ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has ranked last among 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, underscoring persistent gender disparities in political and economic representation despite modest gains in female literacy.

The annual report, released this week, assesses gender parity across four key dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

“Occupying the bottom rank of the index (148), Pakistan sees its overall parity score decline from last year’s edition from 57 percent to 56.7 percent,” the report said, marking the second consecutive annual decline in parity.

While Pakistan recorded improvements in education, the report noted that broader gender equality remained elusive.

The country showed a 1.5 percentage point gain in educational attainment, raising its parity in this area to 85.1 percent, driven partly by a rise in female literacy from 46.5 percent to 48.5 percent, according to WEF.

“Part of the shift is driven by an increase in female literacy rates from 46.5 percent to 48.5 percent,” the report said.

However, it cautioned that the improvement at the university level was partially due to a decline in male enrollment, rather than a significant surge in female participation.

In contrast, the country’s economic participation and opportunity index fell by 1.3 percentage points, amid a widening income and wage gap. The report noted a marginal increase in income disparity and a four-percentage-point rise in perceived wage inequality.

Women continue to make up a small share of Pakistan’s labor force — just 22.8 percent, according to a 2024 World Bank report — and few hold leadership or managerial positions.

Pakistan also saw a notable regression in political empowerment, with parity dropping from 12.2 percent in 2024 to 11 percent in 2025. While women’s representation in parliament rose slightly by 1.2 percentage points, the share of women in ministerial positions dropped from 5.9 percent to zero, according to the WEF.

“Overall Pakistan has closed +2.3 of its gender gap since 2006,” the report noted. “However, this year’s results are a second consecutive drop from the economy’s best score of 57.7 percent achieved in 2023.”

Pakistan has consistently ranked near the bottom in past editions of the Global Gender Gap Index and the 2025 report underscores the country’s ongoing struggle to create equitable opportunities for women, particularly in the political and economic spheres. Progress in education, while encouraging, remains insufficient to offset broader systemic inequalities.