The World Economic Forum has published its 2026 edition of the Global Gender Gap Index report. First launched in 2006, the report has benchmarked progress toward gender parity across four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The most recent report covers a cohort of 145 economies and analyzes a constant sample of 97 economies included in every edition over the past two decades.
Overall, the global gender gap stands at 69.2 percent, an overall improvement of 5.2 percentage points since 2006. The global gender gap closed by 0.4 percentage points from 2025. Considering the collective rate of advancement for the 20-year cohort, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take an additional 120 years to reach global gender parity.
For the seventeenth consecutive year, Iceland reports the highest level of gender parity at 93 percent and remains the only country to have closed more than 90 percent of its overall gender gap. The countries with the next smallest gender gaps are Finland (87.2 percent), Norway (85.7 percent), Namibia (84.5 percent), the United Kingdom (84.2 percent), New Zealand (82.8 percent), Sweden (82.3 percent), Australia (81.9 percent), Germany (81.7 percent), and Ireland (81.4 percent). Four countries have closed less than 60 percent of their overall gender gaps: Chad (57.8 percent), Iran (58.5 percent), Pakistan (59.5 percent), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (59.5 percent). The United States ranks 47th, with an overall gender gap of 74.9 percent.
Among the four sub-indexes, overall global gender parity has nearly been reached in educational attainment and health and survival, while large global gender gaps remain in economic participation and opportunity and political empowerment.
The United States tied for first place in educational attainment with 31 other countries. According to the report, all 32 countries have reached 100 percent gender parity in education. Among the other sub-indexes, the U.S. ranks 21st in economic participation and opportunity, 57th in health and survival, and 54th in political empowerment.