The 2023 report by the World Economic Forum on gender equality saw Israel drop to 83rd out of 146 nations with the greatest disparity in political empowerment
Israel dropped 23 places in the World Economic Forum’s 2023 gender equality rankings report released last week, dropping from 60th out of 146 nations to 83rd in the course of one year.
The Forum, which hosts the annual gathering of global business and political leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos every winter, releases an annual report ranking countries’ gender parity according to several criteria, including educational attainment and political empowerment.
In terms of Economic Participation and Opportunity, Israel “has closed 68.9 percent of the gender gap” and has achieved “full parity” when it comes to education. However, it has declined in terms of political empowerment, with a decrease “in the share of parliamentary positions held by women” since 2022, the report stated.
In 2023, Israel came in 75th place for economic participation and opportunity, up six spots over 2022 while in both years it ties for first place for educational attainment. It also crept up by three spots from 111 to 109 for health and survival.
Israel’s sharp fall in the rankings can primarily be attributed to its lack of female representation in politics, with the country going from 61st place to 96th, just behind Pakistan — a development which occurred as now-opposition leader Yair Lapid lost power, paving the way for the establishment of Prime Minister Benjamin’s latest government.
There are only six women serving in Netanyahu’s cabinet and 30 in the Knesset, down from nine and 35, respectively, prior to the latest national election.
Israel’s lack of female political representation not only dropped Israel in the overall global rankings but in a regional one as well, with the country being edged out by the United Arab Emirates as the country with the greatest gender parity in the Middle East and North Africa.
Despite this, “the rise in the number of female members of Knesset is one of the standout political phenomena of the last three decades,” according to a 2022 explainer by the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank.
From the establishment of the state until the 1990s, women in the Knesset never exceeded 11 percent of the total number of lawmakers, it noted, stating that as of early 2022, the two most recent governments had actually “set new records for women’s representation in government.”
According to the World Economic Forum, “at the current rate of progress, it will take 131 years to reach full parity” across the globe.
The World Economic Forum report comes several months after the Economist Intelligence Unit placed Israel 29th out of 165 countries and territories, a drop of six places, in its annual ranking of countries’ level of democratic governance.
While the country was rated 9.58 out of 10 for electoral process and pluralism and 9.44 for political participation, it only scored 7.86 for functioning of government and 5.88 for civil liberties.
The Economist Intelligence Unit explained that Israel’s lowered score, coming after a years-long steady upwards trend, was due to “the end of the brief stint in government of the Ra’am Party, the first Arab party to form part of a governing coalition in the country, after the November 2022 parliamentary election.”
This level of Arab political participation ended with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power alongside “a number of far-right, ethno-religious nationalist parties,” it stated, explaining that the new government’s push to allow the Knesset to override High Court decisions, “would undermine the separation of powers and possibly imperil civil liberties in the future.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report