Pakistan Ranks Among the Lowest in WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, Pakistan has been ranked last out of 148 countries. This report also highlights ongoing issues with gender inequality, mainly in jobs and politics. Given the stats of the latest report, Pakistan’s overall gender equality score dropped to 56.7% down from 57% last year.

This annual report mainly looks at gender equality in four main areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

In the area of economic participation and opportunity, the country’s score fell by 1.3% this year mainly because of rising income and wage gaps between men and women. This report also noted an increase in income inequality and a 4% increase in how unfairly people think wages are divided.

Pakistan’s score improves a bit in the context of educational attainment as it rose by 1.5% to 85.1%. A minor increase in female literacy rate- from 46.5% to 48.5%- is the primary reason behind this improvement.

The report also points out that the rise in university-level enrollment was because the number of enrolled men reduced, not because a substantial number of women joined universities.

A decline in political empowerment was also noted. The score in this domain dropped from 12.2% in 2024 to 11% in 2025. Though the number of women in parliament slightly increased by 1.2%. 

According to this report, on average, there is still more than a 30% gender gap in the stated areas. The gender equality score in 2025 is 68.8%, a 0.4% increase from 68.4% in 2024. If this improvement pace is considered, it will take 123 years to fully close the gender gap worldwide.

There is not a single country that has achieved complete gender equality. Iceland remains the top performer with a score of 92.6% and it is the only country that has led this ranking for 16 years in a row. Since 2022, it is the only country to have closed over 90% of its gender gap.