China returns to top 100 in gender parity ranking for first time since 2016

For the first time in a decade, China has returned to the top 100 out of 145 economies in an annual global report assessing gender equality.

China closed 69.9 per cent of its gender gap in 2025, rising to 96th place from 103rd the previous year and increasing 1.3 percentage points, according to the 2026 Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international non-profit organisation based in Switzerland.

It marks the first time China has been ranked in the top 100 since 2016, when it placed 99th.

This year, China ranked higher than a few major economies in the region, including South Korea (101), Japan (117) and India (131).

However, it ranked below Singapore (31), Bangladesh (79) and Vietnam (84).

The annual report said that nearly every economy tracked since its inception in 2006 had advanced in gender parity but that full parity was 120 years away.

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According to the WEF, the economies are evaluated across four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

China owed much of its improved standing to economic participation and opportunity, with parity at 72.3 per cent, ranking 57th globally.

Indicators include estimated work income and the rate of labour-force participation. Compared with 2006, China’s score in this category rose 10.3 percentage points.

In educational attainment, China went up 5.3 percentage points to 98.8 per cent, bolstered by achieving full parity in tertiary enrolment in 2009, as well as a progressive two-decade improvement in adult literacy, which moved up from 91 per cent in 2006 to 96.6 per cent in 2026, the report said.

Yet, the report found that the country’s gender gap in sex ratio at birth continued, at 0.907 – roughly 91 girls born for every 100 boys – while the benchmark stood at 0.944, or 94 girls for every 100 boys.

Partly because of that, China’s score on the health and survival sub-index came to 94.8 per cent, ranking 144th.

One area that has changed little over the past two decades is political empowerment.

In 2025, China scored 13.5 per cent, ranking 111th. All three indicators in the category – women in parliament, women in ministerial positions and years with a female head of state – remained unchanged from the previous year.

In 2022, for the first time in two decades, there were no women on China’s 24-member Politburo, a situation that remains today. This was also cited as a concern in a 2023 report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

This pattern could also be observed globally, the WEF said, adding that women held just 19.1 per cent of CEO roles, while only one in 10 ministerial portfolios held by women was considered to be of high influence.

“Women have reached the C-suite and cabinets but are underrepresented in roles carrying the greatest economic and political influence,” the report said.

And in the growing field of artificial intelligence, women are less represented in AI firms than in non-AI firms.

While women accounted for 44.8 per cent of the contributor-level roles in non-AI companies, they occupied 36.6 per cent of such jobs at AI firms.

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Yaqiu Wang, a human rights researcher and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was encouraging that China’s score had improved and that it had returned to the top 100 after several years.

But its 96th position remained a disappointing result for the world’s second-largest economy and a leading technological power, Wang added.

“China’s extraordinary advances in wealth and technology have not been matched by comparable progress in women’s rights,” she said.

“Persistent problems – including the skewed sex ratio at birth and the scarcity of women in senior political positions – reflect deeply rooted preferences for sons and assumptions that men are better suited to lead.”

Official policy had also impeded progress, Wang added, saying Chinese authorities had restricted independent women’s rights groups and censored online discussions of sexual harassment, employment discrimination and other gender issues.

According to Jia Wang, assistant professor in the department of applied social sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, women’s labour-force participation trailed men’s by 14 points and their estimated earnings were only 63 per cent of men’s.

Women also did about 2.6 times as much unpaid care work as men, and hiring discrimination against women of childbearing age persisted, she said.

As Jia Wang saw it, closing such gaps still required specific measures, including more balanced parental leave, affordable childcare, stronger anti-discrimination enforcement and clearer pathways for women into leadership.

“If Beijing wants to achieve genuine progress rather than simply improve its ranking, it should enforce existing prohibitions against gender discrimination in hiring, increase women’s representation in senior political and economic positions, address the continuing sex-ratio imbalance and stop suppressing independent feminist activism,” Yaqiu Wang said.

“Expanding educational and economic opportunities matters, but lasting equality also requires women to be free to organise and speak.”