The global gender gap narrowed to 68.8%, marking the strongest annual advancement since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2025 on Thursday.Despite this advancement, full gender parity is 123 years away, the 19th edition of the report said.This was an 11-year improvement from the previous edition's estimate. But was lagging behind by a century from sustainable development goals.Political empowerment and economic participation were the areas where the most progress was observed with regards to gender parity, with educational attainment, health and survival maintaining their near-parity levels above 95%."At a time of heightened global economic uncertainty and a low growth outlook combined with technological and demographic change, advancing gender parity represents a key force for economic renewal," Saadia Zahidi, managing director of World Economic Forum, said."The evidence is clear. Economies that have made decisive progress towards parity are positioning themselves for stronger, more innovative and more resilient economic progress," she added.Global Gender Equality RankingIceland retained its top spot as the most gender-equal economy, with 92.6% of its gender gap getting closed.Despite Iceland being the only country surpassing 90%, Finland and Norway were not far behind with a ranking of second (87.9%) and third (86.3%) respectively.The United Kingdom (83.8%) and New Zealand (82.7%) followed in the fourth and fifth positions.All top 10 economies have closed at least 80% of their gender gaps and are the only economies to reach this metric. European nations dominated the top 10 rankings with eight positions.Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden have maintained their top 10 status since 2006, the report said.Economic And Political Disparity Reduction North America was the continent that showed the most progress in closing its gender gap in terms of political participation, showing a 19.3% reduction in the political parity gap since 2006. It led the gender parity metric with a score of 75.8%.Europe came in second with a gender parity score of 75.1%, having closed 6.3 percentage points of its overall gap since 2006. Latin America and the Caribbean came in third at 74.5%, making the fastest progress of all the continents in the top 10, advancing 8.6 percentage points since 2006.Political empowerment has seen the most overall progress, with the gap narrowing by nine percentage points since 2006. At the current pace it will take 162 years to fully close this gapEconomic participation and opportunity went up 5.6 percentage points over time, with economic parity expected to take 135 years at current rates.Women represented 41.2% of the global workforce but only 28.8% of top leadership positions.India Womenomics: ‘Passion’ Is Biggest Motivator For Women Entrepreneurs, Finds Goldman Sachs. Read more on Global Economics by NDTV Profit.