Global gender parity remains more than a lifetime away for women even though the gap with men is now smaller than ever, according to the World Economic Forum.
The Geneva-based organization’s annual report on the matter, released on Wednesday, found that current progress means it will still take 120 years to reach full equality. That’s a marked improvement, and up from 170 years measured a decade ago, but it still means that no-one alive today is likely to experience it. The overall gap across 145 economies has narrowed to 69.4%, the best result recorded in two decades of such reports. The category gaining the most ground in the last 20 years is political empowerment — even as parity there is almost two centuries away. There is now one female minister for every 4.3 male peers, up from 8.1 in 2006. In parliaments, the ratio has moved from one woman for every 5.6 men to every three or so. Politics is also the dimension showing the clearest signs of reversal, scoring lower than it did in 2016. The number of female heads of state peaked in 2022, the highest in half a century, and has since fallen back. Within the C-suite, they hold 19% of chief executive officer positions and around a quarter of chief financial officer and chief operating officer jobs.
“Gender parity is achievable — economies at every income level have made progress, so the barrier is not a lack of resources,” said Saadia Zahidi, managing director at the WEF. The WEF’s report combines indexes of political empowerment, economic participation and opportunity, health and survival and educational attainment to assess gender disparity across the world. “To accelerate, governments and employers need to learn from the policies that work and apply them faster. Women have advanced in other leadership roles. Even so, women remain particularly underrepresented in the most powerful corporate roles. They hold fewer than a fifth of those that typically lead to top jobs, while dominating positions such as chief human resources officer and chief people officer. And within artificial intelligence, women remain in a minority at every level. Fewer than one in five AI engineers are female, and they are more concentrated in data annotation roles, which often pay less than engineering jobs. On a geographical basis, Europe leads in closing the overall gender gap, followed by North America, while the Middle East and North Africa lag. That latter region had a later start but has steadily stepped up efforts to become the most reform-intensive part of the world in the current decade.
Iceland Leads Gender Equality for 17th Year
Iceland has maintained its position at the top of the gender equality rankings for the 17th consecutive year, achieving a remarkable 93% closure of the gender gap. This makes it the only country to have eliminated more than 90% of gender disparity.
Despite this progress, experts express concern over the stagnation and even regression of women’s roles in leadership. “Every time there is a hit, we will default to old patterns,” noted a leading voice in the field. This highlights the ongoing challenges in advancing gender equality, even in the face of significant overall improvements.
