Progress towards gender parity stalling as 131 years needed to close global gender gap: WEF

By Nuran Erkul

LONDON (AA) - Despite the recovery in gender parity to pre-pandemic levels across the globe, the pace of change has reached a stagnation point due to converging crises, and 131 years are needed to close the gender gap at the current rate, the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2023 reveals.

The overall gender gap has closed by only 0.3 percentage points compared with last year, leaving the risk that 2154 could be the year of expected parity.

The report benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

"At the current rate of progress, it will take 169 years for economic parity and 162 years for political parity," said the report.

"The overall progress in 2023 is partly due to improvement in closing the educational attainment gap, with 117 out of 146 indexed countries now having closed at least 95% of the gap. Meanwhile, the economic participation and opportunity gap has closed by 60.1% and the political empowerment gap by just 22.1%," said the WEF.

The parity has advanced by 4.1% since the first edition of the report in 2006, with the overall rate of change slowing significantly.

While no country has yet achieved full gender parity, Iceland is the most gender-equal country in the world for the 14th consecutive year and the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.

Norway follows with 87.9%, Finland with 86.3%, New Zealand with 85.6% and Sweden with 81.5% with Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia, Lithuania and Belgium rounding out the top 10.

The WEF found that Europe has the highest gender parity of all regions at 76.3%, followed by 75% in North America and 74.3% in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, has the lowest gender parity with 40%, followed by Chad, Algeria, Iran and Pakistan at 57%.

Eurasia and Central Asia have closed 69% of their gender gap and sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia have closed 68.2% and 63.4% respectively while the Middle East and North Africa remain the furthest from parity with 62.6% of the gender gap closed.

- Glass ceiling remains intact, women bear brunt of current crises

"While there have been encouraging signs of a recovery to pre-pandemic levels, women continue to bear the brunt of the current cost of living crisis and labor market disruptions," said Saadia Zahidi, managing director at WEF.

"An economic rebound requires the full power of creativity and diverse ideas and skills. We cannot afford to lose momentum on women’s economic participation and opportunity."

The report finds that as women have entered the labor force at higher rates than men globally, gaps in the labor market remain "persistently wide."

Women continue to face higher unemployment rates than men, with a global unemployment rate at about 4.5% for women and 4.3% for men.

Women account for 41.9% of the workforce in 2023, according to data covering 163 countries. The share of women in senior leadership positions is nearly 10% lower at 32.2%.

"We’re consistently seeing that women bear the brunt of economic shocks and headwinds. We know that these problems are systemic, which means we need a systemic response," Sue Duke, head of Global Public Policy at LinkedIn, was quoted in the report as saying.