Women remain underrepresented throughout AI value chain
Global gender parity will take another 120 years, according to the World Economic Forum’s report on the global gender gap. Women remain underrepresented throughout the AI value chain – from the infrastructure powering AI to the foundation models and applications. Similar patterns occur across AI occupations, where women make up nearly half of data annotators, but around one-fifth of developers and deployment engineers, according to the report.
There is no economy that has reached full parity. For the 17th consecutive year, Iceland reports the highest level of gender parity at 93% and remains the only economy to have closed more than 90% of its overall gender gap.
The global gender gap stands at 69.2% closed. Among the constant sample of 97 economies, gender parity has improved by +5.2 percentage points since 2006, reaching its highest level to date of 69.4%.
Looking at the constant set of economies included in both this year’s and last year’s editions, the global gender gap closed by 0.4 percentage points in 2026, from 68.8% in 2025 to 69.2% in 2026.
The report says that every economy in the global top 10 has closed at least 81% of the gender gap. European economies make up the majority of best performers in 2026 and across time.
In 2026, Europe represents 70% of the leaderboard between Iceland (93%, 1st), Finland (87.2%, 2nd), Norway (85.7%, 3rd) the United Kingdom (84.2%, 5th), Sweden (82.3%, 7th), Germany (81.7%, 9th), and Ireland (81.4%, 10th). Completing the top 10 are Namibia (84.5%, 4th), the highest scoring Sub-Saharan economy; New Zealand (82.8%, 6th), in a recurring appearance; and Australia (81.9%, 8th) making its top 10 debut.
Since the index was launched in 2006, Europe has occupied 69% of all top 10. Eastern Asia and the Pacific economies have the second highest footprint, with 17% of all top 10.
Four economies have featured in every top 10: Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Five economies have been featured once: Australia, Latvia, Republic of Moldova, the Netherlands and South Africa.
Across the four dimensions of the index, Health and Survival (96.2%) and Educational Attainment (96.9%) are the two dimensions closest to parity, while Economic Participation and Opportunity (61.7%) and Political Empowerment (22.1%) account for the widest gender gaps.
Over the past 20 editions, the Global Gender Gap Index score has increased +5.2 percentage points across the 97 economies featured in all editions, from 64.2% in the 2006 edition to 69.4% in the 2026 edition – its highest score to date. If these economies were to continue to advance at this estimated rate of progress, global gender parity is estimated to be attained in 120 years.
Europe regains the top regional position in the 2026 edition, having closed 75.7% of its overall gender gap and narrowly overtaking Northern America in 2026. Northern America has closed 75.2% of its overall gender gap.
Latin America and the Caribbean ranks 3rd, with 74.5% of the overall gender gap closed in the 2026 edition. Eastern Asia and the Pacific ranks 4th with 70.3% of the overall gender gap closed in the 2026 edition, surpassing the 70% parity threshold for the first time.
Central Asia ranks 5th with 70.0% of its overall gender gap closed in the 2026 edition, with relatively small disparities across economies in the region. Sub-Saharan Africa ranks 6th, with 68.8% of its overall gender gap closed in 2026. The region continues to display the widest variation between economies, ranging from Namibia (84.5%), ranked 4th globally, to Chad (57.8%), among the weakest.
Southern Asia ranks 7th, with 64.5% of its overall gender gap closed in 2026. Since 2006, the region has improved overall parity by 4.8 percentage points.
Middle East and Northern Africa ranks 8th, having closed 62.5% of its overall gender gap in the 2026 edition.
The economies that have made the biggest absolute gains since the index was launched are Namibia, Iceland, Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, France, Bolivia, Chile and Nepal. This group has improved overall individual parity scores by more than 12 percentage points.
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