S'pore has closed 76.4% of gender gap, ranks 31st in Gender Gap Index 2026

Singapore has closed its gender gap by 76.4 per cent, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2026.

That puts the country at 31st in the world, up by 16 spots from 2025.

The Global Gender Gap Index measures progress towards gender parity across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

Published on Sep. 16, the report includes 145 world economies in this 20th edition.

The top five countries in the ranking are, in descending order, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Namibia, and the United Kingdom.

They were all scored to have closed more than 84 per cent of their gender gap, with Iceland at 93 per cent.

Singapore has the second-highest parity score in Asia, after the Philippines at 20th place with 78 per cent of its gender gap closed.

Other Asian countries include Thailand at the 55th spot, China at 96th, South Korea at 101st, Malaysia at 104th, Indonesia at 106th, and Japan at 117th.

Economic participation and opportunity

In terms of the four different domains, Singapore ranked fourth for economic participation and opportunity, 45th for educational attainment, 63rd for health and survival, and 65th for political empowerment.

Under economic participation and opportunity, the indicator for which Singapore scored the highest is the share of women among professional and technical workers. It has attained 97 per cent gender parity here.

However, it is 72nd globally in this indicator — the lowest rank among the five indicators of economic participation.

In the representation among legislators, senior officials, and managers, Singapore has achieved 65.7 per cent gender parity, ranking 48th globally.

As for perceived wage equality for similar work, Singapore got a parity score of 83.1 per cent, putting it at fourth in the world.

Educational attainment

The report evaluates a country's educational attainment in terms of primary education enrolment, secondary education enrolment, tertiary education enrolment, and adult literacy.

Singapore performed strongly in all four indicators, scoring 100 per cent for parity in literacy rate and tertiary education enrolment.

Enrolment in primary and secondary education are also close to equal, at 99.9 per cent and 99.2 per cent respectively.

Health and survival

Singapore's gender parity levels in health and survival are also high.

Its female-to-male sex ratio at birth stands at 94.3 per cent, very close to the parity benchmark of 94.4 per cent.

Its parity in healthy life expectancy has reached 103.6 per cent, against the benchmark of 106 per cent.

Political empowerment

Among the four areas, Singapore has the widest gender gap in political empowerment, with an overall score of 24.6 per cent.

Parity in parliamentary and ministerial representation is at 47.8 per cent and 15.4 per cent respectively.

Additionally, parity in years with a female head of state over the past 50 years is also at a low 13.6 per cent.

Global progress

A total of 143 economies were covered in both the 2025 and 2026 editions.

Among them, overall gender parity improved slightly from 68.8 per cent in 2025, to 69.2 per cent in 2026.

This progress was primarily due to gains in educational attainment, where parity went up by 1.6 percentage points, from 95.3 per cent to 96.9 per cent.

Looking at a larger picture, the Global Gender Gap Index score has increased by 5.2 percentage points over 20 years, from the first edition in 2006 to this latest one, across the 97 economies featured in all editions.

The 2026 edition achieved the highest score to date.

"If these economies were to continue to advance at this estimated rate of progress, global gender parity is estimated to be attained in 120 years," the report said.