India has been ranked 108th in the 2018 World Economic Forum (WEF) gender gap index - same as 2017 - while recording improvement in wage equality for similar work and fully closing its tertiary education gender gap for the first time.

As per the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2018, released on December 18, while India has many challenges as it ranks 142nd out of 149 countries in the economic opportunity and participation sub-index, it also has a few achievements.

Gender gap was measured across four key pillars - economic opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment and health and survival.

“India needs to make improvements across the board, from women’s participation to getting more women into senior and professional roles,” the WEF said.

The WEF also noted that India continues to rank third-lowest on health and survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country on this sub-index over the past decade.

However, on the positive side, India has slightly improved in wage equality for similar work indicator, where it stood at 72nd place. It has also closed its tertiary education enrolment gap for the first time and has managed to keep its primary and secondary gaps closed for the third year running.

Interestingly, India has the second-largest artificial intelligence (AI) workforce, but one of the largest AI gender gaps, with only 22 per cent of roles filled by women.

According to the report, the world has closed 68 per cent of its gender gap and at the current rate of change, it will take 108 years to close the overall gender gap and 202 years to bring about parity in the workplace.

South Asia was the second-lowest ranking region, with only 65 per cent of its gender gap now closed. India is slightly ahead of the regional average, having closed 66 per cent.

The global list was topped by Iceland, having closed more than 85.8 per cent of its overall gender gap. Iceland holds the top spot in the index for the 10th consecutive year.

Norway (second, 83.5 per cent), Sweden (third, 82.2 per cent) and Finland (fourth, 82.1 per cent) dominated the top slots. Others in the top 10 include Nicaragua (fifth, 80.9 per cent), Rwanda (sixth, 80.4 per cent), New Zealand (seventh, 80.1 per cent), the Philippines (eighth, 79.9 per cent), Ireland (ninth, 79.6 per cent) and Namibia (10th, 78.9 per cent).