China has returned to the top 100 of the World Economic Forum’s annual gender gap ranking for the first time in a decade, rising from 103rd to 96th among 145 economies, according to the 2026 Global Gender Gap Report.
The country closed 69.9% of its gender gap, up 1.3 percentage points from the previous year. The last time China placed in the top 100 was 2016, when it ranked 99th.
The result was reported by the South China Morning Post, which said the improvement was driven mainly by the “economic participation and opportunity” category. The category covers indicators such as estimated work income and labor-force participation.
The WEF’s index, now in its 20th edition, measures the distance to parity between women and men across four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
Economic parity was China’s strongest pillar this year, at 72.3%. China’s rise puts it ahead of several large Asian neighbors.
South Korea placed 101st, Japan 117th and India 131st. Elsewhere in the region, Thailand ranked 55th and Singapore 31st. Among major economies, the United States was 47th. Iceland topped the table for a 17th consecutive year, with 93% of its gap closed.
Despite the improvement, the report points to persistent shortfalls in women’s political representation in China, where women still hold only a small fraction of ministerial posts.
The global picture is one of slow, fragile progress. The world has closed 69.2% of the gender gap, up 0.4 percentage points from a year earlier and the highest level recorded.
At the current pace, however, full parity is still an estimated 120 years away. Political empowerment remains the widest gap, with just 22.1% closed worldwide, while economic participation stands at 61.7%. Health and educational attainment are close to parity, at 96.2 and 96.9% respectively.
WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi said parity is “not inevitable” and called on governments and employers to learn from policies that work and apply them faster.
The report also noted that the share of countries led by women peaked in 2022 and has since fallen back to 2016 levels, while women hold fewer than one in five chief executive positions globally. Chad ranked last in the index, with Iran and Pakistan also among the bottom three.
