Pakistan has been ranked at the bottom of the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2025. It placed 148th out of 148 countries.

The report gave Pakistan a gender parity score of 56.7%, showing a 0.3 percentage point drop from last year’s 57.0%.

This is the second year in a row Pakistan’s score has declined. The score had peaked at 57.7% in 2023. Despite the drop in score, Pakistan’s position has only fallen three spots from last year’s 145th place.

The index assesses gender equality across four areas: Economic Participation, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment. Iceland remained at the top of the list, while in South Asia, Bangladesh ranked 24th and India 131st.

Educational Gains Amid Overall Decline

Since the launch of the index in 2006, Pakistan has improved its gender gap by 2.3 percentage points. The only area of progress in the 2025 edition is Educational Attainment. Here, parity increased by 1.5 percentage points, reaching 85.1%.

This improvement is partly due to a rise in female literacy, from 46.5% to 48.5%. However, male enrolment in higher education has declined, raising parity but reducing overall access.

Pakistan now ranks 137th in Educational Attainment. Its best performance is in Political Empowerment, where it ranks 118th.

But even in that area, the score dropped from 12.2% to 11%. The country was listed among those with all-male ministerial cabinets, despite some improvement in parliamentary gender parity.

In Economic Participation and Opportunity, Pakistan scored 34.7%. The report noted a slight increase in income disparity (+0.02) and wage inequality (+4 percentage points). On the Health and Survival sub-index, Pakistan scored its highest, 95.9%.