Bangladesh top gender-neutral country in South Asia: Report

Bangladesh has been ranked the top country among its South Asian neighbours by performing the best in bringing down gender gap, World Economic Forum said in its latest report.

Bangladesh closed 72.6% of its overall gender gap and obtained 50th position out of 153 countries globally, the WEF said in its report titled 'Global Gender Gap Report 2020'.

Global Gender Gap Report 2020 by Daily Star on Scribd

"It is the only country in the world where women have had a longer tenure than men at the helm of the state over the past 50 years, the report said adding that "This contributes to the strong performance on the Political Empowerment subindex (score of 54.5%, 7th).

But there are only 8% of women in the cabinet and only 20% in the parliament. 

Bangladesh's achievement "in the top 50 and regional leadership should not hide the fact that there is considerable room to bolster basic rights of women and improve their economic and political prospects," the report said.

In the economic sphere, as of 2018, 38% of adult women were part of the labour force (up from 34% in 2017), compared with 84% of men. 

Only one in 10 leadership roles is occupied by a woman (139th), and the estimated average annual income of women is 40% that of the men, the WEF report said.  

The country's position in the rest subindexes remains 141st in Economic participation and opportunity, 120th in Educational attainment, and 119th in Health and survival, the report reads.

Meanwhile, the top five gender-neutral countries in the world are: 1. Iceland, 2. Norway, 3. Finland, 4. Sweden and 5. Nicaragua, according to the WEF report.

In South Asia: Nepal, Sri Lanka, India are Maldives on the top five list. 

And five countries who are in the bottom of the ranking are: 149. Congo, Dem Rep, 150. Syria, 151. Pakistan, 152. Iraq and 153. Yemen.

Bangladesh was in the 91st position in WEF's 2006 report.