Global Gender Gap Report 2025: Egypt Slips to 139 as Political Parity Falls and Economic Inclusion Stalls

Executive Summary

• The World Economic Forum released the 19th Global Gender Gap Report on 2025-06-11, covering 148 economies.
• Egypt scored 0.625 and ranked 139/148. Its subindex scores were 0.406 economic, 0.968 education, 0.969 health and 0.157 political.
• The global score was 68.8%, compared with 61.7% for Middle East and North Africa.
• Iceland led the edition at 92.6%. The report estimated 123 years to global parity.
• Egypt’s education and health scores remained high, but the political subindex fell to 0.157 and the economic subindex remained at 0.406. The competitiveness issue is the under-use of available female human capital.
• ENCC’s policy reading prioritizes care infrastructure, fair recruitment and pay, skills-to-work conversion, leadership pipelines, political participation and better sex-disaggregated data.

Release Snapshot

What This Release Is

The Global Gender Gap Report is the World Economic Forum’s annual benchmark of relative gaps between women and men. The 2025 edition is the 19th release and its analytical theme is Labour markets, career pathways, legal frameworks and geoeconomic risk.

What It Measures and Why It Matters

The index captures four dimensions of parity: participation in the economy, access to education, health outcomes and political voice. Together they reveal whether an economy is using the capabilities of women and men on comparable terms.

For competitiveness, gender gaps can reduce labour supply, weaken the return on education, narrow leadership pools, constrain entrepreneurship and diminish institutional representation. Closing them is therefore an economic and governance priority, not only a social objective.

Methodology in Brief

• The Global Gender Gap Index measures gaps between women and men rather than absolute development levels.
• The score runs from 0 to 1; a higher value represents a larger share of the gender gap closed.
• Four equally prominent subindexes are reported: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
• The framework draws on 14 indicators. Most are female-to-male ratios, with parity thresholds that prevent over-rewarding outcomes beyond the equality benchmark.
• The overall score is constructed from the four subindexes; country rank is assigned within the economies included in that edition.
• The 2025 edition covered 148 economies. Egypt had sufficient source data and received a score and rank.
• The methodology has remained broadly stable since 2006, supporting controlled trend analysis.
• Coverage, indicator vintages, survey inputs and occasional source revisions can still change; edition-native values and common samples should be used.
• The index does not measure violence, unpaid care, legal rights or within-country disparities comprehensively; complementary evidence is required.

Global Highlights and Key Signals

• The 19th edition covered 148 economies and recorded a global score of 68.8%.
• Iceland led for the 16th consecutive year at 92.6% and remained the only economy above 90%.
• The world had closed 61.0% of the economic gap, 95.1% of the education gap, 96.2% of the health gap and 22.9% of the political gap.
• Middle East and Northern Africa ranked eighth at 61.7%; its economic score was 42.4%, while education reached 97.6%.
• For the 100 economies covered continuously since 2006, the report estimated 123 years to global parity.

Regional Lens: Middle East and North Africa

The published regional parity score was 61.7%, compared with the global score of 68.8% and Egypt’s 62.5%. This comparison uses WEF’s own regional grouping and the edition’s published aggregates; it is not an analyst-created peer ranking.

The regional aggregate should not be treated as a target or causal benchmark. It contains economies with different income levels, labour markets, legal frameworks and political institutions.

Egypt Lens

ENCC reading. Egypt’s education and health scores remained high, but the political subindex fell to 0.157 and the economic subindex remained at 0.406. The competitiveness issue is the under-use of available female human capital.

Track-Specific Deep Dive: Reading the Index Safely

• Lead with the score and four subindexes; use rank as secondary context.
• Keep the 148-economy denominator visible. A rank movement can occur without a comparable score movement.
• Treat education and health parity as enabling conditions, not proof of equal economic opportunity.
• Use common-country samples when interpreting global or regional change.
• Do not infer a single cause from an annual change; source vintages and underlying indicators differ.
• Pair the WEF index with labour, pay, care, leadership, legal and subnational evidence.

Comparative Evidence

Egypt edition-native time series through 2025

The table uses only editions available up to the report being read. It does not back-cast later revisions into earlier reports.

Policy Implications and Policy Module

Policy question: How can Egypt convert high female education and health attainment into sustained work, income, leadership and political voice?

• Treat care infrastructure as economic infrastructure that affects labour supply and firm access to talent.
• Make recruitment, promotion and pay systems more transparent and reviewable.
• Link female education, including STEM education, to internships, apprenticeships, digital work and leadership pathways.
• Measure women’s entrepreneurship through access to finance, markets, procurement and business services.
• Build transparent pipelines for senior economic, public and political leadership.
• Publish timely sex-disaggregated evidence and evaluate implementation rather than policy adoption alone.

ENCC Institutional Positioning

• Gender parity is a competitiveness issue because it affects productivity, talent utilization, investment and institutional quality.
• The verified WEF finding for Egypt is a score of 0.625 and rank 139/148; the policy diagnosis is ENCC analysis.
• Progress should be judged through outcomes in work, income, leadership and representation, not education figures alone.
• A strong response requires government, business, education, data producers and civil society.
• ENCC can convene evidence-based implementation dialogue while preserving the distinction between source findings and council recommendations.

Roadmap, 6–24 Months

Risks and Mitigation

Monitoring Indicators and KPIs

• Overall Global Gender Gap score, rank and edition denominator — annual.
• Economic Participation and Opportunity score and its underlying labour-force, income and leadership indicators.
• Educational Attainment score plus female graduate transition into employment by field.
• Health and Survival score, complemented by broader health-access and outcome measures.
• Political Empowerment score and women’s representation in elected and appointed decision-making roles.
• Gender pay gaps from transparent, methodologically documented employer or labour-market data — baseline: Not available.
• Availability, affordability and use of care services by location and income — baseline: Not available.
• Women’s share of senior leadership, new appointments and succession pipelines — baseline: Not available.
• Publication timeliness and completeness of sex-disaggregated administrative data.
• Share of roadmap actions with named owners, deadlines and independently reviewable evidence.

Data Notes and Limitations

• The 2025 edition covered 148 economies; changes in coverage affect rank interpretation.
• The score measures relative gender gaps and does not measure absolute development, poverty or service quality.
• Some indicators rely on survey evidence and source data from different reference years.
• National averages conceal geographic, income, age, disability and labour-status differences.
• The framework does not fully capture unpaid care, gender-based violence, legal implementation or job quality.
• The time-to-parity estimate is a projection from observed pace, not a forecast with certainty.
• ENCC recommendations are a policy reading and should not be attributed to the World Economic Forum.

Official Sources

• World Economic Forum — Global Gender Gap Report 2025
• World Economic Forum — Official report PDF 2025

Egyptian National Competitiveness Council (ENCC)
This reading separates World Economic Forum findings from ENCC analysis and policy recommendations.