Heartfelt gratitude to Filipino women domestic workers

BASED on an assessment of the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) 2022 of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Philippines is considered as one of the best performing countries in Asia, as it ranked 19th out of 146 countries in gender parity or equality, with a score of 0.783 (on a scale of 0 to 1, the optimal gender parity). A year before, however, our country ranked 17th out of 156 countries with a score of 0.784. But from 2006 until 2018, the Philippines was one of GGGI-WEF's top 10 performing countries in gender parity. The pandemic years have unfortunately brought down our country's rank — 16th (out of 155 countries) in 2020, to 19th in 2022. Economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment, were the indicators used in the GGGI-WEF assessment. It was in educational attainment that our country did not do so well (46th rank) in 2022 because more boys than girls were enrolled in primary education. We ranked 16th for economic participation and opportunity, 30th for health and survival and 35th for political empowerment.

Despite the reduced GGGI-WEF ranking of our country, it was still considered as Asia's top performer last year, because it placed second in East Asia and the Pacific, after New Zealand, which ranked fourth worldwide.