Global Gender Gap Report 2025

The World Economic Forum's latest report to a collection of data on gender inequality measured by four indices. This is the longest-running index tracking these changes. We check the main results.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2025 is a survey conducted every year for many years — it is one of the best “comparison tools” to measure gender parity disparities as a whole and across regions, because it uses big data sets and four indexes that are indicators that help to actually measure areas of gender inequality. The analysis that is presented in the report is based on its specific methodology; data are collected from statistics of international organizations and surveys of executives. The report itself highlights the fact that the results presented in it are not always closely related to what other World Economic Forum reports present (a separate article based on the WEF report can be found here: World Economic Forum 2025: professions of the future and key skills). Most importantly, the WEF ranking does not represent the countries where gender parity is most equal (it does not measure the level of equality itself), but rather shows the countries where the greatest progress has been made in closing the wage gap. This is why in the ranking presented below in the paragraph we will see both European countries associated with gender equality and a country from Africa or a Balkan state that may stereotypically be less associated with gender equality ideas.

What we will find in the latest study is mainly: key conclusions, ranking of countries from all over the world, description of the first and last ten countries (those that open and those that close the ranking), comparative analysis, regional analyzes, chapter on labor markets, political leadership and support systems.

4 sub-indexes used in the report

The Global Gender Gap Index measures the degree of inequality between women and men in four main areas of social and economic life. Each of these sub-indices assesses the gender gap regardless of a country's level of development, focusing on proportions (that is, on equality rather than overall level of development). 4 sub-indexes:

1. Economic participation and opportunities: differences between women and men in employment, salary levels, access to managerial positions and highly skilled occupations.
2. Education: Access to education at all levels.
3. Health and Survival: addresses differences in life expectancy and the birth rate of girls to boys, access to prenatal and health care.
4. Strengthening the political position: the participation of women in politics: in the posts of heads of state, in parliaments and at the highest levels of government.

By 2025, the gap in health and survival has been closed at 96.2%, education at 95.1%, economic participation at 61.0%, and political influence at 22.9%. Among the 145 countries included in both the 2024 and 2025 editions, the global gender gap has narrowed from 68.4% to 68.8%. Improvements in political empowerment and economic participation have had the greatest impact on this progress. The areas of health and education, which were already relatively flat (above 90%), recorded only modest increases. This shows that progress towards full gender equality proceeds with different dynamics, it is dependent on the individual areas analyzed in these four sub-indices.

Gender equality: which country has done an intensive closing of the gender gap this year?

The analysis shows that so far none of the world's economies have reached full gender parity. However, the closest to this victory is Iceland - the parity index there exceeds 90% (it is 92.6% to be exact) and it maintains its highest position for 16 years. It is also the only such economy in the world to have closed more than 90% of its wage gap since 2022. The top 10 countries with the smallest gap included countries such as (in order from Iceland): Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Sweden, Moldova, Namibia, Germany, Ireland. As you can see after the comparison, referring to the remark in the introduction - in the list we will find two countries that apparently do not associate us with the ideas of gender and equality - however, it was they who made the percentage closure of the gender gap. So it is not about the level of parities in the country itself, but about the changes in the scale that have taken place. So even though the level of parity in Namibia itself is not high, the changes in closing this gap have been intense. So Namibia has seen a truly spectacular pace of change, closing more than 80% of the gap and rising to the world's top speed. At the same time, it has still not achieved full parity, because although it is close at the level of education and health, there are still inequalities in economics and politics. However, let's look at Namibia's own performance in terms of the level of gender parity (apart from the great place in the ranking above): in the Namibian government there are 40.6% women - this is a result that we can call low or moderate but it is still incomplete parity (below 50%). Moldova was also a surprise in the ranking; in this country, the share of women in government is also 40% (equal) and women make up 60% of university graduates, which often exceeds the male rate. An equally high level of women in education has been recorded in Namibia; this shows us that although our intuitive associations are more often directed towards Western European countries (which, by the way, are the most numerous in this ten), countries such as Moldova and Namibia are also achieving success in this field.

But what unites the top ten countries? Most of them are countries where social policy is developed and the state exercises a protective role towards its citizens, these countries are not religious and equality of provision is systemic, which can be seen, for example, by equal access to education, but also to social security and compliance with labor laws.

An interesting comparison in the report and one of the more important results is the comparison between high-income and low-income economies. The best “performers” of closing the gender gap are, surprisingly, lower-income economies. They have closed more of their gaps than more than half of high-income economies.

Countries at the bottom of the ranking are: Pakistan (56.7%), Sudan, Chad, Iran, Guinea, Congo, Niger, Nigeria, Mali and Egypt. In last year's ranking, Egypt's place was occupied by Morocco (today 62.8%). Poland in the ranking Poland took 45th place in the ranking of closing the gender gap with +6 points compared to last year. This means an advance in the ranking relative to other countries, not an increase in percentage. As for the percentage result, Poland reached 75% in the ranking. We will see our position in the rankings over the years:

• 2025:45th place, 75%,
• 2024:51st place, 74%,
• 2023:60th place, 72%,
• 2022:77th place, 70%.

What can these comparisons tell us? Although Poland is still below the European average in the Global Gender Gap Index, data from recent years point to systematic progress in gender equality. In three years, Poland improved its score by 5 percentage points and moved up 32 positions in the global ranking (from 77th place in 2022 to 45th in 2025). However, it is worth noting that an improvement in the ranking does not always mean a real breakthrough; in this case, 1 percentage point of growth in the last year was enough to move up 6 positions, which also indicates stagnation or deterioration in the situation in some other countries. Despite progress, challenges remain - particularly in the areas of economic equality and the political representation of women at the highest levels of power.

Labour market and political leadership

Are decades of progress a reason for optimism? And yes and no. Judging by the fact that closing the gap is still more than 100 years old, we are committed to more intensive work, which requires from us above all structural and systemic changes. We can see that in the face of growing economic uncertainty, the underutilization of women's potential becomes a certain burden for growth and innovation, but It is not the vision of economic growth that should guide us most and the man; the millions of women whose lives are curtailed by systemic discrimination. When we look at the share of women in the global workforce in 2024, it was 41.2%. Today, positive developments have been recorded, especially in sectors traditionally dominated by men, e.g. infrastructure (+8.9 percentage points). Despite this, women still remain predominantly in industries with lower wages and the nature of care work, such as health care and education.

When it comes to education and career opportunities; More and more women are outperforming men in higher education, but educational successes do not translate proportionally into professional careers. Only 29.5% of senior executives with higher education are women. This points to a significant gap in the system, which cannot effectively translate competencies into career advancement and leadership. Between 2015 and 2024, the share of women at the top level of management increased from 25.7% to 28.1%, but after 2022 the pace of change has noticeably weakened. An interesting part of the report is the one on the flexibility of work - Increasingly, non-linear careers, especially among women, are a response to the need for greater flexibility. - on the one hand, people actually want flexibility and, on the other hand, the market itself forces it through the lack of guarantees of employment contracts and job stability. Returning to the care sector: it is crucial for the economy of ageing societies and remains underinvested. The lack of an adequate care system forces women to take longer breaks at work (19.6 months on average versus 13.9 for men), mainly due to parental responsibilities.

There is still a low representation of women in political leadership; on a global scale, they represent less than a third of the Speakers of Parliaments. Although there are 161 institutions with gender equality mandates, their leadership is mostly held by women, but without influence in key decision-making areas; such as the economy, infrastructure or defense. Why does it matter? Unequal access to positions affects national priorities and the allocation of public funds. You will learn more about this from our article Women in Politics. Another problem is technological transformation and geopolitical changes. They can jeopardize women's past achievements (especially in developing countries) and women's roles in formal export sectors are particularly vulnerable to the effects of trade recessions. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, women are feeling the effects of crises for longer, leading to widening inequalities in income, wealth and access to resources. Of course, in order to implement the relevant changes, modifications in law and legislation are needed that would allow systemic action and its effective enforcement.

Still, the gender gap remains a challenge for the world - according to the report, we need 123 years:

Although Poland is improving its position in the Global Gender Gap Index, it is worth looking more broadly at global trends that show that the greatest progress towards gender equality is being made in the areas of economic participation and political empowerment. These two dimensions, despite improvements, still have the biggest, most persistent gaps to close.

Since the first edition of the report in 2006:

• The participation of women in politics increased globally from 14.3% to 23.4% in 2025. This is the largest jump among all the dimensions studied (+9 pp), but at the current rate, full equality will not be achieved until 162 years.
• The share of women in the economy and their economic opportunities improved from 55.1% to 60.7% (+5.6 pp), which means that it will take another 135 years to compensate for these differences unless change accelerates.

These data show that although progress is real, it is still very slow, and structural inequalities in power and economics, particularly in access to senior positions, wage differentials and employment in high-income sectors, remain a key barrier to achieving real equality.

Sources: 1. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2025.pdf

2. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2024.pdf

3. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2023.pdf

4. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2022.pdf

5. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2025/digest/

6. https://data.ipu.org/parliament/MD/MD-LC01/data-on-women/?utm_source=chatgpt.com