The latest Global Gender Gap report from the World Economic Forum revealed that it could take more than 135 years to close the global gender gap, based on the current rate of change.
So another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity. The impact of the prolonged pandemic has increased the time required to close the global gender gap from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.
Preliminary evidence suggests that the health emergency due to Covid-19 and the related economic downturn have impacted women more severely than men, partially re-opening gaps that had already been closed.
Global Gender Gap Report
This report from WEF analyzes gender based discrepancies across 156 countries. The report benchmarks the evolution of gender based gaps among four key dimensions.
- Economic participation and opportunity
- Educational attainment
- Health and survival
- Political empowerment
The Global Gender Gap Index measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale and scores can be interpreted as the distance to parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed).
Regionally, western Europe fares best with an overall score of 77% followed closely by North America at 76%. The worst on the scale are Middle East and North Africa at 61.
Region Wise Scores
| Region | Score: Global Gender Gap 2021 Index |
|---|---|
| Western Europe | 77% |
| North America | 76% |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 71% |
| Eastern Europe and Central Asia | 71% |
| East Asia and the Pacific | 69% |
| Sub Saharan Africa | 67% |
| South Asia | 62% |
| Middle East and North Africa | 61% |
Iceland, Finland and Norway lead the way for the rest of world in closing gender gap. Iceland has been rated as the most gender equal country in the world for the 12th time.
The research shows that closing the gender gap in the global workforce could lead to a boost of more than $28 trillion to the global economy.
Hence, empowering women in the workforce is everyone’s best interest.
Political Empowerment Index
The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points.
Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 parliament seats and just 22.6% of over 3,400 ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of state, as of 15th January 2021.
At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
We still have a long way to go to ensure equality for all. The change has to be across all regions, nationalities and industries – from homes to classrooms to boardrooms and parliaments.
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