MasterCard Worldwide Index of Women's Advancement

This is the first year that Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been included in the Index. To view results for other Asia/Pacific markets, you can click here.

Overall, Nepal leads the South Asian markets with an overall score of 55.0 and a high proportion of women in the workforce (92.0). Bangladesh and Sri Lanka follow with overall scores of 45.5 and 43.8 respectively, while India (38.0) and Pakistan (23.0) round off the lower end of the spectrum.

Sri Lanka, famous for having the world’s first female head of state elected democratically ranked low in terms of the Leadership component (12.6) and specifically the Political Leaders sub-indicator (6.1). On the other hand, women in Nepal came out tops in terms of the Political Leaders sub-indicator (49.6), not only in South Asia but across Asia/Pacific, for their strong representation in parliament.

^[1]   Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Employment component of this year’s Index had Bangladesh (75.5) topping the list with over 75 women for every 100 men in the workforce. Sri Lanka (66.7), Nepal (59.2), India (43.6) and Pakistan (39.7) followed behind. Pakistan had the lowest scores across the Asia/Pacific region in terms of Leadership (3.5) with just over 3 women as business owners for every 100 men.

All five markets ranked well in the third component - Education - with a strong showing of scores across both Secondary and Tertiary sub-indicators. While progress is seen in the field of education, MasterCard’s research stresses the importance of ensuring women receive more access to job opportunities and leadership positions in business and government once they graduate.

Ari Sarker, Division President South Asia said, “It is well established that a country’s social and economic development is closely tied to factors including access to education, employment and political leadership opportunities. While South Asia has recently witnessed an increase in the attention and focus by both public and private sectors towards affirmative action for women, much remains to be done in the march towards gender equality.”

“As emerging economies in the region step up to establish their presence in the global economy, it is important that the barriers preventing women in these markets from seizing economic opportunities be eliminated,” he concluded.