New Zealand has slipped to fifth place globally in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2025, with a score of 0.827, continuing a downward trend from fourth place (0.835) in 2024 and a high of 0.856 in 2023. Once seen as a model for gender parity, the nation is now experiencing notable regressions in political and economic domains, reversing progress made between 2019 and 2023.

Leadership setback: Political empowerment tumbles

Political empowerment, long considered one of New Zealand’s strongest pillars of gender parity, has weakened significantly. The percentage of women in ministerial positions plunged from 81.8% in 2023 to just 53.8% in 2025, a nearly 30-point drop. Similarly, parliamentary representation, which had reached full parity in 2023, now sits at 83.6%.

These shifts have impacted New Zealand’s Political Empowerment subindex, which fell from a score of 0.631 (fourth place in 2024) to 0.605 (seventh place in 2025), said the report. The decline underscores growing concerns about sustained gender representation in national leadership.

Economic gender equality dips below 2007 levels

The report also revealed slippage in economic parity. New Zealand’s Economic Participation and Opportunity score dropped to 0.738 in 2025, pushing its rank down to 42nd globally, from 0.741 and 36th the year prior. For the first time since 2007, the country has fallen below the 70% parity threshold in this category.

Further, a 4.23% gender wage gap remains, with 46% of board seats held by women. However, only 9% of firms are female-owned, and just 20.3% have a female top manager, highlighting persistent barriers in business leadership.

Labour force data also reflects disparity: 51.43% of employed women work part-time, compared to 27.82% of men. The unemployment rate for women aged 15–64 sits at 5.10%, slightly higher than 4.74% for men, according to the report.

Education: A beacon of equality

Despite challenges in politics and the economy, education remains New Zealand’s strongest area for gender parity. The country earned a perfect score of 1.000, maintaining its first-place global ranking in Educational Attainment.

Women and men enjoy equal or near-equal literacy and school enrolment rates at all levels. Notably, tertiary education enrolment is significantly higher for women, with a gender gap of +37.29 percentage points in favour of females.

Health outcomes stable but globally low-ranked

In the Health and Survival subindex, New Zealand scored 0.964, slipping to 104th place globally. The score is only slightly lower than the previous year (0.966, 99th), but still reflects relatively weak performance due to minor but persistent differences in sex ratio at birth and healthy life expectancy.

A warning sign for policymakers?

While New Zealand still outperforms most countries globally, the 2025 report signals a worrisome reversal of previously steady progress. The country’s performance in both political representation and economic participation shows signs of erosion that could worsen without targeted policy intervention.

Meanwhile, the Global Gender Gap score in 2025 for all 148 economies included in this edition stands at 68.8% closed. When comparing the constant set of 145 economies included in both this year’s and last year’s editions, the Global Gender Gap closed by +0.3 percentage points in 2025, from 68.4% in 2024 to 68.8% in 2025. Furthermore, when considering the constant set of 100 economies covered continuously since the inaugural 2006 edition, the gap has narrowed by 0.4 percentage points, from 68.6% in 2024 to 69.0% in 2025, the report mentioned.