Philippines drops eight places in gender equality, remains top in Asia 

December 26, 2019

The Philippines remains the top country in Asia in terms of closing the gender gap, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 of the World Economic Forum, the Philippine Commission on Women said Thursday.

The report shows the Philippines has closed 78 percent of its overall gender gap, garnering a score of 0.781 (down by 1.8 percentage points from .799 in 2019).

With this, it ranked 16th out of 153 countries with the narrowest gap between men and women, dropping by 8 notches from its place last year. 

It remains as the sole Asian country that made it to the top twenty tier; followed by Lao People’s Democratic Republic which ranked 43rd, the Philippine Commission on Women said.

The 2020 report shows that the Philippines remained strong in three of these four dimensions. 

“It has closed 80 percent of the Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap, with women outnumbering men in senior and leadership roles, as well as in professional and technical professions. It is only one of four countries to achieve this feat. The country ranks 5th on the indicator assessing gender wage equality, with a score of 81.2,” the report noted. 

The report said the Philippines has closed the gender gaps in educational attainment and health and survival. 

The dip in the country’s ranking is traced to the Political Empowerment gap which has widened considerably over the past two years. the commission said.

From 41.6 percent in 2019, the political empowerment score is down by 6.3 percentage points to 35.3 in 2020. 

According to the report, “the downgrade is due to the lower female representation in the cabinet, which declined from 25 percent to 10 percent between 2017 to 2019.''

''Female representation in Congress also fell slightly, at 28 percent at the beginning of 2019.” it added. DMS