of the sub-indices, as well as for the overall index.
1. Health and Education attainment
- The 2024 report shows that on “Health and Survival Score”, India’s value is at 0.951 which means that 95.1 per cent of the male-female gap has been closed.
- Similarly, in educational attainment, 96.4 per cent of the gap has been closed.
- India has done well on these indicators but since several other countries have done better, India is at 112th position in the educational ranking and at 142nd position in the health rankings among 146 countries.
2. Economic participation
- The Economic Participation subindex is based on gender gaps in labour force participation, share in managerial positions, wage gaps, and wage parity (equal pay for equal work).
- On this, India’s score at 39.8 per cent places it at the 142nd position among 146 countries.
- While this is an improvement since 2021 (when it was 32.6 per cent), it is very low in absolute terms, and is lower than the 2012 score of 46 per cent.
- To put this score in perspective, countries with the lowest levels of economic parity are Bangladesh (31.1 per cent), Sudan, (33.7 per cent), Iran (34.3 per cent), Pakistan (36 per cent), India (39.8 per cent), and Morocco (40.6 per cent).
- These economies all register less than 30 per cent gender parity in estimated earned income and less than 50 per cent gender parity in labour force participation.
3. Political participation
- In political participation, even though India has closed only 25.1 per cent of the gap, its global rank is 65.
- This reflects the fact that while the rest of the world has made significant forward strides towards gender equality in the economic, educational and health spheres, the global progress on gender equality in political participation remains low.
- We should note that India’s position was at 51 in 2021 with a value of 27.6 per cent, implying that India’s score has worsened over the last two years.
- This is lower than India’s score around 2014 (43.3 per cent). Thus, over the last decade, the progress on this sub-index has worsened.
India’s performance vis-à-vis its neighbours
- The report shows that India and its immediate neighbours — South Asia as a region ranks 7th out of the eight regions in the world, above Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
- Within the seven countries that comprise South Asia, India’s rank is at five, with Bangladesh leading the region at the 99th position globally.
- Thus, India belongs to a region that ranks low on gender parity and does poorly compared to several of its immediate neighbours.
- While there has been an improvement in several dimensions for Indian women, this report points to the persistence of gender gaps in selected indicators.
- It also reminds us that just a decade back, India’s gender gaps were lower.
Cost of ignoring gender gap
- There is ample research documenting the staggering economic costs of side lining women.
- An OECD estimate reveals that gender-based discrimination in social institutions could cost up to $12 trillion for the global economy, and that a reduction in gender discrimination can increase the rate of growth of GDP.
- Internalisation of this understanding would mean that gender equality has to be mainstreamed into economic policy making, rather than viewed as a residual concern to be tackled later, as an afterthought.
Conclusion: Equality in the economic sphere can materialise only when society treats women as independent, intelligent, capable adults who are free to make their individual choices in all matters concerning their lives, and are included as equals at all levels of decision-making.
Editorial 2 : When North needs South
Introduction: A decade ago, the global south countries were seen as struggling with poor growth and instability. Now, they are viewed as important for the future of the global economy, with steady growth predicted. This is likely due to lessons learned from past crises. However, the forecast growth rate of 3% is the lowest in decades.
The global south is poised to drive global growth
- What is striking about these forecasts is that for the next two to three decades, nearly three-fourths of the global growth will come from middle- and low-income countries, with Asia leading the way.
- Without deep financial markets, the availability of sustainable financing will be a binding constraint for growth in the Global South — and by extension for global growth because the Global South attracts capital at prohibitive rates and at short tenure.
- It is in the interest of the Global North to support the growth potential of the Global South.
- But the present international financial architecture is ill-suited for this purpose. That must change.
The impediments in the way of growth of global south
- Decades of supportive geopolitics, demographics, globalisation and technological advances resulted in a period of high growth.
- But this has changed in the last few years for three reasons.
- As globalisation deepened, safety nets in individual countries did not keep pace with the accompanying displacement of livelihoods denting social cohesion and support for the multilateral system.
- The tailwinds to global growth — expanding markets, trade, supply chains, financial globalisation — were disrupted by the pandemic.
- The war in Ukraine, worsening geopolitics, and the rise of strategic competition risks entrenched policy-driven fragmentation.
- Headwinds to growth emanating from several sources — climate change, cost of living crisis, out-of-reach SDG goals, declining productivity, absence of liquidity financing, and a broken debt architecture – impact the Global South the most.
Lasting Wins for the Global Economy can be achieved by focusing 3 Key Areas
1. Focus on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI):
- Strong DPI architecture is crucial for economic growth and inclusion.
- A global effort is needed to create a central repository of best practices and ensure data security.
- The pandemic highlighted the power of DPI in areas like emergency aid, healthcare, education, and e-commerce.
- Advances in AI give it great potential to boost global growth and inclusion.
- The DPI architecture requires a centre and a firmer common structure to realise gains and ensure data and cyber security across multiple usages.
2. Climate Financing through Market Solutions:
- Research shows that 1 per cent of publicly listed companies are responsible for 40 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.
- A market-based solution would entail three elements:
- Mandatory disclosure requirements applied globally for publicly listed companies and large state-owned enterprises.
- A digital public infrastructure that translates data disclosed by companies into machine-readable data.
- New rating agencies that will rate corporates on the sustainability front.
- With reliable and consistent data, shareholders and civil society groups will be in a better position to channel their activism more efficiently.
- It will provide the means for corporate boards to develop effective long-term plans for their organisations and large money managers will have the data to act on their sustainability-related goals.
3. Strengthening Liquidity for the Global South:
- Several international panels, including the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Architecture and the recent UN Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Panel have noted that the global financial system is not providing financing at scale and in time to emerging markets.
- The current financial system falls short in providing timely funding for emerging markets.
- A reformed IMF with expanded liquidity facilities is needed.
- Options include central bank swap lines, market borrowing, and balance sheet expansion.
- Addressing these issues is crucial for global financial stability.
Conclusion: As global economic growth in the coming decades is forecasted to emanate from low and middle-income countries, the Global North must reform existing international financial framework to support future growth initiatives.