NEW DELHI: The World Economic Forum (WEF) will count women’s participation in local government bodies in its Global Gender Gap report after India’s nudge, Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Smriti Irani said on Monday.
Taking to Twitter, Irani, who was among the four Union ministers to participate in the WEF’s Davos summit, said, “...We are happy to share that WEF has recognised the need to enumerate women’s participation in local govt bodies in the Gender Gap Report. This big victory for 1.4 million grassroots women locally elected at the panchayat level in India.”
She further tweeted that the WEF “confirming its willingness to study India’s Gender Budget System is also a huge acknowledgement” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to ensure women-led development.”
In a letter to Irani, WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi said, “Your participation helped shape a new agenda for women empowerment, education and human development, drawing from the experiences and successes of public-private collaboration in India.”
She also wrote that the forum would work with India to strengthen collaboration around the agenda of women and on improving global data collection and cross-country benchmarking efforts to assess in a globally comparable way participation of women in local political decision-making.
She also talked about showcasing on the Forum’s digital platform the impact achieved by the Indian government through its gender budgeting system, promoting gender equality in all sectors and at all levels of governance.
“Establishing a Skills and Gender Parity Accelerator in India to identify and scale up targeted public-private initiatives that will prepare the Indian workforce for the future of work, support the development of the Indian digital, care and green economy, and expand the skills of women for the new economy,” the letter said.
The WEF ranked India at 135th spot out of 146 countries in its GGG Index 2022. India has been ranking low on the index for several years. The Indian government has rejected the index, stressing that the ranking does not give a complete picture as it does not include women elected to local bodies.
Official sources said the step by WEF is a “big achievement” as none of the participating countries had ever flagged this issue of including women’s participation in local governance. “In India, there are 1.4 million women in panchayat. The WEF accepting this parameter is a big victory. The WCD ministry has been pushing for this for two years. It was also for the first time a WCD minister attended the Davos meeting,” an official source said.