Insight Report, June 2025

This year’s edition of the Global Gender Gap Report arrives at a decisive moment, with the world in flux. Technological breakthroughs, geopolitical conflict and economic uncertainty are creating unprecedented challenges as well as bringing new opportunities. Amid such change, gender parity is both a principle and a strategy. Diversity of thought, knowledge and experience often lie at the heart of solving problems, starting creative endeavours, and unleashing innovation in teams, organizations and countries. Economies that tap into the full spectrum of their talent and human capital are best positioned to navigate an era of transformation and accelerate productivity and prosperity.

Yet most economies are not fully leveraging this pathway for growth. The report finds that there is still a combined global average gender gap of over 30% across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival. But there are significant variations across countries, with some economies having closed over 80% of their gender gap and others just over half. With nearly two decades of data, this 19th edition of the report also showcases time series for 100 countries covered since 2006 and reveals countries that have made the fastest progress over time, providing examples to others where the progress to parity may be slower. (From the Preface). Follow the series link for previous reports.

From the 2025 key findings: "In this edition, each of the top 10 ranked economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps, the only economies to do so. European economies dominate the top 10, occupying eight of the spots. Among them, Iceland (92.6%, 1st), Finland (87.9%, 2nd), Norway (86.3%, 3rd), and Sweden (81.7%, 6th), have consistently ranked in the top 10 in every edition since 2006. Compared to the 2024 edition, the United Kingdom (83.8%, 4th) and the Republic of Moldova (81.3%, 7th) moved up in the rankings from last year to join the top 10. Germany (80.3%, 9th) and Ireland (80.1%, 10th) are also among the top 10 this year, marking their 7th and 18th appearances, respectively. New Zealand (82.7%, 5th) and Namibia (81.1%, 8th) have held the two remaining spots in the top 10 since 2021."
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