China re-enters global top 100 for gender equality after nine-year absence
China ranked 96th among 145 economies in the World Economic Forum’s 2026 gender-gap report, its first return to the top 100 since 2016. The improvement was driven mainly by economic participation and education, while the report highlighted continuing disparities in birth ratios, political representation and senior leadership.
China has returned to the top 100 of the World Economic Forum’s global gender-gap ranking for the first time since 2016, placing 96th among 145 economies in the organisation’s 2026 report. The country closed 69.9 per cent of its gender gap in 2025, an improvement of 1.3 percentage points from the previous year. China was ranked 103rd in the previous edition and placed 99th in 2016, according to the report.
China ranked ahead of South Korea, Japan and India, which placed 101st, 117th and 131st respectively. It remained below Singapore, Bangladesh and Vietnam, ranked 31st, 79th and 84th. The WEF assesses economies across economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
China’s strongest improvement came in economic participation, where it recorded 72.3 per cent parity and ranked 57th globally. Its score in that category has risen 10.3 percentage points since 2006. Educational parity reached 98.8 per cent, helped by full parity in tertiary enrolment since 2009 and improvements in adult literacy.
However, the report recorded a sex ratio at birth of 0.907, equivalent to roughly 91 girls for every 100 boys, below its benchmark of 0.944. China ranked 144th on health and survival, with a score of 94.8 per cent. Political empowerment remained largely unchanged.
China scored 13.5 per cent and ranked 111th, with the report saying its indicators for women in parliament, ministerial positions and years with a female head of state had not changed from the previous year. Yaqiu Wang, a human rights researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, welcomed the improved score but said China’s ranking remained disappointing. Jia Wang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University pointed to continuing gaps in labour-force participation, earnings, unpaid care work and hiring practices.
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