Gender Gap Still Not Closed
Another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. As the long-term effects of the pandemic continue to be felt, closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years.
The Global Gender Gap Index measures the evolution of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment) and tracks progress towards closing these gaps over time.
Globally, the average distance completed to parity is at 68 percent, a step backward compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58 percent of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen a small improvement since the 2020 edition of the report and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
The slow progress seen in closing the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap is the result of two opposing trends. On one hand, there has been progress towards wage equality, albeit at a slower pace. On the other hand, overall income disparities are still only part-way towards being bridged and there is a persistent lack of women in leadership positions, with women representing just 27 percent of all manager positions.
Jeffrey Basford, Senior Vice President, Investments at David Lerner Associates says that “This is an indicator of a larger and more troubling trend that women have to face — the broken rung.” Whereas in the past a lot of focus was placed on the “glass ceiling” which no longer seems to be that much of an issue, the area of needed attention seems to be the broken rung.
What is meant by that? The “corporate ladder” is a popularized metaphor in the workforce. The ability to progress up the chain of command at a company to secure a prosperous future through hard work. However, what’s lesser-known, but more important, is that this staple corporate ladder has a broken rung, especially for women in the workplace.
The very first step up from entry-level positions into higher jobs of more influence, power and pay, lacks parity in the workplace. According to McKinsey’s report on Women in the Workplace, it found that women held only 38 percent of entry-level managerial positions while men held 62 percent.
The only way to make a real change is for women to take charge of their own finances and gain more knowledge, financial literacy, and confidence in investments. Of course, the pay gap needs to disappear and the broken rung needs to be repaired. Perhaps in the near future things will change — there have certainly been positive movements in that direction — but until then women will have to fight harder than ever to become financially stable and independent.
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