Bahrain ranks second in gender equality in GCC
Manama : The Kingdom’s attempts to bridge the gender gap is bearing fruit. Bahrain has been ranked second among the GCC countries in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual report measuring gender equality, with progress in UAE and Bahrain but declining performance elsewhere.
WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2017 showed that Bahrain has been making progress in closing the gender gap. Only UAE was shown to be superior to Bahrain when it comes to gender equality in the GCC region. In the Middle East region, Bahrain was third, with Tunisia coming first.
However, the Middle East region was the worst performing region in the world as a whole. The top performing Middle Eastern countries was still among the worst performing globally, Tunisia at 117 globally, the United Arab Emirates at 120, and Bahrain at 126.
The Global Gender Gap Index presented in this report seeks to measure one important aspect of gender equality: the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy and politics. In the report Bahrain ranked 120th in economic participation of women, 75 in education attainment, 136 in health and survival, and 137 in political empowerment.
“Bahrain (126) records a sizeable increase in gender parity in estimated earned income, which is notable also for demonstrating the pertinence of the Index’s updated income scale for fully capturing progress made on this dimension by high-income countries,” the report stated.
2017 has not been a good year for gender equality, the report said. “A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006.
As the world moves from capitalism into the era of talentism, competitiveness on a national and on a business level will be decided more than ever before by the innovative capacity of a country or a company. In this new context, the integration of women into the talent pool becomes a must” said the report.
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