Czechia ranks next to last in Europe in the Global Gender Gap Index

The Czech Republic markedly worsened its position in the Global Gender Gap Index, coming in 101st out of 146 countries in the ranking by the World Economic Forum. Last year it was in 86th place.

All of Czechia’s neighboring countries saw better results: Slovakia is 63rd, Poland 60th, Austria 47th, and Germany sixth. The only European country to rank worse than Czechia is Cyprus, at 106th.

"Europe has the highest gender parity of all regions at 76.3 percent, with one-third of countries in the region ranking in the top 20 and 20 out of 36 countries with at least 75 percent parity," World Economic Forum managing director Saadia Zahidi said in the preface to the report.

"Iceland, Norway, and Finland are the best-performing countries, both in the region and in the world, while Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Cyprus rank at the bottom of the region," she added. At the current rate of progress, Europe is projected to attain gender parity in 67 years, she added.

The annual index tracks performance in four spheres: health and survival, educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, and politics. It monitors for example the differences between the salaries of men and women, the employment rate, the number of men and women in leading positions, their education level, or life expectancy in good health.

Czechia scored best for educational attainment, tying with two dozen other countries for first place. This criterion tracks whether women have the same access to basic and higher education as men. It also tied for first in last year’s ranking.

The country also did well in health and survival, coming in 37th. This is based on life expectancy, taking into account that men have a shorter life expectancy. Women are deemed to have parity if they live at least 6 percent longer than men. This is the only area where Czechia improved. In the previous ranking it was 41st.

For economic participation and opportunity, the country was in the bottom half of the list, ranking 101st, a drop of six places compared to the previous year. The report noted that Czechia has a gender pay gap of 11.52 percent; that only 16 percent of firms had female ownership; and a similar percentage had female managers.

Czechia achieved its worst result in political empowerment, coming in 108th, which was 41 positions lower than in 2022. This factor looks at the representation of women in decision-making structures. For women in parliament, the country ranked 77th and for women in ministerial positions, it was 130th.