India's gender equality index worse than Saudi Arabia: UK report

By A Representative
A new report by a UK-based organization, Equal Measures (EM) 2030, “Harnessing the Power of Data for Gender Equality: Introducing the 2019 EM2030 SDG Gender Index”, has said that India’s Gender Index ranking is 95th among 129 countries it has assessed in order to provide an international to each of the country. This is worse than Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Guatemala, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Ghana.
Among its neighbours, with a score of 56.2 on a scale of I00, India’s rank is better than that of Pakistan (rank 113 score 48.9), Bangladesh (rank 110, score 49.2), Nepal (rank 102, score 52.6), Myanmar (rank 98, score 54.1), but worse than Sri Lanka (rank 80, score 62.1), and China (rank 74, score 64.7).
The report states that “girls’ access to education” suggests “persistent challenges” continue in “gender equality in education”, adding while in India “almost 70 percent of 15–19 year-olds were in secondary education compared to less than 40 percent of those in the 20–24 year age group”, persistent gender disparities “are evident if we look at those who actually complete secondary education.”
Rural girls are losing out on basic skills, the report complains, adding, an assessment of basic math skills of 14–16 year-olds in India suggests that 44 percent of girls can do division compared to 50 percent of boys.
“This learning crisis holds back progress not only on secondary education, but also in young people’s transition to work”, the report says adding “In India, amongst the 15–24 year-old age group, about 8 percent of boys were not in employment, education or training (NEET) compared to 49 percent of girls.”
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