TOKYO — Japan ranked 118th among 146 countries in the 2024 Global Gender Gap Index released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on June 12. While it ranked higher than last year's 125th place, there is still a significant gap in the political and economic fields.
The gender gap report quantifies gender equality evaluations of 14 items in four categories — economy, education, health and politics. From 0 to 1, the higher the index, the more gender equality a country has achieved, while lower scores indicate more inequality. Japan scored 0.663 overall, an improvement of 0.016 points compared to 2023.
In the political field, Japan made significant progress from 138th place last year to 113th, but the score remained low at 0.118. This ranking reflected the record high female to male ratio in the Cabinet, with five of 20 members being women, but also the low number of female Diet members.
In the economy category, Japan ranked 120th with a score of 0.568 points, up from the previous year's 123rd place with 0.561 points. While improvements were made regarding managerial positions and estimated labor income, the wage gap between men and women for the same work slightly worsened.
In the educational field, Japan came in 72nd place by scoring 0.993 points, down from 0.997 points in 2023. The country achieved gender equality with a score of 1.000 for literacy rates and enrollment rates in secondary education, but disparities were found in higher education enrollment. In the category of health, the country scored 0.973 points, the same as last year, ranking 58th. There were no significant changes in the gender ratio of newborns or healthy life expectancy.
Iceland has the smallest gender gap in the world, with a score of 0.935, maintaining its position as the top-ranking country since 2009. While there have been slight improvements in gender equality across the world, the WEF estimates that it would take five generations or 134 more years to achieve complete equality at the current pace.
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