4 industry leaders on how we can recover momentum towards closing the gender gap
Since the pandemic began, headlines worldwide have depicted its disproportionate impact on women. It pushed more women out of jobs, excluded them from quality healthcare and education, pushed them to perform more childcare, and intensified gender inequalities, among others. Then came the multiple shocks in the global economy.
Now, the latest estimates from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report reveal that gender parity is not recovering. Globally, the gender gap has closed by 68.1%, a slight improvement since 2021, but still significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels that suggested the gap would close within 100 years.
It will now take 132 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
The report benchmarks the evolution of gender-based gaps in four areas: Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date. The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity comes next, with only 60.3% of the gap completed.
The gender gaps in Educational Attainment fell from 95.2% to 94.4% while Health and Survival saw a marginal increase from 95.7% to 95.8.
“This is not the moment to roll back on gender parity – it is time to accelerate change, for all of us,” says Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director at the Forum. So what can be done?