World Economic Forum: “The Economic Gender Gap Will Take 257 Years To Close”

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2020, “it will take 99.5 years to close the gender gap.” It is shocking and saddening to know that we have to go afar, and it is a long journey ahead.

Moreover, achieving parity between men and women across health, education, work, and politics will take more than a lifetime!

That is indeed a very long period. Not only this, but also, the economic gender gap is widening day by day. From the time in 2006, when the World Economic Forum started to measure the gender gap, the economic gender gap will take 257 years to close as compared to 202 years measured last year.

The report mentions a number of factors that are responsible for the persisting gender gap in today’s scenario.

Factors Amounting to Persisting Gender Gap

The first being fewer women in management or leadership positions. Although there are many job profiles where women are highly represented, yet they are reluctant to enter those professions — for instance, retail and white-collared clerical jobs in the automation sector.

Secondly, there is a vast stagnation in the wages of women. This is because apart from women not entering the technologically driven jobs, the wages in these jobs remain stagnant. In simple words, women remain in middle-low wage categories, and no change was noticed since the financial crisis about 10 years ago.

Thirdly, persistent factors such as lack of basic infrastructural amenities, access to capital hinder the opportunities for women workforce. According to the data, women spend twice their time at voluntary work in almost all countries. With women not having access to capital, they are unable to pursue entrepreneurial activities that directly affect their income.

As Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum says:

“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,” 

World Economic Forum: The State of Women at Workplaces

If we incorporate the Role Model Effect into the organization’s culture, it will help reduce the existing gender gap. Also, if we compare changes in political empowerment from the year 2006 to 2019, there are improvements as eight of the top 10 countries show a higher number of women in senior positions.

According to the report, the most pressing challenge to reduce the economic gender gap is the under-representation of women in emerging professions. As per the analysis conducted by the World Economic Forum with LinkedIn shows that on average, women are massively under-represented in most emerging businesses.

For instance, if I talk about “cloud computing” jobs, only 12% of the professionals are women. In “engineering” jobs, it’s about 15%, and in “Data and AI”, it amounts to 26%. Women lead in two job scenarios: “content production” and “people and culture”.

The question is, why there is a reluctance to accept women in non-traditional job roles? What do we need to do to tackle these challenges? Are women not exposed to skills that are required for these job roles?

But this is where things get complicated!

According to the data recorded, all women have the relevant skill set required from respective job roles. However, they are not equally represented, for instance, in the field of data science, 31 percent of women have relevant skills, but women hold only 25% of roles.

Proportion of the male: female workforce in both labor and skilled roles

Image: World Economic Forum Gender Gap 2020

The Possible Scenarios to Close the Gender Pay Gap

To bring in gender equality at workplaces and close the gender pay gap, we need to follow three key touchpoints.

First, women should be fully equipped with skills needed for job roles either through training or dedicated mentorship.

Second, women should be given an equal chance into the job roles related to the technological landscape.

Third, organizations should work upon inclusive work cultures where women are considered no less than men.

LinkedIn’s Economic Graph’s insights will be able to aid the policymakers, business leaders, and educators to understand the touchpoints required to make the representation of women better in the future workforce.

And the data by World Economic Forum strongly suggests that meaningful actions are required to make the necessary changes in the talent pipelines to reduce the gender gap in all aspects.

And as Saadia Zahidi, Head of the Centre for the New Economy and Society and Member of the Managing Board, World Economic Forum says:

“To get to parity in the next decade instead of the next two centuries, we will need to mobilize resources, focus leadership attention, and commit to targets across the public and private sectors.”

Talking About Women who Suffered Intimate Partner, Physical and/or Sexual Violence

The following statistics are taken from the World Economic Forum Gender Gap 2020

Region	Percentage of sexual harassment
The Middle East and North Africa	45%
South Asia	38%
North America	32%
Sub-Saharan Africa	31%
Latin America and the Caribbean	27%
East Asia and the Pacific	23%
Western Europe	22%
Eastern Europe and Central Asia	19%

Many organizations, including the world’s leading companies, civil societies, and academic organizations, are working relentlessly to foster gender equality at workplaces and provide women with a safe working environment.

At Rainmaker, we follow a passion for helping corporates create ethical and compliant workplaces. We believe that engaging and interactive training modules can transform the workplace culture that fosters gender equality and the safety of women employees. Along with that, our flagship solution WorkSafe, helps corporates comply with the PoSH law.

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