Pakistan has found itself at the bottom of the Global Gender Gap Index (GGI) 2025—a development that has shocked many within the country. The knee-jerk institutional response from the government has been questioning the methodology, research parameters and data that led to this awful ranking, concluding that the World Economic Forum (WEF), on purpose, ignored the progress made by women of Pakistan. But is that really what the World Economic Forum is putting out? That when it comes to gender, Pakistan has nothing to share?
This warrants another critical question: Did Pakistan understand the questions being asked to measure its progress, if any, on the scale of gender equality? And if yes, how was it communicated through data or how was it reported in the public domain? The WEF report also indicated support from a national partner organisation for the compilation of the GGI but its exact role remains ambiguous. Is this organisation’s role to provide data quantification or to help make qualitative assessments? This also raises the concern that if we are to have a say at the table, how does one go about it when one hasn’t even understood the question being asked?
The World Economic Forum measures gender-based disparities across four thematic areas – Economic Participation and Opportunity; Educational Attainment; Health and Survival; and Political Empowerment. There are 14 indicators across 4 thematic areas that are used to measure the relative gaps between women and men in a country regardless of overall development level. While measuring the annual progress, it also generates comparative analysis from the preceding year. These 4 thematic areas and linked indicators are also part of the SDGs indicator framework. Pakistan re-enacted SDGs through an Act of Parliament and has SDG implementing units to document progress at federal and provincial level.
GGI and all such global indices are premised on national data being the primary measurement tool. If national data is not available, then the data generated by UN agencies or linked national organisations of repute is used.
This leads to the question: exactly what data was submitted for the GGI? And how was it collected, and who submitted it to the World Economic Forum?
Going through the GGI report, one can safely assume that the WEF generally collects the data from the global portal of different UN agencies e.g. UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO, UNFPA, etc. These global portals connect to the national datasets generated via key surveys having globally standardised methodology and frameworks.
This takes us to the heart of the problem which is data itself – its availability, gender disaggregation, accuracy and validity. Does the methodology, practice and periodicity of data collection measure up to what is expected as standardised global data? Does Pakistan have gender-disaggregated national data sets in the four thematic categories to quantify progress and assess the same qualitatively? Who is responsible for generating the data? Are there institutional oversight mechanisms to ensure that updated gender-disaggregated data is available?
Data availability and its validity has always been problematic for Pakistan. This can be gauged from the fact that it took Pakistan almost 19 years to have the population and household census – 1998 to 2017; and after that, in 2023, it turned it into a digital census. The results for both the census exercises to date remain contested by the provinces.
Post-devolution, not only was women’s development as a subject devolved, but it also impacted the availability of national-level gender-disaggregated data
National data that is critical for the GGI is primarily generated by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) and National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS). The national surveys undertaken by these two institutions cover the 14 indicators under the 4 thematic areas being measured by the GGI. This includes key surveys, in compliance with globally standardised methodology, being used by the GGI.
Let’s take a look at the currency of the national data that has led to the lowest ranking for Pakistan:
- Economic Participation and Opportunity: It has 5 indicators i.e. labour force participation rate, wage equality, estimated earned income, employment by occupation & sex, and occupational breakdown of professional and technical workers. The primary data source is the Labour Force Survey and data generated by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and ILO. The Labour Force Survey is dated 2020–21. The Business Register that could update sub-indicator based data requirement of GGI is under process as per the PBS website.
- Educational Attainment: It has 4 indicators including literacy rate; enrolment in primary education, enrolment in secondary education and enrolment in tertiary education. The primary data source used by the GGI is Pakistan Social and Living Measures Survey (PSLM) and data from the Ministry of Federal Education, Higher Education Commission and PBS. The PSLM is dated 2019–20. The report did not use Pakistan Digital Census 2023 that had more current data. The primary enrolment data is from the Annual School Census held in 2022–23. The secondary enrolment data is taken from Pakistan Education Statistics (under National Educational MIS) dated 2023. The tertiary education data is derived from Higher Education Data Repository (HEDR), by HEC, dated 2022–23.
- Health and Survival: This has 2 indicators including sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy. The GGI is said to have used national birth records for sex ratio at birth – we can only assume that it could have come from the digital census 2023, which is the most updated data. However, the Pakistan Maternal Mortality Survey is dated 2019. The health and life expectancy is a weighted indicator that is derived from WHO global health estimates. However, the key data sources are Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017–18, National Health Facility Assessment 2021, National Service Availability and Readiness Assessment 2021, and Health Management Information Survey, which is under process.
- Political Empowerment: This has 3 indicators at national level including women in parliament, women in ministerial positions, and number of years with a female head of state in the past 50 years. Interestingly, GGI uses data from Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) for the number of women in parliament; and UN Women and World Bank Data for women cabinet ministers, even though this data is available on the National Assembly of Pakistan website. The female head of state in Pakistan is easiest, as it has only been Ms. Benazir Bhutto for two terms.
If there is one thing that the above is pointing to, it is that Pakistan only has ‘outdated data’. If, on average, data from 2020–21 is used for the 2025 index, then any country would fall flat—in this case, Pakistan. There can be no progressive qualitative assessment on the basis of old data.
This brings us to the point from where we started: the State needs to take ownership and admit its lack of focus on national data generation that can be fed into such global indices. It also makes us ask that if these national data sets are dated, where is the data from SDG implementation units that is also recording progress on over 250 indicators including the 14 used by the GGI?
When the State fails to share valid data in the public domain, it creates space for data estimation/projection by local data houses that can claim to have collated the best projections and may also become a data consolidation partner with an entity like the WEF. Unfortunately, post-devolution, not only was women’s development as a subject devolved, but it also impacted the availability of national-level gender-disaggregated data. However, institutions such as the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) have the oversight function to ask the government to generate timely data as a primary advocacy tool.
The National Gender Data Portal of Pakistan (genderportal.pbs.gov.pk), hosted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), compiles and visualises key gender-disaggregated data from multiple national surveys and administrative sources. Its goal is to provide a centralised platform for gender statistics across economic, social, and political dimensions. If one goes to the NGDP, the national data used to populate it is all outdated.
The portal aggregates gender-disaggregated indicators from a range of national surveys, censuses, and administrative records. This includes data on education (e.g., literacy, school attendance), health (e.g., maternal mortality, family planning), employment and economic participation, violence against women and justice access, population and demographics, and political participation.
The role of all these gender portals and systems is to support the Pakistani government with specific data to report effectively on its international obligations. However, when data is primarily sourced from the PBS, and is outdated (e.g. 2021–2022), then it renders itself of little value for an index measuring 2025. When we have such outdated data sets, then how can we expect our ranking to improve? Lack of data availability is the excuse given, but then did WEF exercise some element of perception in assessing Pakistan’s gender situation?
This brings us back to the original question. Are we really the lowest-ranking country as the World Economic Forum projects, or is it just that Pakistan has been unable to tell the national story of its progressive trajectory of reduction in gender inequalities? The answer, my friend, lies in the conundrum of valid and current data and not in the art of storytelling.