Why Kenya's gender gap is widening whilst our neighbours surge ahead

Just how well is the world performing in closing the gender gap? This question is partly answered by the recently released Global Gender Gap Report 2025. Published annually by the World Economic Forum, the report uses an index introduced in 2006 “to benchmark progress towards gender parity across four dimensions: economic opportunities, education, health and political leadership”.

The philosophy behind the report is that gender parity is an essential measure of how economies are harnessing “the full spectrum of their talent and human capital” towards productivity and prosperity. The more the gap is closed, the higher the potential levels of economic development. The report, thus, laments that “most economies are not fully leveraging this pathway for growth” based on its finding “that there is still a combined global average gender gap of over 30per cent across (the) four areas”.

Also read: 106 countries have never elected a woman leader

On a positive note, however, it observes that some countries have closed over 80 per cent of their gender gap. These countries are mainly in the northern hemisphere.

Covering 148 economies, the report “shows that no economy has yet achieved full gender parity”. The best performing economy is Iceland (92.6 per cent), which has held the top position “for 16 consecutive years, and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90 per cent of its gender gap since 2022”. European countries dominate the top 10 positions with only New Zealand and Namibia interrupting the pattern by coming in 5^th and 8^th respectively.

Notably, the higher income countries lead in closing the gender gap (74.3 per cent). But the “top performers among lower income economies have closed a greater share of their gender gaps than over half of the economies in the high-income group”. This points to the fact that it is not merely the economic status of a country that contributes to gender parity.

Thematically, health and survival is leading in closing the gap at (96.2 per cent) followed by educational attainment (95.1 per cent), economic participation and opportunity (61 per cent) and political empowerment (22.9 per cent). Obviously, this shows that gender parity in the political arena is still a global pipe dream even though it has shown the most significant change moving from 14.3 per cent in 2006 to 23.4 per cent in 2025.

Highest ranked

At this rate, the report notes, it will take 162 years to fully close this gap. Regrettably, therefore, none of us alive today will witness this momentous occasion when it comes.

From a regional perspective, Northern America performed best in closing the overall gender gap followed by Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central Asia, Eastern

Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa (sixth globally), Southern Asia, Middle East and Northern Africa,

Namibia (81.1 per cent) is the highest ranked Sub-Saharan country at eighth position globally, this being the sixth time it is appearing among the top 10 performers. It advanced by six percentage points, its scores boosted by improvements in economic and political parity. Namibia is the only country in which the president and the deputy are both women, following last year’s elections.

Another piece of good news for Sub-Saharan Africa is that Botswana leads the economic global ranking (87.3 per cent) followed by Liberia (86.5 per cent) and Eswatini (85.6 per cent). The region has also significantly improved on political empowerment with women holding 3.2 per cent of heads of state positions, 40.2 per cent of ministerial roles and 37.7 per cent of parliamentary seats.

Also read: Ruto@1,000: Ruto, the President who ghosted Kenyan women and girls

Kenya ranks 98 globally out of 148 countries with a score of 0.689 down from 0.712 in 2024. It is ranked 19^th in Sub-Saharan Africa, with Namibia, Cape Verde, South Africa and Rwanda in the first four places. Chad and Sudan come last at 146^th and 147^th positions respectively.

Regarding overall scores, the country performs best on health and survival with a score of 0.971 followed by educational attainment (0.847), economic participation and opportunity (0.738) and last, political empowerment (0.20). This clearly shows that gender parity in the political arena in Kenya leaves a lot to be desired. But on thematic ranking, Kenya performs best on economic participation and opportunity ranked 43, followed by health and survival (64), political empowerment (86) and educational attainment (138).

Take-away

Clearly, this indicates that relative to other countries, Kenya’s performance in achieving gender parity in education has a lot of catch up to do as it beats only 10 other economies. Read together, the data indicates that health and survival plus economic participation and opportunity are the best performing spaces nationally.

The take-away from this report is that slowly but surely, there is progress towards gender parity globally. However, much more needs to be done especially in the political sphere. For Kenya, it is critical to examine why the country has regressed and to take measures to maintain gains made and reverse losses.  The latter is particularly so with regard to political empowerment. 

The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya ([email protected]).