Namibia retains gender gap ranking

Namibia remains among the top 10 countries to have closed at least 80% of its gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap report 2022.The country has maintained its position at number eight from last year and is the only sub-Saharan African nation that made the top 10.The report - based on an assessment of 146 countries - showed that the gender gap only improved by 4.1% between 2006 and 2023.Slow progress has been made towards the achievement of 100% global gender parity, which the report estimated could take 131 years.It is worth noting that Namibia was ranked 38th in 2006.According to the report, no country has yet achieved full gender parity, although the top nine countries - Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania - have closed at least 80% of their gap.For the 14th year running, Iceland took the top spot and also continues to be the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap (91.2%).More to be doneThe report said sub-Saharan Africa’s parity score is the sixth highest amongst the eight regions at 68.2%, ranking above southern Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.At the current rate of progress, it will take 102 years to close the gender gap in sub-Saharan Africa, it read.“Ranked eighth is Namibia, which has attained 80.2% gender parity, a 0.5 percentage point decline since the last edition. Namibia has achieved full parity on both the health and survival and educational attainment sub-indexes, although their absolute levels of attainment are low for both women and men.”The report said with 56% of technical workers and 43.6% of senior officers being women, economic participation and opportunity is at 78.4% parity, ranking Namibia 19th globally in this respect.“However, after a phase of rapid and broad-based increase in economic parity up until 2018, parity has been flagging.”This is mostly due to a 4.8 percentage point decline in parity in estimated earned income and two percentage-point decline in parity in the labour force participation rate since 2018, it said.Namibia has achieved 44.3% parity in political empowerment, with 44.2% women parliamentarians, 31.6% women ministers and a female prime minister in power since 2015.

Namibia retains gender gap ranking

Comments

Namibian Sun 2025-09-19

Please login to leave a comment

Namibia retains gender gap ranking

Comments

Namibian Sun 2025-09-19

Please login to leave a comment

Login