Vietnam has climbed 11 places on the latest World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap Index over the past year. (Photo: Sggp.org.vn)

The leading position was maintained by Iceland with a score of 0.912, followed by Norway and Finland. Elsewhere, Austria dropped sharply from 21st to 47th place.

Liberia, Estonia, Bhutan, Malawi, Colombia, and Chile all showed strong increases in the global index thanks to improvements recorded in closing the gender gaps across the four main components of the index: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.

In terms of Economic Participation and Opportunity sub-index, Vietnam remained in 31st position, behind countries such as Liberia in first, the United States in 21st, and Slovenia in 30th, as well as regional neighbors such as Laos in fifth, the Philippines in 17th, Thailand in 24th, and Brunei in 29th out of 146 countries assessed.

Indicators at this level reveal that lower workforce participation and lower parity in terms of workforce participation have both contributed to poorer gender outcomes, the report outlined.

Vietnam duly ranked 89th place in terms of Educational Attainment, with the country being near the bottom of the ranking for Health and Survival sub-index at 144th place, just above China and Azerbaijan.

However, the country climbed from 106th to 89th place in terms of Political Empowerment, with the majority of European countries populating the highest places.

The Global Gender Gap Index records the current state and evolution of gender parity in a country and can be viewed as the longest-standing index which tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time since its inception back in 2006.

The latest index was updated by the WEF on Wednesday.