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The World Economic Forum says the time it will take to close the gender gap has narrowed to 99.5 years in 2019 showing an improvement over the level in 2018 when it was estimated it will take 108 years to achieve this feat.
However, it still means parity between men and women across health, education, work and politics will take more than a lifetime to achieve. This is the finding of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, published today.
In Africa, the survey found that the Sub-Saharan region has closed 68.0% of its gender gap so far. This result is a significant progress since last edition which leads to revise down the number of years it will take to close the gender gap, which is now estimated at 95 years.
Africa is home of one of the top-ten countries overall Rwanda (9th) while another 21 countries have improved their performances since last year, including Ethiopia (82nd) one of the best improved this year globally.
According to the report, this year’s improvement can largely be ascribed to a significant increase in the number of women in politics.
The political gender gap will take 95 years to close, compared to 107 years last year. Worldwide in 2019, women now hold 25.2% of parliamentary lower-house seats and 21.2% of ministerial positions, compared to 24.1% and 19% respectively last year.
Politics, however, remains the area where least progress has been made to date. With Educational Attainment and Health and Survival much closer to parity on 96.1% and 95.7% respectively, the other major battlefield is economic participation.
Here, the gap widened in 2019 from 58.1% in 2018 to 57.8%. Looking simply at the progress that has been made since 2006 when the World Economic Forum first began measuring the gender gap, this economic gender gap will take 257 years to close, compared to 202 years last year.
The report attributes the economic gender gap to a number of factors. These include stubbornly low levels of women in managerial or leadership positions, wage stagnation, labour force participation and income.
Women have been hit by a triple whammy: first, they are more highly represented in many of the roles that have been hit hardest by automation, for example, retail and white-collar clerical roles.
Second, not enough women are entering those professions – often but not exclusively technology-driven – where wage growth has been the most pronounced.
As a result, women in work too often find themselves in middle-low wage categories that have been stagnant since the financial crisis 10 years ago.
Third, perennial factors such as lack of care infrastructure and lack of access to capital strongly limit women’s workforce opportunities.
Women spend at least twice as much time on care and voluntary work in every country where data is available, and lack of access to capital prevents women from pursuing entrepreneurial activity, another key driver of income.
“Supporting gender parity is critical to ensuring strong, cohesive and resilient societies around the world. For business, too, diversity will be an essential element to demonstrate that stakeholder capitalism is the guiding principle. This is why the World Economic Forum is working with business and government stakeholders to accelerate efforts to close the gender gap,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.
