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Japan fell to a record low 125th in global gender equality rankings this year, as the country failed to heighten female representation in politics and economic activities.

Japan’s ranking among 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2023 released on June 21 represents a drop of nine notches from last year.

The WEF started releasing the report in 2006.

The annual report analyzes progress in gender equality in four areas--education, health, politics and economy--in the 146 countries.

With its low percentage of female Lower House members and Cabinet ministers, Japan placed 138th in the political sector.

It also ranked 123rd in the economic sector, as efforts to achieve equality in income and promote more women to executive and managerial positions at companies have stagnated, according to the report.

The WEF gives each country a gender gap score that represents how much they have closed the gender gap. A score of 100 percent means complete gender parity.

Overall, the world gender gap score is 68.4 percent this year, an improvement of 0.3 point from 2022, the report said.

Japan’s gender gap score is below average, at 64.7 percent.

Some indexes, such as women’s participation in the workforce, recovered to levels before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

However, the WEF estimates that it will take 131 years for the world to achieve complete gender equality at its current rate of improvement.

Northern European countries continued to dominate the gender equality rankings.

Iceland topped the list for the 14th straight year, with a gender gap score of 91.2 percent, followed by Norway, at 87.9 percent, and Finland, at 86.3 percent.

Sweden was ranked fifth with a score of 81.5 percent.