Nepal has climbed two spots up on the gender gap index to rank 110th out of 145 countries surveyed this year, according to Global Gender Gap 2015.  

Nepal had made up nine places last year in the annual report published by the World Economic Forum.

Nepal has been showing signs of improvement in narrowing the gender gap for the five consecutive years, says the WEF report which measures gender gap on the basis of four pillars—economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

The country’s overall performance on the Global Gender Gap Index is measured on 0-to-1 scale.

Nepal lies behind Sri Lanka and India among South Asian countries. Sri Lanka is at the 84th spot, while India has leapfrogged from 114th to 108th position. Iceland tops this year’s rankings with a score of 0.881, while Yemen with 0.484 is at the bottom of the pile.

As per the report, Nepal has made a significant progress in areas of political empowerment followed by health and survival (sex rate ratio and health life expectancy). There has been no change in the educational attainment, which includes literacy rate, enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education.

Much like many of the countries, Nepal’s progress in economic participation and opportunity. The gender gap on economic participation and political empowerment worldwide remains wide, the report suggests. Only 59% of the economic outcomes gap and 23% of the political outcomes gap have been closed.

Gender expert Meena Poudel remarked that Nepal´s new ranking was possible due to the provision ensuring 33 percent reservation seats for women in Parliament and other government sectors.

“We have passed significant bills like the Domestic Violence and formed national plan of action along with ensuring women 33 percent participation in all forms of government, which has made in political participation,” said Poudel.

Achievements of Millennium Development Goal in maternal and child mortality and progress in reproductive health of women has made Nepal the second best country in South Asia after Sri Lanka, she continued.

The gender gap in the country can be narrowed further if Nepal implements all the international laws relating to women’s right it has ratified and the national policies made in accordance with it, she added. “The challenge for us is whether we can actually practice all the affirmative acts and policies that have been formulated recently.”