Women of Red Dao ethnic minority in their traditional attire. (Photo: VNA) The increase is thanks to "mild improvements" recorded in closing thegender gaps across the four main components of the index: EconomicParticipation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, andPolitical Empowerment.
In terms of closing the gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity, Vietnamis ranked 31st, behind countries like Sweden (5th), the US (22nd), Kenya (6th),and regional neighbours like Laos (1st), Thailand (15th), or the Philippines(16th), out of 146 countries assessed.
Indicators at this level reveal that lower workforce participation and lowerparity in workforce participation have both contributed to poorer genderoutcomes, the report said.
“While parity in technical and professional workers has been maintained, theshare of women in legislator, senior and manager roles decreased approximatelyone percentage point. Finally, estimated earned income also fell, in higherproportion for women (-20.7%) than for men (-18.3%).
Vietnam only ranks in 88th place in terms of Educational Attainment, with thereport commenting that the literacy rate increased by 0.005, which, in theabsence of data for compulsory education enrolment, raised the sub-index scoreslightly.
The country is nearly at the bottom of the ranking for Health and Survivalsub-index at 141st place (just above Qatar, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, China, andIndia). In Asia Pacific region, the WEF report noted that “Vietnam and Chinahave the most progress still to make.”
Marginal improvements in sex ratio at birth in Vietnam and China have led to anaverage improvement of the region’s sub-index gender gap score of 0.3percentage points. Only five countries in this region have achieved genderparity in healthy life expectancy: Mongolia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, andthe Philippines.
The country is in 106th place in terms of Political Empowerment, with mostEuropean countries populating the highest places.
On Political Empowerment, Vietnam saw a 3.6 percentage points increase in theshare of women in parliament, although men continue to hold 100% of ministerialroles, according to the WEF.
Relative to other regions, East Asia and the Pacific registered the second-lowestmeasure of progress on Political Empowerment, ahead only of Central Asia. Theregion achieved a 13.3% in gender parity on this sub-index, which is marginallylower than the last edition. Only four countries have closed the gender gap inthe share of women in parliamentary positions by at least one percentage point:in order of magnitude of improvement, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, New Zealand, andIndonesia.
Overall in the East Asia and the Pacific, Vietnam ranks 9th out of 19 countriesassessed, with New Zealand and the Philippines in the top, and Vanuata andJapan at the bottom.
The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks the current state and evolution ofgender parity and is the longest-standing index which tracks progress towardsclosing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006.
In 2022, the global gender gap has been closed by 68.1%. At the current rate ofprogress, it will take 132 years to reach full parity, according to the WEF.This represents a slight four-year improvement compared to the 2021 estimate(136 years to parity). However, it does not compensate for the generationalloss which occurred between 2020 and 2021: according to trends leading up to2020, the gender gap was set to close within 100 years.
Although no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top 10 economieshave closed at least 80% of their gender gaps, with Iceland (90.8%) leading theglobal ranking. Iceland remains the only economy to have closed more than 90%of its gender gap. Other Scandinavian countries such as Finland (86%, 2nd),Norway (84.5%, 3rd) and Sweden (82.2%, 5th) feature in the top 5, withadditional European countries such as Ireland (80.4%) and Germany (80.1%) in9th and 10th positions, respectively.
Sub-Saharan African countries Rwanda (81.1%, 6th) and Namibia (80.7%, 8th),along with one Latin American country, Nicaragua (81%, 7th), and one countryfrom East Asia and the Pacific, New Zealand (84.1%, 4th), also take positionsin the top 10. Nicaragua and Germany are the new entrants in the top 10 in2022, while Lithuania (79.9%, 11th) and Switzerland (79.5%, 13th) drop out thisyear./.
VNA
