GEORGETOWN, Guyana, (DPI) – Guyana has moved significantly upwards on the 2022 World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Index, moving 18 spaces up from 53rd in 2021 to 35th among 146 countries.
Minister of parliamentary affairs and governance, Gail Teixeira said the government is pleased with the report, which she believes shows the positive impact of its policies, as well as areas in which more attention could be given.
The Global Gender Gap Report is published by the WEF to highlight the current state and evolution of “gender parity” in countries worldwide. Contained in the report is an index which measures economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment to identify if these opportunities and provisions are equal between men and women.
“For Guyana, we have done well…many times people make comments about Guyana, and these reports are very useful to show the progress Guyana is making. This is where I think we have made some leaps in the last year, and I think it’s important for us to note that and what were the factors that may have contributed to that,” minister Teixeira told DPI in an interview on Wednesday.
In the area of economic participation and opportunity, Guyana moved from the 105th rank to 53rd in the space of one year. In the same period, the country moved from 91st to 57th in educational attainment, from 44th to 42nd in political empowerment, and retained 1st place in health and survival.
Women were also listed in the report as having “near-equal rights” in the areas of access to financial services, land assets and non-land assets.
The governance minister credited these improvements to the multitude of programmes that have been implemented, such as the ministry of housing and water’s “Dream Realised” housing programme and the ministry of human services and social security’s women entrepreneurship initiatives, among others.
“These are programmes that accelerate women’s access. The fact that…women have been able to access loans, for example, or small [business] grants is a major achievement and all of this accumulates in terms of how we’re doing,” she said.
The global gender gap report is evidence of the PPP/C administration’s commitment to the economic empowerment of women and the mainstreaming of their participation in governance.
