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IT-TLETTAX-IL LEĠIŻLATURA P.L.

4411 Dokument imqiegħed fuq il-Mejda tal-Kamra tad-Deputati fis-Seduta Numru 294 tat-3 ta’ Frar 2020 mill-Onor.

Claudette Buttigieg, MP.

___________________________ Raymond Scicluna Skrivan tal-Kamra Insight Report Global Gender Gap Report 2020 Terms of Use and Disclaimer The analysis presented in the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 (herein: “Report”) is based on a methodology integrating the latest statistics from international organizations and a survey of executives.
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ISBN-13: 978-2-940631-03-2 2 The Report and an interactive data platform are available at http:// reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2020/dataexplorer.
Contents Preface _________________________________________________________________ 4 Key Findings ____________________________________________________________ 5 PART 1 - MEASURING THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP ________________________ 7 Chapter 1 - The Global Gender Gap Index 2020 ____________________________ 8 Global Results, 2020 _______________________________________________ 8 Progress over Time _______________________________________________ 15 Performance by Region ___________________________________________ 20 Chapter 2 - The Future of Gender Parity __________________________________ 37 Gender Gaps in Frontier Roles _____________________________________ 37 Gender Gaps in Frontier Skills _____________________________________ 38 The Road to Gender Parity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution __________________________________ 42 Appendix A - Regional Classifications ____________________________________ 44 Appendix B - The Global Gender Gap Index: Methodology and Technical Notes ________________________________________ 45 Section A: Computation and Composition of the Global Gender Gap Index ____________________________________ 45 Section B: Indicators Definitions and Sources _______________________ 48 Notes & References _______________________________________________ 56 PART 2 - COUNTRY PROFILES __________________________________________ 58 How to Read the Country Profiles ________________________________________ 59 Index of Country Profiles __________________________________________ 62 Country Profiles ________________________________________________________ 63 Contributors and Acknowledgments _____________________________________ 369 3 most critical professions of the new economy.
Finally, we have set ourselves an institutional target to at least double the participation of women leaders at our Annual Meeting in Davos over the next decade, as a symbol of the leadership shift that must occur globally to make our economies and societies more inclusive.
On behalf of the Forum, I would like to express my grat- itude to Roberto Crotti, Thierry Geiger, Vesselina Ratcheva and Saadia Zahidi for their leadership of this project, as well as all members of the Platform for shaping the New Econ- omy and Society team for their support.

Additionally, this report and our broader work on gender parity benefits from the outstanding engagement of the Partners of the Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society.
We are certain that this report will contribute to shaping mindsets and catalysing action towards the achievement of gender equality.

We invite business and governments to join the Platform for the New Economy and Society to collabo- rate with us and with each other to hasten progress on this fundamental challenge of the new decade.
Klaus Schwab Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum Preface At the dawn of the 2020s, building fairer and more inclu- sive economies must be the goal of global, national and industry leaders.

To get there, instilling gender parity across education, health, politics and across all forms of economic participation will be critical.
Over the past 14 years the Global Gender Gap Index included in this report has served as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men on health, education, economy and politics.

Through this annual yardstick, stakeholders within each country are able to set priorities relevant in each specific economic, political and cultural context.

This year’s report highlights the growing urgency for action.
Without the equal inclusion of half of the world’s tal- ent, we will not be able to deliver on the promise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for all of society, grow our economies for greater shared prosperity or achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

At the present rate of change, it will take nearly a century to achieve parity, a timeline we simply cannot accept in today’s globalized world, especially among younger generations who hold increasingly progressive views of gender equality.
Fortunately, the pathways to accelerating gender parity have also become more evident.

Companies must treat peo- ple with dignity and respect and offer equal opportunities to all members of the society, leveraging gender diversity and investing in all of their talent through ongoing upskilling and reskilling.
Governments must create policies that provide talent development, integration and deployment opportuni- ties for all genders, diversify the leadership pool and provide support to families and caregivers, in both youthful and ageing societies alike.

And business and government must work together on creating a new economic and social nar- rative for action and on coordinating and speeding up the process of change.
At the World Economic Forum, in our Platform for Shap- ing the New Economy and Society, we are supplementing studies such as this annual report, with a growing portfo- lio of impact-focused initiatives.
Our Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators work with advanced and developing economies to create public-private collaborations for rapid acceleration to economic parity, focusing on increasing women’s participation in the workforce, closing the pay gap between men and women, and helping more women advance into leadership roles and develop in-demand skills.
Our Hardwiring Gender Parity in the Future of Work initiative is starting with a commitment framework for businesses to embed parity into their fastest growing professions.
We are delighted to feature in this report a special collaboration with our partner LinkedIn exploring gender gaps in some of the 4 Key Findings Since 2006 the Global Gender Gap Index has been measuring the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attain- ment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment) and tracking progress towards closing these gaps over time.
This year’s edition of the report benchmarks 153 countries and provides country rankings that allow for effective compari- sons across and within regional peers.

The methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings are intended to serve as a basis for designing effective measures for reducing gender gaps.

The methodology of the index has remained stable since its original conception in 2006, providing a basis for robust cross-country and time-series analysis.
In addition, over the past 50 years, in 85 of the 153 countries covered by this report there has never been a female head of state.

4.

In parallel to improving representation of women among political leaders, the number of women in senior roles within the Economic Participation and Opportunity dimension has also increased.

Globally, 36% of senior private sector’s managers and public sector’s officials are women (about 2% higher than the figure reported last year).
Despite this progress, the gap to close on this aspect remains substantial as only a handful of countries are approaching parity.

The 2020 report’s findings are: 5.

1.

Globally, the average (population-weighted) distance completed to parity is at 68.6%, which is a further improvement since last edition.

To date, there is still a 31.4% average gender gap that remains to be closed globally.
The positive increase in the average global score into several countries advancing towards gender parity (although often at a slow pace): 101 of the 149 countries covered both this year and last year have increased their scores.

translates this year 2.

Across the four subindexes, on average, the largest gender disparity again—the Political is—once Empowerment gap.
Despite being the most improved the overall positive (driving dimension performance) only 24.7% of the global Political Empowerment gap has been closed in 2020.

The second-largest gap is on Economic Participation and Opportunity; 57.8% of this gap has been closed so far, which represents a slight step back since last year.
Progress towards closing the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps is more advanced: 96.1% and 95.7%, respectively, of these gaps have been closed to date, both marginally improved since last year.

3.

With regard to the Political Empowerment subindex, 108 countries of the 149 covered in both current and last year’s editions have improved their overall scores, driven mainly by a significant increase in the number of women in parliaments compared to the last assessment.
Notably, in some countries such as Latvia, Spain and Thailand the number of women in parliament has increased substantially.

Nonetheless, to date only 25% of these 35,127 global seats are occupied by women and only 21% of the 3,343 ministers are women; and in some countries, women are not represented at all.
In contrast to the slow but positive progress in terms of leadership positions, women’s participation in the labour market is stalling and financial disparities are slightly larger (on average), explaining the step back registered by the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex this year.
On average, only 55% of adult women are in the labour market, versus 78% of men, while over 40% of the wage gap (the ratio of the wage of a woman to that of a man in a similar position) and over 50% of the income gap (the ratio of the total wage and non-wage income of women to that of men) are still to be bridged.
Further, in many countries, women are significantly disadvantaged in accessing credit, land or financial products, which prevents opportunities for them to start a company or make a living by managing assets.

in 6.

Educational Attainment gaps are relatively small on average but there are still countries where investment in women’s talent is insufficient.

While in 35 countries gender parity in education has been achieved, a few developing countries have yet to close over 20% of the gaps.
Ten percent of girls aged 15–24 in the world are illiterate, with a high concentration in developing these countries, education countries.

Further, attainment is low for both girls and boys, which calls for greater investment to develop human capital in general.

Even in countries where education attainment is relatively high, women’s skills are not always in line with those required to succeed in the professions of the future.
In addition, they encounter barriers to employment in the most dynamic and in-demand occupations.

Based on data from the LinkedIn platform, women are under- represented in six of the eight micro-clusters with the highest employment growth rate (people and culture, content production, marketing, sales, specialized project managers, data and AI, engineering and cloud computing).

Further, comparing where women are 5 10.
At the current pace, gender gaps can potentially be closed in 54 years in Western Europe, 59 years in Latin America and the Caribbean (thanks to accelerated speed registered across some countries in the region this year), 71 and a half years in South Asia, 95 years in Sub- Saharan Africa, 107 years in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 140 years in the Middle East and North Africa, 151 years in North America (reflecting lack of progress in the region this year), and 163 years in East Asia and the Pacific.
While the increased speed in some regions has reduced the estimated time to close gender gaps, progress remains slow and uneven across countries and regions.

Policy-makers and other stakeholders need to further adopt policies and practices to accelerate this process going forward.

11.
11.

The top five most-improved countries in the overall index this year (Ethiopia, Spain, Mali, Albania, and Mexico) have all closed their gaps by 3.4 percentage points or more, and they all share a substantial increase in women’s presence in political institutions.

When it comes to Economic Participation and Opportunity, some countries improve their score compared to last edition.
Among them, the most improved (Cape Verde, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Indonesia) improved their performance by 5 percentage points or more.

Further, this year the 153 countries covered by the report include four new entrants: Trinidad and Tobago (24th), Zambia (45th), Vanuatu (126th) and Papua New Guinea (127th).

currently employed with the skills they possess, it turns out that there are some occupations where women are under-utilized even if they have the needed skills.
Women could further contribute to many of them— including some high-tech and managerial roles—if current barriers could be addressed.

7.

Projecting current trends into the future, the overall global gender gap will close in 99.5 years, on average, across the 107 countries covered continuously since the first edition of the report.

Lack of progress in closing the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap leads to an extension of the time it will be needed to close this gap.
At the slow speed experienced over the period 2006–2020, it will take 257 years to close this gap.

The second area where gender gaps will take longest to close is Political Empowerment.

This year’s evolution speeds up the pace of progress towards parity, yet it will still take 94.5 years—even at this faster rate—to close the gender gap.

Third, the Educational Attainment gender gap is on track to be closed over the next 12 years, mainly thanks to advancements in some developing countries.
The Health and Survival gender gap remains virtually unchanged since last year.

Globally, the time to fully close this gap remains undefined, while gender parity has been already fully achieved in 40 countries among the 153 covered by this edition of the report.

8.

Iceland is once again the most gender-equal country in the world for the 11th time in a row.

It has closed almost 88% of its overall gender gap, further improving since last year.
Iceland is followed by Norway (2nd, 84.2%), Finland (3rd, 83.2%) and Sweden (4th, 82.0%).

Other economies in the top 10 include Nicaragua (5th, 80.4%), New Zealand (6th, 79.9%), Ireland (7th, 79.8%), Spain (8th, 79.5%), Rwanda (9th, 79.1%) and Germany (10th, 78.7%).

9.

On average, the eight regions assessed by the report have closed between 60.5% (the average score in Middle East and North Africa) and 76.7% (the average score in Western Europe).
North America is a few percentage points below Western Europe (72.9%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (72.2%) has almost caught up with Eastern Europe and Central Asia (71.3%).

They are followed by East Asia and the Pacific (68.5%), Sub-Saharan Africa (68.2%) and South Asia (66.1%).
6 Part 1 Measuring the Global Gender Gap 7 CHAPTER 1 The Global Gender Gap Index 2020 The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time.

The index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, education, health and political criteria (see Figure 1), and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups.
The rankings are designed to create global awareness of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities cre- ated by reducing them.

The methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings are intended to serve as a basis for designing effective measures for reducing gender gaps.

This year’s 14th edition continues to build on the well-es- tablished methodology.
While it would be important to measure differences in opportunities and conditions across the full spectrum of gender identities, data availability limits the possibility to convert these aspirations into statistical mea- surement.

As such, the index and the analysis remain focused on benchmarking progress on disparities between women and men across the four dimensions mentioned above.
This chapter presents the 2020 rankings, trends in both overall scores and subindex scores, as well as performances across regions.

Chapter 2 presents the results of the analysis based on new data showing gender gaps in emerging jobs, conducted in collaboration with LinkedIn.

Country Coverage, 2020 Every year, in an effort to draw a complete picture of the global gender gap, we aim to cover as many countries as possible, within data availability constraints.
To be included, a country must have data available for a minimum of 12 indi- cators out of the 14 that compose the index.

In this edition, we have been able further increase the number of countries included in the ranking and the analysis, reaching 153 coun- tries.

Two countries (Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu) enter the index for the first time ever, while Trinidad and Tobago and Zambia are re-instated.
Of the 153 countries, 107 have consistently been included in the index every year since the first edition, published in 2006.

The Global Gender Gap Report groups countries into eight broad geographical groupings: East Asia and the Pacific; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East and North Africa; North America; South Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Western Europe.

The classification of countries according to these categories is detailed in Appendix A.
Figure 1 The Global Gender Gap Index framework Economic Participation and Opportunity Educational Attainment Health and Survival Political Empowerment Global Results In 2020, the Global Gender Gap score (based on the popu- lation-weighted average) stands at 68.6%.

This means that, on average, the gap is narrower, and the remaining gap to close is now 31.4%.
This year the progress has not only been larger than in the previous edition, but also more widespread: out of the 149 countries and economies covered both this year and last year, 101 have improved their score and 48 have seen their performance unchanged or reduced.

In fact, the top 10th percentile consists of 16 countries that have improved their score by more than 3.3% year-on-year.

Table 1 shows the 2020 Global Gender Gap rankings and the score of all 153 countries covered by this year’s report.
No country to date has yet achieved full gender par- ity.

All the top five countries have closed at least 80% of their gaps, and the best performer (Iceland) has closed 82% of its gap so far.
The global top ten features four Nordic countries (Ice- land, 1st, Norway 2nd, Finland 3rd and Sweden 4th), one Latin American country (Nicaragua, 5th), one country from the East Asia and the Pacific region (New Zealand, 6th), three other countries from Western Europe (Ireland, 7th, Spain, 8th and Germany, 10th) and one country from Sub-Saharan Africa (Rwanda, 9th).
8 Table 1 The Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings Rank Country Score Rank change Score change Rank Country Score Rank change Score change Iceland Norway Finland Sweden Nicaragua New Zealand Ireland Spain Rwanda Germany Latvia Namibia Costa Rica Denmark France Philippines South Africa Switzerland Canada Albania United Kingdom Colombia Moldova Trinidad and Tobago* Mexico Estonia Belgium Barbados Belarus Argentina Cuba Burundi Lithuania Austria Portugal Slovenia Uruguay Netherlands Serbia Poland Jamaica Bolivia Lao PDR Australia Zambia* Panama Zimbabwe Ecuador Bulgaria Bangladesh Luxembourg Cape Verde United States Singapore Romania Mozambique Chile Honduras Ukraine Croatia Bahamas Madagascar Slovak Republic Israel Uganda Peru Venezuela Tanzania Bosnia Herzegovina North Macedonia Montenegro Kazakhstan Botswana Georgia Thailand Italy Suriname 0– – – 1 –1 – 1 2 21 –3 4 6 –2 9 –1 –3 –8 2 2 –3 14 –6 18 12 n/a 25 7 5 –7 –1 6 –8 –1 –9 19 2 –25 19 –11 –1 2 3 –17 –17 –5 n/a –1 – –7 –31 –2 10 20 –2 13 8 –7 –3 10 6 –1 –31 22 20 –18 –22 –14 –3 3 –7 –4 –2 –12 –18 25 –2 –6 2 2018 +0.018 +0.007 +0.012 -0.002 -0.005 -0.002 +0.002 +0.049 -0.013 +0.011 +0.027 -0.005 +0.033 +0.004 +0.002 -0.018 +0.025 +0.024 +0.001 +0.035 -0.007 +0.029 +0.023 n/a +0.034 +0.017 +0.012 -0.004 – +0.014 -0.004 +0.004 -0.005 +0.026 +0.011 -0.041 +0.023 -0.010 +0.006 +0.008
 +0.012 -0.014 -0.017 +0.001 n/a +0.008 +0.009 – -0.029 +0.004 +0.013 +0.023 +0.004 +0.017 +0.013 +0.003 +0.006 +0.016 +0.013 +0.008 -0.021 +0.027 +0.026 -0.004 -0.008 -0.006 +0.005 +0.008 -0.001 +0.003 +0.004 -0.002 -0.006 +0.030 +0.006 +0.001 +0.012 2006 +0.095 +0.043 +0.036 +0.007 +0.147 +0.048 +0.065 +0.063 n/a +0.034 +0.076 +0.098 +0.089 +0.036 +0.129 +0.029 +0.068 +0.079 +0.055 +0.108 +0.031 +0.053 +0.044 +0.076 +0.108 +0.057 +0.042 n/a n/a +0.063 n/a n/a +0.037 +0.046 +0.052 +0.069 +0.082 +0.012 n/a +0.056 +0.034 +0.101 n/a +0.015 +0.095 +0.037 +0.084 +0.085 +0.040 +0.099 +0.058 n/a +0.020 +0.069 +0.044 n/a +0.077 +0.074 +0.042 +0.006 n/a +0.080 +0.043 +0.029 +0.037 +0.052 +0.047 +0.009 n/a +0.013 n/a +0.018 +0.020 +0.038 +0.024 +0.061 n/a Czech Republic Mongolia El Salvador Russian Federation Ethiopia Eswatini Greece Indonesia Dominican Republic Viet Nam Lesotho Cambodia Malta Cyprus Brazil Kyrgyz Republic Azerbaijan Brunei Darussalam Cameroon Liberia Armenia Senegal Paraguay Nepal Sri Lanka Fiji Malaysia Hungary China Ghana Korea, Rep. Kenya Belize Sierra Leone India Guatemala Myanmar Mauritius Malawi Timor-Leste Angola Benin United Arab Emirates Japan Kuwait Maldives Tunisia Guinea Vanuatu* Papua New Guinea* Nigeria Burkina Faso Turkey Bhutan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Qatar Gambia, The Tajikistan Jordan Mali Togo Mauritania Côte d'Ivoire Morocco Oman Lebanon Saudi Arabia Chad Iran, Islamic Rep. Congo, Dem.
Rep. Syria Pakistan Iraq Yemen 0– –21 7 –6 35 –3 –6 – –12 –10 –7 4 1 1 3 –7 3 –5 –39 –1 – –5 4 4 –2 3 –3 –3 –3 –18 7 –33 1 3 –4 –6 –26 –6 –4 7 7 –1 1 –11 4 –10 –5 –9 n/a n/a 5 – – –9 –4 –1 1 –8 –16 –14 – 4 –6 –5 –11 –6 –5 –5 –5 –2 –6 –5 –4 –3 –5 –4 2018 +0.014 -0.007 +0.016 +0.004 +0.049 +0.009 +0.004 +0.010 -0.001 +0.001 +0.001 +0.011 +0.008 +0.008 +0.010 -0.002 +0.007 +0.001 -0.028 +0.004 +0.006 +0.002 +0.011 +0.009 +0.004 +0.008 +0.002 +0.003 +0.003 -0.016 +0.014 -0.029 +0.008 +0.007 +0.003 -0.002 -0.024 +0.002 +0.002 +0.025 +0.027 +0.003 +0.013 -0.010 +0.020 -0.016 -0.004 -0.014 n/a n/a +0.015 +0.006 +0.007 -0.003 +0.005 +0.002 +0.015 – -0.015 -0.012 +0.018 +0.039 -0.003 +0.006 -0.021 -0.002 -0.003 +0.004 +0.010 +0.016 -0.005 -0.003 -0.001 +0.014 -0.021 -0.006 2006 +0.035 +0.024 +0.022 +0.029 +0.111 +0.043 +0.047 +0.046 +0.036 n/a +0.014 +0.065 +0.042 +0.049 +0.037 +0.014 n/a n/a +0.099 n/a n/a n/a +0.028 +0.132 -0.040 n/a +0.027 +0.007 +0.020 +0.007 +0.056 +0.023 n/a n/a +0.066 +0.059 n/a +0.032 +0.020 n/a +0.056 +0.080 +0.063 +0.008 +0.016 n/a +0.015 n/a n/a n/a +0.025 +0.049 +0.050 n/a +0.032 +0.040 +0.051 n/a -0.017 n/a +0.012 +0.021 n/a +0.030 n/a +0.022 n/a n/a +0.075 +0.071 +0.004 n/a n/a +0.020 n/a +0.034 Eastern Europe Middle East East Asia Latin America North America South Asia Sub-Saharan Western Europe and Central Asia and North Africa and the Pacific and the Caribbean Africa Notes “–” indicates score or rank is unchanged from the previous year.
“n/a” indicates that the country was not covered in previous editions.

* New countries in 2020 9 Performance by Subindex The overall gender gap performance is a synthesis of per- formances across the four dimensions composing the index—the Economic Participation, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival and Political Empowerment subindexes.

As such it masks significant differences in gender gaps across dimensions.
Overall, this year’s positive result has been driven mainly by a progress on the Political Empowerment subindex, as well as by marginal improvements on the Health and Sur- vival and Educational Attainment subindexes.

Conversely, the progress towards gender parity in terms of Economic Partic- ipation and Opportunity registers a retraction.

and Health As shown in Figure 2, global gender gaps vary significantly across these four dimensions.
In two sub- indexes—Educational Attainment and Survival—96.1% and 95.7% of the gap (respectively) have already been closed so far.

By contrast, differences between women and men remain significantly larger on Political Empowerment, where only 24.7% of the gap has been closed to date, and on Economic Participation and Opportunity, where 58.8% of the gap has been closed.
In Figure 2 The state of the gender gaps Percentage of the gender gap closed to date, 2020 Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.

Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 153 economies featured in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020. order of gender gap size, Political Empowerment is the area where women are severely under-represented.
Despite a significant improvement from the last edition (see section below for more details), so far only 25% of the gap has been closed on this subindex, and no country has fully closed this gap yet.

Iceland—with approximately 70% of its Political Empowerment gap closed—is the country where the pres- ence of women across parliament, ministries and heads of states is the most widespread compared to all other coun- tries assessed by the index.
Iceland’s score is 10 percentage points higher than the second-ranked Norway and is almost four times higher than the global average.

The fact that only a handful of countries have closed at least 50% of their Political Empowerment gaps demon- strates how, globally, women’s presence and participation in politics is still extremely limited.
For instance, considering the sum of the seats of all parliaments of the 153 countries covered by the index, only 25% of these 35,127 global seats are occupied by women.

In as many as 45 of the 153 coun- tries women take less than 20% of the seats available, and in two countries (Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea) there are no women.

When examining higher-level institutional roles the pres- ence of women grows even thinner.
Only 21% of the 3,343 10 Percentage points Gender gap ministers are women, and there are 32 countries where women represent less than 10% of ministers in office today.

Among these countries, in Azerbaijan, Belize, Brunei Darus- salam, Iraq, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Thailand, there are no women ministers at all.

Further, considering head of states over the past 50 years, in 85 of the 153 countries covered by this report there has never been a woman in charge.
This accounts for 56% of the countries covered, and, notably, includes emerging and advanced economies such as Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Swe- den and the United States.

The second dimension where the gender gap is widest globally is the one measured by the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex.

Here, only 58% of the gap has been closed so far, and it has slightly widened since last year (see Progress Over Time section on page 15).
The dispersion between the best performing countries and those at the bot- tom of the ranking is substantial.

While the top 10 countries have closed at least 80% of the gap, the bottom 10 countries have only closed 40% of the gap between men and women in the workplace.
0100The Global Gender Gap IndexHealth and Survival subindexEducational Attainment subindexEconomic Participationand Opportunity subindexPolitical Empowerment subindex69%97%96%58%25% volunteer work) equal to that of women; and in many coun- tries, women still spend multiple-folds as much time than men on these activities.

Even in countries where this ratio is lowest (i.e.

Norway or the United States) women spend almost twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work.
As shown by Figure 3, the dedication of women to these activities is not only due to overall standards of liv- ing: even in advanced economies such as Japan the share of time that women spend is more than four times that of men.

Across advanced and developing countries there is a negative relationship between women’s relative amount of time they spend on unpaid domestic work and economic participation and opportunity gender gaps.
While this anal- ysis is partial, it suggests that in addition to ongoing cultural and social transformations that require a long time to occur, policies that offer cost- and time-effective solutions to house- care needs (i.e.

kinder-gardens within a company) or change the incentives for men and women to rebalance the burden of household and care duties (i.e.

paternity leave) are likely to have a significant impact on women’s career opportunities.
The third-ranked gender gap dimension is Educational Attainment, where 96.1% of the gap has been closed so far, and therefore it is at a significantly more advanced stage than the level achieved in terms of Economic Participation and Political Empowerment.
Thirty-five countries have already achieved full parity on this subindex, and all regions feature at least one country that has completely closed this gap: nine are in Western Europe, another nine are in Latin America, eight are located in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, three in Sub-Saha- ran Africa, two from East Asia and the Pacific, two from North America, and one each in South Asia and Middle East and North Africa.
Further, 120 countries have closed at least 95% of their educational gender gaps.

On the other hand, eight countries have yet to close more than 20% of their gaps: Togo (77.8%); Angola (75.9%); Mali (75.7%); Benin (73.3%); Yemen (71.7%); Guinea (68.0%); Congo, Democratic Rep. (65.8%); Chad (58.9%).

As in past editions, the gap varies across levels of edu- cation.
Gender gaps in literacy and basic skills are somewhat wider than those in higher levels of education: 90.4% of girls and 92.9% of boys aged 15–24 in the world are literate, and 88.2% of girls in the world were enrolled in primary education in 2018, versus 90.5% of boys.5 While these figures high- light a persistent gap at the entry-level of education, it is also important to underscore that there are still over 10% of both boys and girls who are left behind, therefore making sure that all children receive at least a basic education is as important as closing gender gaps in this dimension.
Among the 10 best performers on this subindex (see Table 2 on page 12), four are from Sub-Saharan African (Benin has closed so far 84.7% of its Economic Participa- tion and Opportunity gap; Burundi 83.7%; Zambia, 83.1% and Guinea, 80.3%); one is from Western Europe (Iceland, 83.9%); one is from the East Asia and the Pacific region (Lao PDR, 83.9%); two are from Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Belarus, 83.7%, and Latvia, 81.0%); and two are from the Latin America and the Caribbean region (Bahamas, 83.8%, and Barbados 80.8%).
At the other end of the spectrum, economic opportunities for women are extremely limited in India (35.4%), Pakistan (32.7%), Yemen (27.3%), Syria (24.9%) and Iraq (22.7%).

The fact that women are persistently less present in the labour market than men contributes to the Economic Par- ticipation and Opportunity gap.

On average about 78% of adult men (15–64) are in the labour force, while only 55% of women of the same cohort are actively engaged in the labour market.
This means that over 30% of the global labour force participation gender gap has yet to be closed.

Further, within the labour market, gender gaps tend to widen together with seniority level.
Globally, 36% of senior private sector’s managers and public sector’s officials are women, while the presence of women on corporate boards or as top business leaders is even more limited: only 18.2%1 of firms globally are led by a woman, and on average, 22.3% of board members in OECD countries are women2 with an even lower representation in emerging economies (e.g.

9.7% in China and 13.8% in India).

Financial disparities also remain important.


On average, over 40% of the wage gap (the ratio of the wage of woman to that of a man in a similar position) and over 50% of the income gap (the ratio of the total wage and non-wage income of women to that of men) are still to be bridged.

These fig- ures highlight how, not only that women in similar positions as men (for seniority and skill levels) are still paid less, but also that income disparities are larger than wage gaps.
This difference is due partially to that fact that women encounter challenges to get to senior roles and/or to be employed in high-reward segments of the economy.3 However, a second part of the story is that women are less likely than men to obtain revenues from non-employment activities (i.e.

from financial investment, entrepreneurship) where financial gains are substantially higher.
In many countries, women are significantly disadvan- taged in accessing credit, land or financial products which prevent them starting a company or making a living by managing financial assets.
For instance, there are still 72 countries (among those 153 covered by this report) where at least some women from specific social groups do not have the right to open a bank account or obtain credit, and 25 countries where not all women have full inheritance rights.4 A further underlying aspect that contributes to finan- cial disparities between women and men as well as overall economic participation and opportunities gaps worldwide is the disproportionate burden of household and care respon- sibilities that women continue to carry compared to men almost everywhere.
In no country in the world is the amount of time spent by men on unpaid work (mainly domestic and 11 Table 2 The Global Gender Gap Index rankings by subindex, 2020 Economic Participation and Opportunity Educational Attainment Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) 1 Benin 2 3 Iceland Lao PDR 4 Bahamas 5 Belarus 6 Burundi 7 Zambia* 8 Latvia 9 Barbados 10 Guinea 11 Norway 12 Slovenia 13 Lithuania 14 Philippines 15 Cape Verde 16 Sweden 17 Namibia 18 Finland 19 Moldova 20 Singapore 21 Botswana 22 Thailand 23 Madagascar 24 Jamaica 25 Cambodia 26 United States 27 New Zealand 28 Brunei Darussalam 29 Mongolia 30 Canada 31 Vietnam 32 Russian Federation 33 Azerbaijan 34 Switzerland 35 Sierra Leone 36 Albania 37 Kazakhstan 38 Nigeria 39 Ukraine 40 Estonia 41 Denmark 42 Colombia 43 Ireland 44 Romania 45 Zimbabwe 46 Portugal 47 Panama 48 Germany 49 Australia 50 51 Luxembourg Trinidad and Tobago* 52 Bulgaria 53 Liberia 54 Belgium 55 Honduras 56 Montenegro 57 Poland 58 United Kingdom 59 Swaziland 60 Netherlands 61 Georgia 62 Serbia 63 Tanzania 64 Uruguay 65 France 66 Cameroon 67 68 Israel Indonesia 69 Venezuela 70 Papua New Guinea* 71 Chad 72 Spain 73 Cyprus 74 Ecuador 75 Belize 76 Greece 77 Croatia Armenia 79 Rwanda 80 Hungary 81 Nicaragua 82 Uganda 83 Slovak Republic 84 Lesotho 85 Dominican Republic 86 Austria 87 Czech Republic 88 Kyrgyz Republic 89 Brazil 90 Peru 91 China 92 South Africa 93 Mozambique 94 Ghana 95 Paraguay 96 Angola 97 Malaysia 98 Vanuatu* 99 Suriname 100 Macedonia 101 Nepal 102 Myanmar 103
 Argentina 104 Guatemala 105 Bolivia 106 Malta 107 Cuba 108 Burkina Faso 109 Bosnia Herzegovina 110 Togo 111 Chile 112 Costa Rica 113 Malawi 114 Kenya 115 Japan 116 Mauritius 117 Italy 118 Mali 119 El Salvador 120 Kuwait 121 Congo Dem Rep 122 Gambia 123 Fiji 124 Mexico 125 Ethiopia 126 Sri Lanka 127 Korea 128 Senegal 129 Côte d'Ivoire 130 Bhutan 131 Maldives 132 Qatar 133 Bahrain 134 Tajikistan 135 Timor-Leste 136 Turkey 137 United Arab Emirates 138 Algeria 139 Lebanon 140 Egypt 141 Bangladesh 142 Tunisia 143 Oman 144 Mauritania 145 Jordan 146 Morocco 147 Iran 148 Saudi Arabia 149 India 150 Pakistan 151 Yemen 152 Syria 153 Iraq Australia 1 Austria 1 Bahamas 1 Belgium 1 Botswana 1 Canada 1 Colombia 1 Czech Republic 1 Denmark 1 Estonia 1 1 Finland France 1 Honduras 1 1 1 1 1 Israel Jamaica Latvia Lesotho Luxembourg 1 Maldives 1 Malta 1 Netherlands 1 New Zealand 1 Nicaragua 1 Russian Federation 1 Slovak Republic 26 Ukraine 27 Slovenia 28 Uruguay 29 Georgia 30 Chile 31 Norway 32 Namibia 33 Costa Rica 34 United States 35 Brazil 36 Iceland 37 Philippines 38 United Kingdom 39 Belarus 40 Albania 41 Venezuela 42 Dominican Republic 43 Spain 44 Cuba 45 Armenia 46 Paraguay 47 Ireland 48 Cyprus 49 Montenegro 50 51 Lithuania Fiji 52 Romania 53 Serbia 54 Mexico 55 Italy 56 Ecuador 57 Kuwait 58 Poland 59 Sweden 60 Azerbaijan 61 Moldova 62 Croatia 63 Kazakhstan 64 Argentina 65 Panama 66 Trinidad and Tobago* 67 South Africa 68 Suriname 69 Greece 70 Hungary 71 Mongolia 72 Brunei Darussalam 73 Portugal 74 Mauritius 75 El Salvador 76
 Swaziland 77 Switzerland Belize 79 Barbados 80 81 Thailand Jordan 82 Kyrgyz Republic 83 Qatar 84 Singapore 85 Bulgaria 86 Malaysia 87 Macedonia 88 Sri Lanka 89 United Arab Emirates 90 Bahrain 91 Japan 92 Saudi Arabia 93 Vietnam 94 Peru 95 Madagascar 96 Bolivia 97 Oman 98 Zimbabwe 99 Myanmar 100 China 101 Korea 102 Egypt 103 Germany 104 Cape Verde 105 Indonesia 106 Tunisia 107 Guatemala 108 Bosnia Herzegovina 109 Algeria 110 111 112 113 Lao PDR Lebanon India Turkey 114 Rwanda 115 Morocco 116 Bhutan 117 Syria 118 Iran 119 Ghana 120 Bangladesh 121 Vanuatu* 122 Timor-Leste 123 Tajikistan 124 Cambodia 125 Zambia* 126 Kenya 127 Tanzania 128 Malawi 129 Uganda 130 Mozambique 131 Burundi 132 Papua New Guinea* 133 Nepal 134 Gambia 135 Senegal 136 Cameroon 137 Mauritania 138 Burkina Faso 139 Sierra Leone 140 Ethiopia 141 Liberia 142 Côte d'Ivoire 143 Pakistan 144 Iraq 145 Nigeria 146 Togo 147 Angola 148 Mali 149 Benin 150 Yemen 151 Guinea 152 Congo Dem Rep 153 Chad Eastern Europe Middle East East Asia Latin America North America South Asia Sub-Saharan Western Europe and Central
 Asia and North Africa and the Pacific and the Caribbean Africa * New countries in 2020 12 Health and Survival Political Empowerment Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) Rank Country Score (0–1) 1 Angola 1 Argentina 1 Bahamas 1 Belize 1 Botswana 1 Brazil 1 Colombia 1 Czech Republic 1 Dominican Republic 1 El Salvador 1 Guatemala 1 Hungary 1 Kenya 1 Korea 1 Kyrgyz Republic 1 Lesotho 1 Malawi 1 Mauritius 1 Moldova 1 Mongolia 1 Mozambique 1 Namibia 1 Nicaragua 1 Panama 1 Poland 1 Romania 1 Russian Federation 1 Slovak Republic 1 Slovenia 1 South Africa 1 Sri Lanka 1 Swaziland 1 Syria 1 Trinidad and Tobago* 1 Uganda 1 Uruguay 1 Venezuela 1 Zambia* 1 Zimbabwe 40 Japan 41 Bulgaria 41 41 Fiji Lithuania 41 Philippines 45 Oman 46 Mexico 47 Bolivia 48 Croatia 49 Tanzania 50 Portugal 51 Burundi 52 Thailand 52 Ukraine 54 Ecuador 55 Chile 56 Finland 57 Myanmar 58 Belarus 59 Honduras 60 Costa Rica 61 Timor-Leste 62 Peru 63 Ethiopia 64 65 Turkey Jamaica 66 Senegal 67 Congo Dem Rep 68 Bosnia Herzegovina 68 Georgia 70 United States 71 Barbados 72 Tajikistan 73 Cambodia 74 Kazakhstan 74 76 Latvia Iraq 77 Cuba France Indonesia 80 Cape Verde 81 Estonia 82 Austria 83 Madagascar 84 Malaysia 85 Egypt 86 Belgium 86 Germany 88 Cameroon 89 Macedonia 90 Rwanda 91 Luxembourg 92 Benin 93 Spain 94 United Arab Emirates 95 Norway 96 Paraguay 97 98 Israel Lao PDR 99 Serbia 100 Greece 101 Denmark 102 Chad 103 Jordan 104 Australia 105 Canada 106 Montenegro 107 Tunisia 108 Côte d'Ivoire 109 New Zealand
 110 Switzerland 111 Mauritania 112 United Kingdom 113 Ireland 114 Gambia 115 Brunei Darussalam 116 Malta 117 Sweden 118 Italy 119 Bangladesh 120 Liberia 121 Ghana 122 Netherlands 123 Iceland 124 Lebanon 125 Suriname 126 Sierra Leone 127 Cyprus 128 Vanuatu* 129 Yemen 130 Iran 131 Nepal 132 Mali 133 Singapore 134 Togo 135 Nigeria 136 Papua New Guinea* 137 Burkina Faso 138 Morocco 139 Saudi Arabia 140 Algeria 141 Guinea 142 Qatar 143 Kuwait 144 Bhutan 145 Albania 146 Bahrain 147 Maldives 148 Armenia 149 Pakistan 150 India 151 Vietnam 152 Azerbaijan 153 China Iceland 2 Norway 3 Nicaragua 4 Rwanda 5 Finland 6 Costa Rica 7 Bangladesh 8 Spain 9 Sweden 10 South Africa 11 Ireland 12 Germany 13 New Zealand 14 Mexico 15 France 16 Ethiopia 17 Denmark 18 India 19 Switzerland 20 United Kingdom 21 Cuba 22 Argentina 23 Albania 24 Namibia 25 Canada 26 Mozambique 27 Bolivia 28 Latvia 29 Philippines 30 Austria 31 Trinidad and Tobago* 32 Senegal 33 Colombia 34 Belgium 35 Uganda 36 Chile 37 Estonia 38 Bosnia Herzegovina 39 Portugal 40 Netherlands 41 Serbia 42 Uruguay 43 Burundi 44 Italy 45 Moldova 46 Angola 47 El Salvador 48 Ecuador 49 Poland 50 51 Tanzania Timor-Leste 52 Macedonia 53 Peru 54 Zimbabwe 55 Croatia 56 Suriname 57 Australia 58 Slovak Republic 59 Nepal 60 Bulgaria 61 Barbados 62 Panama 63 64 65 66 67 Liberia Israel Lithuania Luxembourg Tunisia 68 Honduras 69 Jamaica 70 Cameroon 71 Slovenia 72 Mauritania 73 Sri Lanka 74 Venezuela 75 United Arab Emirates 76 Romania 77 Czech Republic 0.701 0.598 0.565 0.563 0.563 0.545 0.545
Malta 79 Korea 80 Zambia* 81 Belarus 82 Indonesia 83 Ukraine 84 Mali 85 Kenya 86 United States 87 Greece 88 Dominican Republic 89 Cape Verde 90 Malawi 91 Montenegro 92 Singapore 93 Pakistan 94 Georgia 95 China 96 Madagascar 97 98 Fiji Lao PDR 99 Algeria 100 Chad 101 Swaziland 102 Lesotho 103 Egypt 104 Brazil 105 Kyrgyz Republic 106 Kazakhstan 107 Ghana 108 Guinea 109 Turkey 110 Vietnam 111 Cyprus 112 Paraguay 113 Jordan 114 Armenia 115 Maldives 116 Togo 117 Malaysia 118 Iraq 119 Cambodia 120 Mongolia 121 Sierra Leone 122 Russian Federation 123 Morocco 124 Mauritius 125 Guatemala 126 Congo Dem Rep 127 Burkina Faso 128 Tajikistan 129 Thailand 130 Syria 131 Côte d'Ivoire 132 Bhutan 133 Myanmar 134 Benin 135 Botswana 136 Saudi Arabia 137 Gambia 138 Bahrain 139 Hungary 140 Azerbaijan 141 Bahamas 142 Kuwait 143 Qatar 144 Japan 145 Iran 146 Nigeria 147 Belize 148 Brunei Darussalam 149 Lebanon 150 Oman 151 Yemen 152 Papua New Guinea* 152 Vanuatu* Eastern Europe Middle East East Asia Latin America North America South Asia Sub-Saharan Western Europe and Central Asia and North Africa and the Pacific and the Caribbean
 Africa * New countries in 2020 13 Figure 3 Economic participation and time spent in unpaid domestic work Norway ) y t i r a p 1 - 0 ( Japan India Proportion of unpaid work per day Sources World Economic Forum and OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Database (GID-DB).
Notes Economic participation corresponds to the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex 0–1 (parity).

Proportion of unpaid work per day is the ratio of the share of average time spent on unpaid domestic work by women to that of men.

Unpaid domestic work includes care and volunteer work, and is expressed as a share of a 24-hour period.
A ratio of 1 means that women spend the same share of their time in these activities as men; a ratio of 2 means that women spend twice as much time as men in these activities and so on.
At higher levels of education, though parity across gender is more common, participation is still relatively low for both sexes: only approximately 66% of boys and girls are enrolled in secondary education.6 At tertiary education levels, women have surpassed men, but still only 40.6% of young women and 35.6% of young men who have graduated from high school globally are attending university.7 Moreover, while progress has been made to achieve gender parity, more has to be done to equip new generations, especially in devel- oping countries, with the skills to succeed in tomorrow’s reality.
In this respect, increasing formal education attain- ment is necessary but not sufficient to provide young men and women graduating from every level of education with the type of skills demanded by the job market in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era.

Here, skills gaps remain—in terms of demand versus both supply and gender.

While these types of gender gaps are becoming increasingly important, they are currently not systematically tracked by national statistics.
To shed light on these new dynamics, Chapter 2 offers a deep dive into gender gaps in emerging jobs and the related skills required for those jobs.

The subindex where the average gender gap is the small- est is Health and Survival, where 95.7% of the global gap has been closed so far.

Forty-eight countries have achieved near-parity, the next 71 countries have closed at least 97% of the gap, and only nine countries have yet to close more than 4% of their gap.
Among the third group, four large countries — Pakistan (94.6%); India (94.4%); Viet Nam (94.2%) and China (92.6%) — trail behind, which means that millions of women in these and other countries are not yet granted the same access to health as men.

Performance on some of the specific components of this subindex shows that these results are driven by gender dif- ferences at birth.
In six countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, China, 14 1.000.00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9123456789101112 India, Pakistan and Viet Nam) the ratio is below 92%, and in China the ratio is as low as 88.5%.

These examples under- score the issue of “missing women” and gender-specific gaps on access to healthcare.
In most other countries, however, gender parity on sex ratio at birth has been nearly achieved: in 128 countries, the share of girls is at the natural 94% birth level, and in almost all other countries is above 92%.

Parity has also been essentially achieved in all countries in terms of life expectancy.

Women tend to live longer in all countries, except Kuwait, Bhutan and Bahrain, where the ratio is above 99%.
An overview of the global distribution of subindex perfor- mances described above is presented in Figure 4.

It illustrates the range of country scores for the four subindexes.

The pop- ulation-weighted average for each subindex is represented with diamonds.

Countries’ performances are distributed unevenly among the gender gap index and the underlying subindexes.

Overall, gender gap scores are clustered around the average score (69%), with a greater concentration of countries slightly above the average.
The distribution is much more dispersed within the Economic Opportunity and Partic- ipation subindex, where country scores range between 23% and 85%, and most countries score somewhat above the global population-weighted average.

The fact that populous countries such as India and Mexico perform below average contributes to reducing the global average result.

The dis- tribution of scores on the Educational Attainment subindex ranges from 59% to 100%.
On the Health and Survival sub- index countries cluster around an even more concentrated set of values between 93% and 98%, with few outliers per- forming below 96%.

The Political Empowerment subindex is the area where country performance is the most diverse and varied, with scores between 0% and 70%, and a stronger concentration towards the lower half of the distribution.
Figure 4 Range of scores, Global Gender Gap Index and subindexes, 2020 Global Gender Gap index Economic Opportunity and Participation subindex Educational Attainment subindex Health and Survival subindex Political Empowerment subindex 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Score (0.0-1.0 scale) Population-weighted average Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.

Progress Over Time Since 2006, the Global Gender Gap Report has tracked prog- ress in closing gender gaps.
Each year, the rate of change can estimate the time required to close the divide between women and men in employment, education, health and politics.

Figure 5 charts the evolution of the Global Gender Gap Index and its subindexes since the report’s first edition in 2006.

Overall, the gender gap has reduced by 0.6 percentage points since 2018 and by a compounded 4 percentage points since 2006 (or an average of almost 0.3 points a year).
All things being equal, with current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in 99.5 years.

This is almost 10 years less than reported in the last edition and is mainly driven by faster prog- ress in the political empowerment dimension.

The Political Empowerment gender gap globally improves to a score of 24.7%, which is 1.8 percentage points higher than last year and represents the most significant improve- ment since 2006.

On average, this dimension has improved by 0.75 points every year.
Should progress continue at the 15 IcelandRwandaUnited StatesIndiaSaudi ArabiaYemenNorwayUnited StatesGermanyIndonesiaItalyMexicoIndiaPakistanNetherlandsPeruNigeriaChadKenyaChinaIndiaIcelandUnited StatesCosta RicaFranceSwedenUnited Arab EmiratesJapanViet Nam Figure 5 Evolution of the Global Gender Gap Index and its subindexes over time Evolution in scores, 2006-2019 Years to close ) y t i r a p 1 - 0 ( e r o c S Global Gender Gap Index Health and Survival Educational Attainment Economic Participation and Opportunity Political Empowerment Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.
Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 153 economies featured in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020. same rate, it will take 95 years to close this gap, a much more positive outlook than the 107 years registered by last year’s assessment.

While, on average, all the indicators composing this sub- index register an improvement this year, there has been a particular strong increase in the number of women in terms of ministerial positions in 2019.
Although the number of women ministers remains low, this progress will hopefully contribute to generating a more women-friendly environment in political parties and institutions while setting role models for the private sector as well.

Conversely, the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex gap has widened slightly and is the only subindex that has regressed this year.

The global 2020 score (57.8%) is 0.35 percentage points lower than last year, but it is still better than it was 14 years ago.
On average, the economic gender gap has closed by 0.15 percentage points every year over the 2006–2019 period.

This progress is certainly too slow.

At this rate, it will take 257 years to close this gap.

This shows that while the time required to close the overall gender gap aver- ages out the progresses across all four dimensions tracked by the Global Gender Gap Index, it may take an even longer time to ensure full gender parity is achieved across all dimensions.
Within this subindex, generally positive trends in share of women among skilled workers and senior officials are coun- terbalanced by stagnating or reversing gaps in labour market 16 participation and monetary rewards.

When it comes to wage gaps, the negative trend is mostly explained by diverging regional trends rather than by a common direction across all countries.
As analysed in Box 1, while in OECD countries wage gaps over the past decade are on a declining trend, they are widening in emerging and developing economies.

The global declining trend is therefore due to the fact that widening gaps in emerging and developing economies have outweighed the progresses made by OECD countries.

Closing gender gaps in the remaining two subindexes is likely to happen much sooner.

On current trends, the Educa- tional Attainment gender gap can be fully closed in just 12 years.
Global performance is virtually unchanged since last year and remains above 96% or less than 4% from full parity.

To achieve a perfect 100%, it will still require some institu- tional and cultural changes that would improve participation of both men and women in higher education in the countries where there is still unequal access to school.

The time it would take to close the Health and Survival gender gap remains undefined.
It is the smallest gap and has remained substantially stable over the years and can be con- sidered virtually closed in most countries.

However, it won’t be fully closed as long as specific issues remain in some of the most populous countries (e.g.

China and India).

2007200620082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201900.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9199.5257.394.512.3Undeﬁned Box 1 Progress towards gender equality in wages, where do we stand?

Gender parity in pay is proving hard to achieve.


Pay differ- entials between men and women are a persistent form of gender inequality in the workplace and the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 finds that the progress towards closing the gender gap on this aspect has stalled.

No country (includ- ing the top-ranked ones) have yet achieved gender parity in wages.
Given that women continue to be less rewarded than men in the workplace, it is important to assess the extent of this difference in monetary terms and if there has been some progress looking at a longer time series, at least in some countries.

To answer these questions, it is first necessary to define how wage gaps are measured and what they include.
To start, recall that wage gaps refer only to differences in pay of employees, and therefore they do not take into account differences in men’s and women’s revenues due to non-em- ployment contracts.

For instance, revenues from corporate profits or from financial assets are not considered.

Since there are less women than men among entrepreneurs or investors, and non-salary revenues are higher than wages, income gaps (which include all types of revenues) tend to be larger than wage gaps.
According to the estimate provided by this report, income differences are quite large: the global average of woman’s income is about $11,000 (in Purchasing Power Parity, PPPs) while the average income of a man is $21,000 (in PPPs).

The wage gap is somewhat smaller, but different mea- surements deliver different results.

Four metrics are available for cross-country comparison: 1.

The OECD’s gender wage gap is defined as the difference between male and female median wages divided by male median wages.
Wages are computed for full-time equivalent dependent employees and are expressed in Purchasing Power Parity terms.1 2.

The ILO’s gender median and mean pay gaps are two indicators computed either as the difference between the median wages of men to that of women; or as the difference between the average wages of men and women.

In both cases ILO uses hourly wages.2 3.

The ILO’s factor-weighted gender pay gap is a corrected version of the measures above.
Simply put, the raw mean and median wage differences are corrected (using econometric analysis) by four factors: education levels, age, working time (full-time versus part-time) and status (private-sector versus public- sector employment).

4.

The World Economic Forum’s wage equality for similar work is derived from the Executive Opinion Survey, a questionnaire answered by business leaders in over 140 countries.
The respondents are asked: “In your country, for similar work, to what extent are wages for women equal to those of men?” (1 = not at all, significantly below those of men; 7 = fully, equal to those of men).

These individual answers are then aggregated, and the resulting figures are converted into 0–1 scores, where 1 stands for equal pay between women and men, working in a similar position.
Each approach has advantages and disadvantages; however, it is important to be aware that to correctly measure wage gaps one needs to control for: i) incidence of part-time and hours worked: since a relatively high share of women is working part-time, wage gaps may be partially due to working fewer hours; ii) concentration in professions where salaries are higher: a relatively high share of women is working in occupa- tions that are less well-paid then men, which of course affects the calculation of average and median wages by gender; iii) concentration in senior roles: since salaries of managers and senior professionals are higher than those in operational positions and there are fewer women in senior roles, not con- sidering this aspect leads to over-estimating wage gaps.
Economic theory suggests that, absent frictions or dis- tortions, wages should simply remunerate the productivity of a worker.

However, this is not the case in the job market; hence, to correctly measure gender wage gaps, one should be able to disentangle productivity differentials (i.e.

differ- ences in skills), from outright gender discrimination (i.e.
the part of wage differential only to a woman with a similar set of skill and same role is offered a lower salary than a man) and from other types of frictions than in turn impact wage differentials (i.e.

discrimination in promoting women in senior roles).

In this respect, while OECD and ILO unweighted wage gaps have the merit to produce a quantitative measure of the monetary difference between salaries of men and women, they do not isolate the difference in pay only due to gender bias.
They therefore capture overall differences in wages due to all elements that cause women to be disad- vantaged in the workplace.

The ILO factor-weighted gender pay gap is a more refined estimate of differences due to gender biases, but it is still not comparing exactly wages of men and women in the same positions.

In addition, this measure requires a large statistical collection effort and therefore is produced in discrete points in time in each country.
As such, continuous time series are not available for most countries.

The World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Sur- vey score—although it is based on perceptions and does not allow for a monetary quantification of the wage gap— compares gender wage gaps for similar roles and therefore aims at isolating the gender bias, excluding frictions in the labour market structure that lead women to be employed in 17 different roles than men.

encouraging, but too slowly.


Having clarified what each measure captures, it is pos- sible to compare trends in wage gap measures based on statistical data (OECD gender wage gaps) and based on Executive Opinion Survey data.

Time series of wage differ- entials based on “hard” data are only available for OECD countries.

Figure 1.1 shows trends in average wage gaps in this group of countries.

According to OECD data, the differential in men’s median income and women’s median income is about 13.5%.
This estimate is somewhat smaller than the ILO’s factor-weighted median gender pay gap, which is about 15%.

Looking at the trend, the average wage gap in OECD countries is closing but at a very slow rate.

As shown in Figure 1.1, it was 14.5% a decade ago and is now 13.5%, and it has therefore reduced by 1 percentage point in 10 years.
This direction is consistent with Executive Opinion Survey trends, which finds that in OECD countries, the wage equality for similar work has increased by approxi- mately 2 percentage points in 10 years.3 Both trends are Further, as time series for the indicator “wage equal- ity for similar work” are available continuously for over 100 countries, it is possible to compare wage gap trends in OECD countries and all other countries.
Figure 1.2 shows that while in OECD countries gender equality is improving, albeit slowly, in the rest of the world, on average equality is worsening.

As a consequence, the negative average trend observed in non-OECD countries over-weights progress achieved in high-income (OECD) countries.

This clarifies why global progress towards closing the wage gap has stalled.
Further research is needed to fully explain why wage gaps are widening (on average) outside OECD countries, yet the analysis allows to conclude that: first, gender gap in wages are still large and women’s wages can be estimated to be about 15% lower than those of men; second, in OECD countries wage gaps are closing but the progress is too slow; third, more efforts are needed to remove all barriers that prevent women to attain similar economic opportunities as men, especially in emerging and developing countries.
Figure 1.1 Wage gap between women and men, OECD countries, 2010-2019 ) p a g o n ( 1 - ) p a g e g r a l ( ( i % ) Wage equality for similar work (OECD countries) Median wage gap (OECD countries) Sources World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey 2019 and OECD Employment database.
Notes The indicator “Wage equality for similar work” is derived from the Executive Opinion Survey’s question “In your country, for similar work, to what extent are wages for women equal to those of men?” (1 = not at all, significantly below those of men; 7 = fully, equal to those of men)”.

It is then transformed into a 0-1 scale where 0 means “large gap”, and 1 means “no gap”.

The indicator “Median wage gap” is defined as the difference between male and female median wages divided by male median wages.
Wages are computed for full-time equivalent dependent employees and are expressed in US $ using current exchange rates and US $ Purchasing Power Parity rates (PPPs) for private consumption expenditures as conversion factors.

For more details about the computation of wage estimates, refer to http://www.oecd.org/employment/emp/average_wages.pdf.
18 20112010201220132014201520162017201820190.40.50.70.80.91579111315170.6 Figure 1.2 Wage equality between women and men, OECD and non-OECD countries, 2010–2019 ) p a g o n ( 1 - ) p a g e g r a l ( 0 Wage equality for similar work (OECD countries) Wage equality for similar work (NON-OECD countries) Sources World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey 2019.

Notes Data is taken from 153 countries covered in the 2019 Global Gender Gap Index.
The indicator “Wage equality for similiar work” is derived from the Executive Opinion Survey’s question “In your country, for similar work, to what extent are wages for women equal to those of men?” (1 = not at all, significantly below those of men; 7 = fully, equal to those of men)”.

It is then transformed into a 0-1 scale where 0 means “large gap”, and 1 means “no gap”.
Endnotes 1 For more details, refer to the OECD’s Employment database, and to the document “Comparable estimates of average wages for full-time equivalent employees”, available at http://www.oecd.org/employment/emp/ average_wages.pdf.

2 For more details, refer to ILO, “What lies behind gender pay gaps” in Global Wage Report 2018/19, 2018, available at: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/ publication/wcms_650553.pdf.
3 Aggregation is based on simple average across countries; as such, the score of each country has the same weight.

19 20112010201220132014201520162017201820190.30.40.50.60.70.80.91 Performance by Region Figure 6 provides a snapshot of the regional average gender gap closed so far.

In 2020, four regions have closed at least 71% of their gaps.
Western Europe is once again the region where the gender gap is smallest (76.7%), placing it ahead of North America, which has closed 72.9% of its gap, Latin America and the Caribbean (72.1%), and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (71.5%).

The East Asia and the Pacific region (68.5%) is just ahead of Sub-Saharan Africa (68.0%), while South Asia has closed 66.1% of its gap and is ahead of the Middle East and North Africa, the region with the lowest performance (61.1%).
The reader should note that popula- tion-weighted group averages are used throughout the report.

Figure 6 Gender gap closed to date by region, 2020 Years to close Percentage points All countries, 153 economies Gender gap Constant sample, 107 economies Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.

Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 153 economies featured in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 and the 107 economies featured throughout all 2006-2020 edition of the index.
Progress towards gender parity is proceeding at different speeds across the eight geographic areas benchmarked by this report.

Figure 7 tracks the evolution of the overall index since 2006 by region.

It highlights the local progress towards gender parity made over the past decade in East Asia and the Pacific, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, North America, Western Europe, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
All regions have reduced their gender gaps by at least three decimal points this year.

The two most improved regions this year are Sub-Saha- ran Africa and Latin America, which have both reduced their gaps by 1.4 percentage points, followed by Western Europe (gap reduced by 0.9 percentage points).

All other regions improve at a slower rate (gaps have been reduced by 0.6 points or less).
The performances of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have been driven by a significant reduction of polit- ical empowerment gaps (+4.3 and +5.0 points, respectively, compared to the 2018 edition).

While six of the eight regions have improved their Political Empowerment subindex scores, the progress of these two regions are the most significant in this edition of report, and among the most remarkable year-on-year improvements in this subindex since 2012.
In contrast, Political Empowerment in East Asia and the Pacific is regressing, marking the only negative trend in this subin- dex across all regions.
Progress in Economic Participation and Opportunity across 20 0100Middle East and North AfricaSouth AsiaSub-Saharan AfricaEast Asia and the PaciﬁcWestern EuropeNorth AmericaLatin America and the CaribbeanEastern Europe and Central Asia76.7%76.7%72.9%72.9%72.1%72.2%71.5%71.3%68.5%68.5%68.0%68.2%66.1%66.1%61.2%60.5%139.971.595.1163.454.4151.459.0107.3 Figure 7 Evolution of the Global Gender Gap Index by region over time Evolution in scores, 2006-2020 ) y t i r a p 1 - 0 ( e r o c S East Asia and the Paciﬁc Latin America and the Caribbean North America Sub-Saharan Africa Eastern Europe and Central Asia Middle East and North Africa South Asia Western Europe Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.
Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 107 economies featured throughout all the 2006-2020 editions of the Global gender Gap Index.

regions is more mixed.

Only one region improves by more than 1 percentage point (Middle East and North Africa, which began from a low base, 43%); while in two regions (North America and South Asia) gender gaps in this subindex are marginally wider than they were in the previous assessment, and in all other regions there is virtually no change on this aspect.
In terms of the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival subindexes, most regions register similar scores to those reported in the last edition.

However, both East Asia and the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa have reduced edu- cational gender gaps by about 1 percentage point.

Breaking down regional results by subindex reveals fur- ther differences across geographies (see Figure 8).

Overall, three facts stand out from this analysis.


First, while political empowerment has improved significantly in many regions, it is still the area with the largest gender gap in all regions.

It is particularly low in the Middle East and North Africa, where only 10% of the gap has been closed, as well as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (15%), East Asia and the Pacific (16%) and North America (18%).
On the other hand, Western Europe is the region where progress towards gender parity in politics is the most advanced, as 41% of the gap has been closed.

However, much still needs to be done to advance women’s political participation even in this region.

Second, Health and Survival and Educational Attainment gaps are, as discussed above, relatively small across all regions.

Third, Economic Participation and Opportunity is the subindex where gender gaps vary the most across regions.
In North America and Eastern Europe and Central Asia 76% and 73% of the gaps have been closed so far, while South Asia (37%) and Middle East and North Africa (43%) are the regions where women are the most disadvantaged in the workplace.

While these conclusions can be drawn from the direct comparison of regional subindex aggregates, analysing coun- try performances within each region brings to light a more complex reality.
As introduced above, the East Asia and the Pacific region has closed 68.5% of the overall gender gap.

Since 2006 its progress towards gender parity has been very slow with a mere 2.5 percentage point gain.

It represents the sec- ond-smallest gain over the period, after North America, but the gender gap itself in this region is considerably narrower.
If the region maintains the same rate of improvement as the 2006–2019 period, and given the current gap, it will take another 163 years to close the gender gap, the most time of any region (see Figure 6).

And though it is eight years shorter than what was predicted in the previous edition of the index, thanks to a small gain of 0.3 percentage points, this dura- tion is three times longer than what is predicted for Western Europe (54 years).
21 2007200620082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201900.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.91 Figure 8 Regional performance 2020, by subindex Overall Index Economic Participation and Opportunity Educational Attainment Health and Survival Political Empowerment Subindexes Western Europe North America Latin American and the Caribbean Eastern Europe and Central Asia East Asia and the Paciﬁc Sub-Saharan Africa South Asia Middle East and North Africa Global average Sources World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2020.
Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 153 economies featured in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020.

0 1 This lacklustre performance is particularly concerning consid- ering the region is home to 1.13 billion women, the most of any region.

In China (score of 67.6%, 106th) alone, there are almost 700 billion women still facing major barriers to economic and political advancement.
In such a vast and culturally and economically diverse region, averages necessarily conceal large differences among countries.

With an overall score of 79.9%, New Zealand features among the top 10 nations globally and leads the region ahead of the Philippines (78.1%, 16th).

Papua New Guinea, covered for the first time, is the region’s worst per- former with a score of 63.5% (127th globally).
Similar to all regions, Political Empowerment (one of the four subindexes of the Global Gender Gap Index) is where the region performs the worst by far (see Figure 8).

But unlike all the other regions, the East Asia and Pacific region is where the performance has deteriorated since last year.

With only 15.9% of the gap closed, the region is on par with Eastern Europe and Central Asia (15.0%) and just ahead of the Mid- dle East (10.2%), while 25 percentage points behind Western Europe.
Only four of the region’s 20 countries studied have a score above 20%, including New Zealand (47.4%, 13th globally), while four countries from the region rank among the worst 10 performers, including Japan (4.9%, 144th) and Bru- nei Darussalam (3.1%, 148th), while Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu rank last in the world, with a score of 0.
This means that, in either country, there has never been a female head of state in the past 50 years, and there is currently no woman in parliament or in ministerial positions.

The region has closed two-thirds of its economic gen- der gap, posting a small gain compared with last year.

Based on the rate of progress between 2006 and 2019, it will take approximately another 100 years to close the gap.
The region’s best performing country in this subindex, Lao PDR, ranks 2nd globally with a score of 83.9%, on par with Iceland and just behind Benin (84.7%).

The region has closed 94% of the gender gap in terms of health and survival, but it remains the worst-performing of all regions and has made no progress since 2006.
Since regional averages are weighted by population, the poor per- formances of China and, to a lesser extent, of Viet Nam (last and 151st, respectively, out of 153 countries in this subindex) contribute significantly to this result.

The two countries have, respectively, the lowest and the third-lowest female/male ratio at birth, with approximately 90 girls born for every 100 boys.

The global average stands at 94 girls for every 100 boys.
The region’s performance in terms of healthy life expectancy is in line with other regions: on average, women consistently out- live mean by a few years—specifically, by 1.3 years in China and by as many as 6.9 years in Mongolia.

Finally, Educational Attainment is the subindex where the region is the closest to parity, with 98% of the gap closed to date.

There is virtual parity (score of 99% or more) in nine of the 20 countries of the region.
The region’s worst performer, Papua New Guinea, has closed 90% of its educational gen- der gap (132nd).

The Eastern Europe and Central Asia region has closed 71.5% of its gender gap so far, yet the five points that separate this region from Western Europe (the region where the average gaps are the narrowest) represent a significant difference.
Glob- ally, on average, progress towards gender parity have been as slow as 0.3 percentage points per year; and if the Eastern Europe and Central Asia will close its gap at this average rate it may take almost 20 years for this region to catch up with today’s Western Europe performance.

To date, the time to fully close its overall gender gap is estimated to be 107 years.
Overall, gender gaps across Eastern Europe and Central 22 0.7670.7290.7210.7150.6850.6800.6610.6930.7560.6420.7320.6630.6660.3650.9931.0000.9960.9980.9760.8720.9430.9720.9750.9790.9790.9430.9720.9470.4090.1840.2690.1500.1590.2110.3870.6110.4250.9500.9690.1020.6850.5820.9570.9580.241 Asia are relatively evenly distributed: 21 of the 26 countries in this region have closed at least 70% and the top-ranked country (Latvia 78.5%) is 16 percentage points higher than the lowest-positioned Tajikistan (62.6%), which is a signifi- cantly smaller difference than that observed in any other region.
Most of the countries in this region (18 out of 26) have improved performances since last year, while eight have decreased their overall scores or remained stagnant.

Gender gaps are small across all countries in terms of Educational Attainment (above 94%) and Health and Survival, where all but three countries (Albania, Armenia and Azerbai- jan) have closed at least 97% of this gap.
In terms of Economic Participation and Opportunity, thanks to a high participation of women in the labour force (74.7%) and a remarkable high share of women in senior roles (47%), Belarus achieves the best subindex performance (83.7%), which is 34.1 percentage points higher than Tajiki- stan’s (49.6%), and 22.4 percentage points higher than the second-worst performer, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Women’s participation in the labour force is generally high in many countries of the region.
Consequently, gender gaps yet to be closed in this dimension are 20% or lower in 18 of the 26 countries in this region.

Notably, in both Lithuania and Latvia, over 74% of women are in the labour market, which translates into 4% and 6% of gaps yet to close, respectively.

Two additional positive aspects characterize this region: first, the share of women among senior officials is relatively high.
In five countries (Belarus, Latvia, Georgia, Poland and Russian Federation) at least 40% of these senior roles are women, and in another 10 countries, women who are senior officials are above 35%.

Second—and possibly related to the high participation of women in the labour force—a few coun- tries demonstrate relatively low differences in income between genders, including Slovenia (80.9%), Lithuania (76.3%) and Moldova (74.9%).

In contrast, Political Empowerment is weak in most coun- tries of the region.
The best regional performer is Albania, which has closed only 37.6% of its gap, although this is over 30 percentage points ahead of the lowest performer, Azerbai- jan (which has only closed only 6.3 percent of this gap).

The Latin America and the Caribbean region has closed 72.1% of its gender gap so far, progressing 1 percent- age point since last year.

At this rate it will take 59 years to close the gender gap.
All countries in the region fall into a 13.8% range between the best performer Nicaragua (80.4%) and the lowest-per- forming Guatemala (66.6%).

Among the 24 countries covered in both the 2018 and 2020 editions, 15 countries have improved their overall scores and nine have registered a stag- nant performance or reversal since last year.

Among the most improved countries, Mexico reduced its gender gap by 3.4 points on a year-over-year basis.
Looking at the four subindexes, all countries are well positioned in terms of Health and Survival, where 13 countries have achieved full gender parity, and even the least-perform- ing country in the region (Suriname) has closed almost 97% of its gender gap.

Similarly, gender parity in Educational Attain- ment is complete in 11 countries, and is above 96.7% in all other countries, including the least-performing (Guatemala).
Regional performances on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex, however, vary within a wider range (26.4 percentage points) between the score of the Bahamas (83.8%) and that of Mexico (57.4%), which, despite a remark- able improvement in other dimensions, has not improved its gap over the past three years.

In fact, Mexico attains the second-lowest labour force participation of women in the region after Guatemala.
Only 47% of Mexican women are in the labour market, corresponding to a ratio between women and men of 57%.

In Guatemala, 43% of women are actively engaged in the labour market, corresponding to a ratio of 49.5% relative to men’s participation.

In other large economies in the region women are relatively more active: in Brazil and Colombia over 60% of women are in the labour market and in Argentina, 57%.
However, only one country (Barbados) is close to achieving gender parity in labour force participation, as 75% of the women and 80% of men are in the labour mar- ket today.

Among women already in the labour force, in many coun- tries they are as equally engaged in professional and technical professions as men: in 11 countries at least 98% of the gap has been closed already, and only in one country (Cuba) is the gap still large (38.4%).
Differences among countries are more marked when it comes to senior roles.

In some countries gen- der parity has been achieved (namely, Colombia, Bahamas, Honduras and Jamaica), yet three countries (Argentina, Peru and Chile) are still halfway from achieving gender parity in this aspect.
Similarly, income disparities among genders remain wide: four countries (Argentina, Guatemala, Suriname and Mexico) have closed between 46% and 50% of their income gender gap so far, and even the best performer, Nicaragua, has yet to close over 32% of its gap.

Political empowerment gaps are also large in many coun- tries of the region.
However, recent fast progress in Costa Rica and Mexico has allowed these countries to join Nicaragua as the group of countries that has closed at least 46% of the gap on this subindex.

Other countries have progressed at a fast pace on this dimension this year: Colombia, notably, has closed 31.8% of its gap versus 20.3% in the previous assess- ment, and another six countries have doubled their scores since 2018 but remain below the 30% level.
Moreover, in 2019 there were almost 50% of women among parliament mem- bers in Bolivia, Cuba and Mexico, and at least 50% of women among ministers in Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has the lowest score (61.1%) of all regions in the Global Gender Gap Index.

The gap has narrowed by 0.5 percentage points since last year and by 3.6 points since 2006.
Assuming the same rate of progress going forward, it will take approximately 150 years to close the gender gap in the MENA region, 15 years shorter than what was predicted last year.

For now, many women in the region continue to face limitations of basic rights, including for divorce, inheritance, asset owner- ship, access to justice and freedom of movement.

The best-performing country, Israel, attains a middle position in ranking (64th ) on the overall index.
The other 18 countries in the region rank below 100.

The second-best performer is the United Arab Emirates at 120th, followed by Kuwait (122nd) and Tunisia (124th).

Seven of the 10 countries 23 with the largest gender gaps in the world are from the MENA region, including Iraq and Yemen, which are, respectively, penultimate and last in the ranking of 153 countries.

The MENA region has essentially closed the health gen- der gap, with an average score of 96.9% (maximum is 98.0).
In all MENA countries except in Bahrain and Kuwait, women live longer than men on average.

The educational gender gap of the region is extremely narrow, with a score of 98.0 (maximum of 1).

However, serious gender imbalances persist in some countries when it comes to literacy.

In Yemen, only 35% of women are literate, compared with 73% of men.8 In Mauritania and Morocco, the differential is approximately 20 percentage points.
While the situation is by and large satisfac- tory in terms of health outcomes and educational attainment, the gender gap is cavernous in the remaining two categories.

The region’s average score on the Political Empowerment subindex is 10.2%, the worst performance among all regions and four times worse than the Western European average.

It must be noted, however, that the average has almost tre- bled since 2006, when the score was 3.5%.
Three-quarters of MENA countries rank beyond the 100th mark in this subin- dex.

Women are almost absent of political life in Oman (2.1%, 150th) and Yemen (1.9%, 151st).

There has been no female head of state in the last 50 years in 17 of the 19 MENA coun- tries studied.

Only Israel and Turkey have had a female head of state (for 5.7 and 2.7 years, respectively).

The average female representation in parliament is 15%, the lowest share of all regions.

Finally, the economic gender gap runs deep.


MENA labour markets are generally characterized by low female participation and discrimination against women, with dire consequences on economic growth, social cohesion and social mobility.

The regional average score on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex is 42.5%, the sec- ond-lowest mark after South Asia (36.5%).

In 16 countries, less than half of women participate in the labour force.
The rate is even below 20% in six countries, including in Yemen, where the female participation rate of 6.3% is the lowest in the world.

Furthermore, the estimated earned income of women is on average 28% of what men earn.

In six countries the ratio is less than one-fifth.

The South Asia region has closed two-thirds of its gender gap.

The region is home to 860 million women, three- fourths of whom live in India.
Among the eight regions of the world, South Asia’s gender gap is the second-largest after the MENA region, where only 61% of the gender gap has been closed.

Since 2006, South Asia is the region that has pro- gressed the most, gaining six percentage points.

If the rate of progress of the past 15 years was to continue—a very strong hypothesis indeed—it will take 71 years to close the region’s gender gap.
Reflecting the magnitude of the challenge when it comes to gender parity, Bangladesh (overall score of 72.6%) is the only one of the seven South Asian countries studied to feature in the top 100 of the Global Gender Gap Index (see Table 1).

India ranks 112th (66.8%) and Pakistan (56.4%) is antepenul- timate, only ahead of Iraq and Yemen.

The performance of South Asia across the four main areas of the Global Gender Gap Index is one of stark contrasts.
With a score of 38.7% on the Political Empowerment subindex, the region is on par with the leading region, Western Europe (40.9).

The score is four times better that of the MENA region (10.2), which otherwise has a very similar profile to South Asia in the other three subindexes.

The performance is also helped by the fact that Bangladesh (1st), India (4th), and Sri Lanka (9th) are among the 10 countries with the most years with a female head of state in the past 50 years.
Indeed, Ban- gladesh is the only country in the world where that number exceeds the number of years with a male head of state (25.6 compared with 24.4).

In terms of female representation in par- liament and in cabinets, however, South Asia’s performance is largely in line with other emerging regions.

For example, women represent 20% or less of the parliament in six of the seven countries studied, the only exception being Sri Lanka (33%, 34th).
In fact, South Asia is the only region that scores better on the Political and Empowerment subindex than on the Eco- nomic Participation and Opportunity subindex, where South Asia has only bridged 37% of its gender gap.

The region ranks last in this dimension, notably standing 6 percentage points behind the MENA region and almost 40 points behind North America.

The situation has been deteriorating steadily, from a peak at 45% in 2012, and the gender gap is now significantly wider than in 2006.
South Asia has made significant strides in narrowing its educational gender gap.

In 2006, the gap stood at almost 20%, the largest of all regions.

Since then, the gap has narrowed to 6%.

Female attainment at all education levels is generally on par, or at times better than for men across the region—but abso- lute attainment levels for both sexes remain generally low.

The main issue is gender differences in literacy rate.

In India, 66% of women are literate compared with 82% of men.
Pakistan’s literacy rates are 46% and 71%, respectively.

Among the four areas the index looks at, health and sur- vival is where the South Asia’s gender gap is the narrowest, with a score of 94.7%, even though the region has stagnated since 2006.

Women enjoy a longer healthy life expectancy than men do, except in Bhutan.

The performance continues to be undermined by the abnormally low sex ratios at birth in India (91 girls for every 100 boys) and Pakistan (92 girls for every 100 boys).
Sub-Saharan Africa has closed 68.0% of its gender gap so far.

This result is significant progress since the last edi- tion of the report, which leads to a decline in the number of years it will take to close the gender gap, now estimated at 95.

Performances are widespread in this region between the best performer, Rwanda (which has so far closed 79.1% of its gap), and Congo, DRC (57.8%).
Among the 33 countries cov- ered in both the 2018 and 2020 editions, 21 countries have improved their scores and 12 have regressed since last year.

Seven of the 33 have narrowed their gender gap by more than 2 percentage points; the most improved country (Ethio- pia) has reduced almost 5 percentage points of its gap in one year and has currently closed 70.5% of its overall gender gap.
Notably, seven countries (Madagascar, Ghana, Mozam- bique, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Liberia and Mali) have reduced their Educational Attainment gap between 1.5 and 4.7 per- centage points.

However, three countries (Guinea, Congo 24 DRC and Chad) where the educational gender gap is larger have registered a stagnant performance and have yet to close 32% and 40% of their gaps.
On the other side of the spectrum, three countries have already achieved parity in education (Botswana, Lesotho and Namibia), and four have closed more than 98% of their gaps.

Gender differences in education remain particularly large beyond elementary school.

For instance, gender gaps in tertiary enrolment are as large as 81% in Chad, and over 50% in Ethiopia, Burundi, Benin, Guinea, Mali and Sierra Leone.

Gender parity in Health and Survival is relatively advanced in most countries of the region.
All countries achieve full parity in terms of sex-ratio at birth; however, life expectancy remains low for both men and women in many countries.

For instance, Guinea, the country with the largest gender gap on the Health and Survival subindex, has already closed 96.2% of this gap, yet women and men can expect to live only 52.2 and 52.1 years of healthy life, respectively.

Regional divides in Economic Participation and Oppor- tunity gender parity are particularly stark in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Benin, the best performer, has closed 84.7% of this gap while Cote d’Ivoire only 54.5%.

Further, four of the five most improved on this subindex are from Sub-Saharan Africa (Cape Verde, Mali, Nigeria and Sierra Leone).

However, the particularly strong performance of Benin reflects similarly low levels of income for both men and women, as well as no information on presence of women among senior positions and technical workers.
On average, labour participation of women is relatively high in most Sub-Saharan African countries.

In Burundi, Guinea, Rwanda and Sierra Leone there are at least as many women as men in the labour market, and in Senegal, the low- est performer, at least 36% of the women are in the labour market.

In contrast, however, while there are many women in the labour force in most countries, senior roles are prepon- derantly still held my men.
Only in Cameroon is the situation relatively advanced (49% of senior officials are women); while in most countries the share of women among senior officials varies between 30% and 14%.

Income and wage gender gaps are also large in most countries.

In terms of wages, few countries (Burundi, Rwanda and Guinea and Gambia) have already closed at least 75% of their gaps, while Ethiopia and Lesotho have yet to close over 50% of their gaps.
Cross-country differences are even starkers in terms of income, where three countries (Burundi, Liberia and Zambia) have achieved gender parity (though granting low income levels to both men and women), while in two countries (Gambia and Ghana) gender gaps in income are as large as 65% and 68.9%.

In parallel to limited presence of women among senior officials, the presence of women in politics is also under- whelming in most countries.
Rwanda (the only country with a 50% share of woman in parliament in the region) and South Africa have closed at least 50% of their political empower- ment gender gaps to date, while 21 countries closed only between 20% and 30% of their gaps.

Notably, there are few women in parliament in half of the countries in the region, including Nigeria, where only 3.4% of parliament members are women.

Similarly, women in ministerial positions are between 18% and 8% across 15 economies.
Rwanda, South Africa and Ethiopia are important positive exceptions, with more than 48% of women among their ministers.

The presence of women is even scarcer at the head-of state level; 24 countries of the 34 assessed have never had a woman as a head of state over the past 50 years.

Since 2006, Western Europe has been the best-per- forming region on the Global Gender Gap Index and the 2020 edition is no exception.
With an average score of 76.7% (out of 100), the region has now closed 77% of its gender gap, up from 76% in the previous edition and 71% in 2001.

If prog- ress over the period 2006–2020 was to continue at the same pace, it will take 54 years to close the gap in Western Europe, seven years shorter that what had been predicted previously.
The region is home to the four most gender-equal coun- tries in the world—in order, Iceland (87.7), Norway (84.2), Finland (83.2) and Sweden (82.0); seven of the top 10 (see country commentaries for top 10 countries below); and half of the top 20.

Twenty-one of the 24 Western European coun- tries studied feature in the top half of the overall rankings.

The exceptions are Greece (84th), Malta (90th) and Cyprus (91st).

Indeed, almost 20 percentage points separate Iceland from Cyprus.
With the educational and health gender gaps virtually closed across all countries in the region, all efforts are con- centrated on the political and economic gender gaps.

On the Political Empowerment subindex the region is the most advanced among all regions, but only 41% of the gender gap has been closed in this area.

In terms of the Economic Par- ticipation and Opportunity subindex, Western Europe (69.3%) lags behind North America (75.6%) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (73.2%).
Consequently, the size and evolution of the political and economic gender gaps are the two differentiating fac- tors among Western European countries.

For example, Iceland leads the Political Empowerment Category globally with a score of 70.2%, whereas Cyprus ranks 111th with a score of 11.2%, with female representation below 20% in the parliament and the cabinet.
And while the score differen- tial is smaller, Italy (59.6, 117th) trails Iceland (83.9, 2nd) by 115 places on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex.

Spain (79.5, 8th overall) jumps 21 places from the pre- vious edition, largely as a result of the nomination in 2018 of the world’s most female-centric government where 65% of ministers are women.

It is one of the only 10 governments in the world with a share of 50% or more.
Austria (74.4, 34th) also leapfrogs 19 places thanks to significantly larger female representation in both the cabinet and the parliament.

On the other hand, the Netherlands loses ground (73.6, 38th, down 11 places in the rankings) as a result of lower female political representation, which remains high by international standards.

The North America region groups the United States (72.4, 53rd) and Canada (77.2, 19th).9 In 2006, both Europe and North America had closed 71% of their gender gaps.
Today, Europe has closed 77% and North America, 73%.

As a result of this positive but much slower evolution, it is expected that it will take almost three times longer to close 25 the gap in North America (151 years) than in Europe (54 years).

Like Europe, North America has closed its educational and health gender gaps.
The region boasts the smallest gap when it comes to economic participation and opportunities (having closed 76% of the gender gap in this area), but this figure has remained exactly the same since 2006.

In Europe, the gap is larger at 30% but has been reduced by almost 10 points since 2006.

It is in the area of political empowerment that offers most room for improvement in North America, where only 18% of the political gender gap has been closed.
This is less than half that of Europe (41%) and also worse than in Latin America (27%), South Asia (39%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (21%).

In Canada and the United States, women rep- resentation in congress hovers around 25%, approximately 10% below Western Europe’s average.
And while Canada’s cabinet achieved gender parity in 2018, only 20% of ministerial Table 3 The Global Gender Gap Index rankings by region, 2020 East Asia and the Pacific Eastern Europe and Central Asia Country Rank Score Country Rank Score Regional Global Regional Global New Zealand Philippines Lao PDR Australia Singapore Thailand Mongolia Indonesia Viet Nam Cambodia Brunei Darussalam Fiji Malaysia China Korea, Rep. Myanmar Timor-leste Japan Vanuatu* Papua New Guinea* Latin America and the Caribbean Country Rank Score Regional Global Nicaragua Costa Rica Colombia Trinidad and Tobago* Mexico Barbados Argentina Cuba Uruguay Jamaica Bolivia Panama Ecuador Chile Honduras Bahamas Peru Venezuela Suriname El Salvador Dominican Republic Brazil Paraguay Belize Guatemala Latvia Albania Moldova Estonia Belarus Lithuania Slovenia Serbia Poland Bulgaria Romania Ukraine Croatia Slovak Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina North Macedonia Montenegro Kazakhstan Georgia Czech Republic Russian Federation Kyrgyz Republic Azerbaijan Armenia Hungary Tajikistan Middle East and North Africa Country Rank Score Regional Global Israel United Arab Emirates Kuwait Tunisia Turkey Algeria Bahrain Egypt Qatar Jordan
 Mauritania Morocco Oman Lebanon Saudi Arabia Iran, Islamic Rep. Syria Iraq Yemen South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa Country Rank Score Country Rank Score Regional Global Regional Global Bangladesh Nepal Sri Lanka India Maldives Bhutan Pakistan 50 101 102 112 123 131 151 0.726 0.680 0.680 0.668 0.646 0.635 0.564 Western Europe and North America Country Rank Score Regional Global Iceland Norway Finland Sweden Ireland Spain Germany Denmark France Switzerland Canada United Kingdom Belgium Austria Portugal Netherlands Luxembourg United States Italy Greece Malta Cyprus Rwanda Namibia South Africa Burundi Zambia* Zimbabwe Cape Verde Mozambique Madagascar Uganda Tanzania Botswana Ethiopia Eswatini Lesotho Cameroon Liberia Senegal Ghana Kenya Sierra Leone Mauritius Malawi Angola Benin Guinea Nigeria Burkina Faso Gambia, The Mali Togo Côte d'Ivoire Chad Congo, Dem Rep. * New countries in 2020 positions in the United States were filled by women.
In both countries, there has been no female head of state in the past 50 years (there was a female prime minister in Canada for four months in 1993).

Selected Country Performances This section provides a short commentary for selected coun- tries, namely, the 10 best performers (listed in rank order) in the overall Global Gender Gap index and the 15 most populous countries in the world (listed in alphabetical order).
Together, they are home to approximately 2.4 billion women who account for 65% of the world’s female population.

Top 10 This year’s edition of the Global Gender Gap Index still sees four Nordic countries in the top four positions and two new entrants in the global top 10 list.

All but three countries in the overall Index top 10 have closed at least 80% of their overall gender gap—the same as last year.
Iceland (1), once again the country where progress towards gender parity is the most advanced, has closed almost 88% of its gender gap, 3.5 percentage points ahead of the second-ranked Norway.
It has closed both its Educa- tional Attainment and Health and Survival gaps completely, and it remains the top performer in terms of Political Empow- erment, mainly thanks to long tenures of women as head of the country (over the past 50 years, 22 had a woman as the country leader) but also thanks to significant represen- tation of women in parliament (38.1%) and among ministers (40%).
Further, Iceland attains the second-best performance on Economic Participation and Opportunity, where it con- tinues to improve.

In fact, not only are 85.8% of women in the labour market (17th) but they can often achieve senior and managerial roles (41.5% of senior officials are women, ranking 21st).
In addition, women are 43% of companies board members, and the country achieves these results with a significantly less generous policy towards parental leave than other Nordic countries (for instance, women receive only 68% of their gross salary during maternity leave while in 27 Norway it is 94%; in Sweden, 77.6%; and in France, 90%.

Nonetheless, income and wage gaps are still open and will require further efforts to achieve parity on these aspects as well.
Norway (2) maintains its position and further reduces its gender gap.

Norway has by now closed 84.2% of its overall gender gap, almost 1 percentage point more than reported last year.

The country has already completely closed its Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps, while the Economic Participation and Opportunity and Political Empowerment gaps are 79.8% and 59.8% closed, respec- tively.
On the former, women are almost equal to men when it comes to labour force participation (94.5%), and there are more women than men among professional and technical workers.

However, women are still significantly less likely to hold managerial positions than men (the split between women and men in senior roles is 35.6% / 64.4%).

Also, there are still 26% and 21% of wage and income gaps to be filled.
When it comes to Political Empowerment, although Norway ranks 2nd overall, women are still less than 50% of both parliamentarians (40.8%) and ministers (42%).

Finland (3) climbs one place this year, reducing its over- all gender gap by 1 percentage point to 84.2%.
Finland had already achieved parity on the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival subindexes since the first edition of the Gender Gap Report, and this edition’s improvement is mainly due to a narrower Political Empowerment gap, where the share of women in parliament gets closer to an equal split between women and men.

In fact, this share increases to 47% from 42% in the past assessment, counterbalancing a slight decrease in the share of women in ministerial positions (37.5%).
Further, Finland marginally reduces its Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap (2 percentage points narrower than last year).

This result is mainly driven by a slight increase of women in senior roles (31.8%, ver- sus 31.3% in 2018), which does still translate into a relatively large gender gap level (over 50% of this gap is yet to be bridged).
The remaining aspects of the Economic Participa- tion and Opportunity gap remain substantially stable: the gap in labour force participation is relatively small (96% closed so far) and the share of women in skilled roles is already higher than those of men, while the wage and income gaps yet to close remain at about 20% and 28%, respectively.

Sweden (4) loses 1 place as it sees its gap stagnating at 82% and is overtaken by Finland.
The country’s gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity is marginally regressing due to stagnating labour force participation and wage gender gaps, while differences in income between women and men are slightly diverging.

Nonetheless, Swe- den remains among the world’s top 15 countries in terms of labour force participation (81% of women are in the labour market) and income gender gaps (76.9%).

In addi- tion, women are 38.6% of managers and over 50% of skilled workers.
Notably, Sweden has the highest share of women graduates from STEM programmes among Nordic countries (15.7% of female graduates attain a degree from a techni- cal programme).

Further, Sweden is ranked fourth globally for the number of women on boards of directors (36.3% of companies’ board members are women).
Consistent with the global trend, the political empowerment gender gap is closing in Sweden as well, as 47.3% of parliamentary seats (an increase of 4 percentage points) and 54% of ministerial positions are represented by women.

However, there has not yet been a woman head of state in the country.

Nicaragua (5) has, to date, closed nearly 80% of its gender gap, the 5th best performance in the world.
Nica- ragua has already achieved gender parity in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival, and has the third-lowest Political Empowerment gender gap in the world (43.5% yet to close).

Notably, Nicaragua has more women in ministerial positions than men, and has been led by a female head of state for almost seven years of the past 50.

However, Nica- ragua’s Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap is relatively large by international comparison.
The country has closed so far just 67.1% of this gap, ranking 81st.

This result is driven by low labour force participation of women (53.9% of them are in the labour market, versus 86% of men) and relatively large wage gaps (45% of this gap is yet to be bridged).

Further, the participation of women in the labour market is concentrated in part-time jobs (51.4% of working women are employed part-time) and few women rise to man- agerial positions (approximately 35% of these positions are filled by women).
These aspects show that, although Nicara- gua attains a strong performance overall, there are still some important areas for improvement to better leverage female talent in the labour market.

In parallel, further investments in skills and education should support better opportunities for all Nicaraguan citizens.

For instance, secondary enrol- ment rates remain low for both boys and girls (52% and 44% respectively), and greater efforts should be made to increase human capital in the country.
New Zealand (6) is ranked one position higher com- pared to 2018, despite the fact that its overall gender gap is virtually unchanged.

New Zealand has closed 79.9% of its overall gender gap so far, and since 2006 has achieved gen- der parity in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival.

The country is also 13th globally in terms of Political Empow- erment (47.4% of this gap has been closed so far).
With 41% of women in parliament, and a cumulative 12.6 years of the past 50 with a woman as its head of state, New Zealand is among the countries where women are strongly represented in institutions, and one of the first to grant the right to vote to all women (1893).

There were, however, fewer women in ministerial positions (30.1%).

In terms of Economic Partici- pation and Opportunity, New Zealand is ranked 27th overall, after having closed 75.3% of this gap.
Women’s participation in the labour force is relatively high (76.4%) but lower than that of men (85.8%), leading to a gender gap of 11%.

The two aspects where New Zealand attains the lowest perfor- mances are in this subindex.

Women in senior roles are a few decimal points shy of 40% (26th overall) and the wage and income gaps stand at about 29% and 49%, ranking 38th and 77th respectively.
Ireland (7) climbs two positions in 2020, having closed 79.8% of its gender gap; in particular, the country has nearly achieved parity in secondary education (99.6%).

Ireland also continues to reduce Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gaps.

The country has been on a constantly positive 28 trend for the past four editions and has now closed 73.2% of this gap.
The most significant progress has been in the increase in the number of women in senior positions (36% from 34.3%) as well as estimated earned income, where 34.1% of the gap has yet to be closed.

Despite these steps forward, however, wage and income gender gaps are still relatively large, both ranking 56th globally.

Similarly, women engage in the labour market relatively less than in other coun- tries (ranking 65th), and less than men (66.7% of women and 78.9% of men are in the labour force).
Notably, only half of the women who work are employed part-time, and on aver- age an Irish woman tends to spend 2.3 times more than a man on unpaid care and domestic activities.

In the political domain, on the other hand, Ireland is one of a handful of countries that has been led by a woman for long periods of time (21 years in the past 50).

Yet this has not coincided to a particularly strong involvement of women in politics.
Only 22% of parliamentarians in the lower house, 30% in the upper house, and 26% of ministers are women.

Spain (8) is one of the most improved countries in this edition, entering the top 10 from the past edition’s 29th position.

Spain has improved on all dimensions, except for Health and Survival where it has already closed 97.2% of its gap.

Political Empowerment is the area where the most substantial improvement is achieved.
Spain advances 17.3 percentage points in this dimension compared with previous editions, closing 52.7% of this gap thanks to a large repre- sentation of women among ministers (64.7%) and an almost equal share of parliamentarians (47.4% women and 42.6%, men).

Despite this large step forward however, Spain’s heads of state have so far always been men.

To a lesser extent, gen- der parity in Spain also advances in the workplace (68.1% from last edition’s 66.8%).
Despite improving on all aspects of economic participation, however, Spain has yet to bridge large gaps in wages (44.2% yet to close), income (33.9% yet to close) and the presence of women in managerial positions (52.7% yet to close).

Only 32% of senior officials (in both public and private sectors) and only 22% of board members in Spanish firms are women.
Labour participation of women is also still below that of men (68.8% versus 78.9%), showing that there are still strong cultural and business practices bar- riers to grant women the same opportunities as men.

Rwanda (9) is confirmed as the best performer in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Rwanda has closed 79.1% of its gender gap but loses three positions from previous edition.
Rwanda is still among the top 4 countries in the world for political empow- erment, thanks to a high share of women (above 50%) among both parliamentarians and ministers.

Rwanda has also closed its Health and Survival gap and is 4.3% shy of completing gen- der parity in education.

Human capital formation is limited in general, yet women are relatively more penalized than men.
For instance, only 69.4% of women and 77.5% of men are literate, and, while gross participation in tertiary education is below 8% for both men and women, there are almost twice as many men than women who obtain scientific and technical degrees.

This is to some extent reflected by the relatively large gap that Rwanda has yet to close in terms of Economic Par- ticipation and Opportunity (67.2% so far).
Despite the fact that Rwanda’s women are as active as men in the labour market, their income and wages remain significantly lower (23.7% and 38.9%, respectively, of these gaps have yet to close).

While this may partially due to cultural biases, the skill differences between women and men currently in the labour force also play a role.

As a result, a relatively small fraction of Rwanda’s women are employed in skilled professions (38.7%) and an even smaller share is found among senior officials (14%).
While skills are not the only factors, the fact that women’s access to education has been limited in the past is still affecting the opportunities they need to compete in the workplace today.

Ongoing investments and enhancements in education and human capital promise to offer better opportunities to future generations of Rwanda’s women.

Germany (10) returns into the top ten for the first time since 2007 and has so far closed 78.7% of its gender gap.
Similar to several countries in this edition, Germany climbs in the rankings mainly thanks to greater participation of women in politics.

Women are now 40% of German ministers, while the share of parliamentarians remains at 30.9%.

The ongo- ing tenure of a woman as a head of state also contributes to further increase Germany’s score on the Political Empow- erment subindex.

To date 14.1 years of the past 50 have seen a woman in charge of the highest institutional role in the country.
However, gender gaps in other dimensions are essentially at the same level as last year.

Germany has closed 97.2% of its Educational Attainment gap (there are still more men than women in secondary education) and has virtually achieved gender parity in terms of Health and Survival.

When it comes to Economic Participation and Opportunity, how- ever, Germany has only closed 72.3% of its gap.
Among the factors that stand out as priorities in this area are the need to fast-forward reduction in wage and income disparities (only 67.1% and 69.5% of these gaps have been closed so far), and the limited presence of women among managers.

Only 29.3% of these positions are held by women, which translates into a gap of 58.4%.

Similarly, only 31.9% of board members of German-listed companies are women.

Paternity leave is also relatively limited: only nine weeks are granted to men.
Enhancing an even playing field to both genders in the workplace is the next step for Germany’s progress towards full gender parity.

Top 15 most populous countries Bangladesh has closed 72.6% of its overall gender gap and ranks 50th on the index.

The country improves its score marginally by 0.4 percentage points but loses two positions nonetheless, as other countries have improved even more.
Bangladesh is the best performer in South Asia, ahead of Nepal (101st) and Sri Lanka (102nd), and some 60 places ahead of India (112th).

But its presence in the top 50 and regional leadership should not hide the fact that there is considerable room to bolster basic rights of women and improve their economic and political prospects.

It is the only country in the world where women have had a longer tenure than men at the helm of the state over the past 50 years.
This contributes to the strong performance on the Political Empowerment subindex (score of 54.5%, 7th).

But there are only 8% of women in the cabinet and only 20% in the par- liament.

In the economic sphere, as of 2018, 38% of adult 29 women were part of the labour force (up from 34% in 2017), compared with 84% of men.

Only one in 10 leadership roles is occupied by a woman (139th), and the estimated average annual income of women is 40% that of the men.
Progressing three places over 2018, Brazil ranks 92nd with an overall score of 69.1%.

The country has closed 69% of its overall gender gap, up one percentage point from the previous edition.

Despite this improvement, Brazil has one of Latin America’s largest gender gaps, ranking 22nd out of 25 countries in the region, and almost 90 places behind Nica- ragua (80.4%, 5th), the region’s best performer.

The country has closed both the educational and health gender gaps.
There is perfect gender parity in literacy rate (93%) and pri- mary education (95%), and a larger proportion of women than men are enrolled in both secondary and tertiary edu- cation, where there are 140 female students for every 100 male students.

Furthermore, women can expect to live five years more than men in good health.

The economic gender gap remains wide but has narrowed over the past year (score of 69.1%, 92nd).
The low rate of female participation in the labour force, combined with persisting wage and income inequalities, weigh on the country’s performance on this subindex, but the occupation gap is much narrower.

Brazil ranks among the 70 countries in the world that have reached parity between women and men for technical and profes- sional roles, and some 40% of leadership roles (managers, senior officials, legislators) are filled by women (27th).
Polit- ical empowerment, or lack thereof, represents the biggest drag on Brazil’s overall performance; with a score of 13.3%, the country ranks 104th in the world.

As of June 2019, only two positions in the 22-member cabinet were held women (122nd) and women represent only 18% of the members of the parliament (114th).

China ranks 106th, down 3 places, on the Global Gender Gap Index 2020.
The country has closed two-thirds of its gen- der gap (score of 67.6%), registering a very small gain of 0.3 percentage points from the previous edition.

But since 2006, China has narrowed the gap only marginally (a gain of just 2 points).

Meanwhile, many countries have moved closer to par- ity, causing China to slip from 63rd position in 2006 to today’s rank.

The Chinese political landscape remains dominated by men.

The country ranks 95th, with a score of 15.4%, on the related subindex.
Women hold only two ministerial positions and make up only one-quarter of the National People’s Con- gress membership (as of 2018).

Leadership positions in the economy also largely remain the preserve of the men, with one woman for every five men in these roles.

China has virtually closed the educational gender gap, with both sexes achiev- ing universal literacy.

Although data is scant, available figures show that the share of women attending tertiary education is larger than the share of men.
Finally, the very skewed sex ratio at birth (885 girls per 1,000 boys) weighs heavily on China’s performance on the Health and Survival subindex, where it ranks 153rd and last with a score of 92.6%.

Egypt is home to 48.7 million women, and improve- ments to their conditions will have a significant impact on the country’s economic and social progress.

To date, Egypt has closed only 62.9% of its gender gap, ranking 134th.

Much has yet to be done to grant equal opportunities to women in almost all aspects.
The literacy rate is still as low as 65% among women, which translates into a 15% gender gap yet to bridge.

Political empowerment is also low yet improving.

Although there has never been a woman in a head of state position, and only 14.9% of parliamentarians are women, there are now significantly more women in ministerial posi- tions (24%) than in 2018 (11.8%).

This progress can hopefully stimulate further the involvement of women in politics as well as in the workplace.
When it comes to economic opportuni- ties, Egypt has a long way to go yet (140th).

Only 24.7% of women are in the labour force, out of which about 20% are on a part-time contract.

Further, very few women are in man- agerial roles (7.1%) and their presence among firms’ owners and top managers is also extremely limited (2.4% and 4.9%, respectively).

These facts reflect the barriers that still pre- vent women to access finance and assets.
By law, there are still significant limitations for women (at least for some social groups) to own land, capital and financial products.

As a result, differences in income (which include wage and non-wage revenues) between men and women are large.

It is estimated that the income of an average man is about 3.8 times that of an average woman.

Removing all barriers that grant equal access to women and men to internships should be a first step to leveraging untapped human talent of women in the country.
Ethiopia is 82nd in the 2020 rankings and has closed 70.5% of its gender gap to date.

It has achieved full parity on its Health and Survival subindex and has attained the 16th position globally in terms of Political Empowerment.

Almost half (47.6%) of ministers are women, and a woman was elected president in 2018.

In addition, 38.8% of parliament seats are occupied by women.

Despite these remarkable results, women still suffer from underdevelopment in health services.
For instance, every year 400 mothers out of every 100,000 die giving birth, and only 27% of births are attended by skilled health personnel.

Further, Ethiopia is struggling to progress on gender parity in education (85.0%, 140th) and economic opportunities (56.8%, 125th).

Investments in human capital are insufficient in general, but women are even more penalized than men.

Only 44% of women and 59% of men are literate, and almost 20% of girls and 12% of boys are not receiving formal primary education.
At higher levels of education, participation is even lower: only 5.2% of women and 10.9% of men graduating from high school attend uni- versity.

Delays in preparing the talent pool also translate into low employment performances.

Labour force participation is skewed towards men: 87.8% of men are in active employ- ment versus 77% of women.

Wages and income are low in general, and gender gaps are still significant (51% and 42% of the wage and income gender gaps are yet to be closed).
Women are also a minority among skilled workers (32.6%) and managers and senior officials (26.5%).

Despite the fact that legislation does not restrain women from accessing assets, there are still some limitations for women who belong to some ethnic or social groups, which leads to a relatively low number of female entrepreneurs (16.5%) in general.

India ranks 112th on the overall Global Gender Gap Index and the country has closed two-thirds of its overall gender gap (score of 66.8%).
However, the condition of women in 30 large fringes of India’s society is precarious.

It has lost four positions since the previous edition, despite a small score improvement, as some countries ranked lower than India have improved more.

The economic gender gap runs particularly deep in India.

Only one-third of the gap has been bridged (score of 35.4%, 149th, down 7 places).

Since 2006, the gap has gotten significantly wider.
Among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap is larger than the political gender gap.

Only one-quarter of women, compared with 82% of men, engage actively in the labour market (i.e.

working or looking for work)—one of the lowest participation rates in the world (145th).

Further- more, female estimated earned income is a mere one-fifth of male income, which is also among the world’s lowest (144th).
Women only account for 14% of leadership roles (136th) and 30% of professional and technical workers.

India ranks a low 150th on the Health and Survival subindex (94.4), as a result of the skewed sex ratio at birth: there are 91 girls born per 100 boys born, a ratio well below the natural one.

Violence, forced marriage and discrimination in access to health remain perva- sive.

The situation and the trend are more positive in terms of gender gaps in education.
From primary to tertiary education, the share of women attending school is systematically larger than the share of men.

But a large difference persists for lit- eracy rate; only two-thirds of women are literate compared with 82% of men.

Yet the gap has been narrowing in the past decade, because the literacy rate has significantly increased among women (66%) and slightly decreased among men to 79%.

Finally, India ranks 18th (score of 41.1%) on the Political Empowerment subindex.
Of the past 50 years, the country was headed by a woman for 20 years (4th) which largely explains this strong performance.

But today, female political representation is low: women make up only 14.4% of the par- liament (122nd) and 23% of the cabinet (69th).

Indonesia retains its 85th position on the Global Gender Gap Index, despite a small improvement in its score (70.0, up 1 percentage point).

The country has closed 70% of its gender gap.


The economic gap remains large but has nar- rowed considerably since 2006.

For example, in the last year alone, Indonesia jumped 28 places on the Economic Par- ticipation and Opportunity subindex rankings (68.5%, 68th), constituting one of the most significant improvements on this dimension globally.
Indonesia boasts the world’s largest share (55%) of senior and leadership roles held by women and is one of the six countries in the world where a majority of such roles are held by women.

On the other hand, the low share of women (54%) participating in the labour market and significant difference in income distribution (female earned income is half that of men) continue to weigh on the coun- try’s performance on this subindex.
Both the educational and health gender gaps have nearly closed (scores of 97.0 and 97.4% on the respective subindexes).

However, small imbal- ances persist in terms of literacy rates (94% among women compared with 97% among men) and primary enrolment rate (91% versus 96%), although levels are extremely high and rising for both sexes.
Whereas the trends are overwhelmingly positive in the economic, health and educational spheres, the political gender gap has widened slightly, from a low base (17.2%, 82nd down 22 places).

This results from weaker female representation in parliament (17.4%, down from 19.8%) and in the cabinet (24%, down from 26%).

Japan’s gender gap is by far the largest among all advanced economies and has widened over the past year.
The country ranks 121st out of 153 countries on this year’s Global Gender Gap Index, down 1 percentage point and 11 positions from 2018.

Japan has narrowed slightly its eco- nomic gender gap, but from a very low base (score of 59.8, 115th).

Indeed, the gap in this area is the third-largest among advanced economies, after Italy (117th) and the Republic of Korea (127th).

Only 15% of senior and leadership positions are held by women (131st), whose income is around half that of men (108th).
The progress achieved in the economic arena has been more than offset by a widening of the politi- cal gender gap.

Japan has only closed 5% of the gap in this dimension (144th).

At 10%, female representation in the Jap- anese parliament is one of the lowest in the world (135th) and 20% below the average share across advanced economies.

Furthermore, there is only one woman in the 18-member cabinet.

This translates into a rate of approximately 5% (139th), 26% below the peer (high income) average.
Finally, like more than half of the countries studied, Japan has had no female head of state in the last 50 years.

Mexico is one of the most improved countries this year, reaching the 25th position with a score of 75.4%.

Most of this progress is due to a large increase in the number of women in ministerial positions, jumping from 15.8% in 2018 to 42.1%.

In addition, women represent over 48% of seats in the country’s parliament.
These factors explain why Mexico has closed 46.8% of its gender gap on the Polit- ical Empowerment subindex, where it ranks 14th.

Further, Mexico has almost completely closed both its Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps.

Economically however, women are still disadvantaged.

Mexico has closed just 57.4% of its Economic Participation and Opportunity gap, ranking 124th.

Significant gaps in both wages (50%) and income (54%) show how women are less valued than men in the workplace.
At the same time, women struggle to attain senior positions (36%) and are not very active in the labour market in the first place.

Only 47% of women are in the labour force, 26.4% of them work part-time and women continue to spend three times as much as men on unpaid household care activities.

Nigeria has so far closed 63.5% of its gender gap, which places it 128th on the global rankings.
Nigeria performs relatively better in offering comparable economic oppor- tunities to both men and women than it does on the other dimensions of the index.

The country has closed 73.8% of its Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap to date (38th globally) and is one of the most improved coun- tries globally on this aspect since 2018 (almost 8 percentage points better than last edition).
Labour force participation, wages and income are low for both men and women, which has led to relatively positive gender parity outcomes that are however unsatisfactory from a human development point of view.

For instance, average annual incomes are estimated to be close to 4,600 int.$ for women and 6,300 for men.

31 In terms of occupations, women represent a higher share of skilled professionals than men (64.6%), but a significantly lower share of senior positions (30.3%).
Literacy rates are also insufficient and skewed in favour of men (52.6% and 71.3%, respectively).

Similarly, participation of women in for- mal in education is relatively low compared to other countries in the index, leading to gender gaps of almost 17% in primary education, 13% in secondary education and nearly 30% at the university level.

Only 58% of girls are in primary school, 47% of them attend secondary school and just 8.3% go to university.
Among politicians, only 3.4% of parliamentarians (149th) and 8% of ministers are women (124th).

Nigeria has never had a female head of state.

Pakistan ranks third-to-last (151st) on the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index, having closed only 56% of the gender gap.

This performance represents an improvement from the previous edition (55.0), but it is insufficient to prevent Pakistan from falling in the rankings, as new countries have entered the rankings at a higher position.
Pakistan ranks in the bottom 10 in three of the four main categories of the index and below the 100th mark in 12 of the 14 individual indicators composing the index.

Encouragingly, however, Pakistan improves on a majority of them—sometimes mark- edly and is stable in the others.

The gap remains cavernous in terms of economic participation and opportunities (32.7, 150th).

Only one-quarter of women participate in the labour force (i.e.

working or looking to work) compared with 85% of men (148th).
Only 5% of senior and leadership roles are held by women (146th), twice the rate of 2016.

It is esti- mated that only 18% of Pakistan’s labour income goes to women (148th), one of the lowest share among countries studied.

While a majority of countries have bridged or nearly bridged the educational gender gap, Pakistan’s still stands at almost 20%.
Less than half of women are literate, com- pared with 71% of men, while the share of women enrolled is systematically lower than the share of men across primary, secondary and tertiary education.

The political gender gap has narrowed markedly over the past two years but remains wide (15.9, 93rd).

In 2017, there was not a single female min- ister.

As of 1 January 2019, there were three women in the 25-member cabinet.

The Philippines has closed 78% of its overall gender gap.
Once a member of the top 10 on the Global Gender Gap Index, the country now ranks 16th as a result of a small decline in its score (78.1, down 1.8 percentage points).

The Philippines boasts the smallest gender gap of the Asian continent by far—the second best is Lao PDR, which ranks 43rd.

The country’s performance is strong across three of the four dimensions of the index.
It has closed 80% of the Economic Participation and Opportunity gender gap, with women outnumbering men in senior and leadership roles, as well as in professional and technical professions.

It is only one of four countries to achieve this feat.

The country ranks 5th on the indicator assessing gender wage equality, with a score of 81.2.

The Philippines has closed both its Edu- cational Attainment and Health and Survival gender gaps.

Women can expect to live in good health five years longer than men.
Literacy is universal, with rates above 98% for both sexes.

A significantly larger share of women is enrolled in secondary education (71% compared with 60% of men) and tertiary education (57% versus 43%).

However, the Polit- ical Empowerment gap has widened considerably over the past two years, albeit from a relatively high base (score of 35.3%, down 0.063), causing the country to drop from 13th to 29th position.
This downgrade is almost entirely attrib- utable to lower female representation in the cabinet, which declined from 25% to 10% between 2017 and 2019.

Female representation in the parliament was also slightly down and stood at 28% at the beginning of 2019.

The Russian Federation has closed 70.6% of its gap so far and ranks 81st overall in 2020.

Russian women are, on average, more educated than men and live longer but seldom achieve positions of leadership.
Ninety-one percent of women attend high school (versus 90.4% of men), 89% of female high-school graduates are enrolled in tertiary edu- cation versus 75% of men, and women enjoy a healthy life expectancy that is almost 8 years longer than men.

In addi- tion, there are almost as many women as men holding a PhD (64% vs. 66%).
Given these qualifications, Russian women not only participate in the labour force at high levels (68.9% are in the labour market), but they are employed in skilled jobs to a greater extent than men (62.3% of professional and technical workers are women).

Despite their average level of skill however, women are still penalized financially: only 71.2% of the wage gap and 57.9% of the income gap have been closed so far.
Income disparities are partially explained by the fact the women encounter resistance to access senior or managerial positions: 41.8% of managers and senior offi- cials are women and only 7% of board members are women.

Political participation is even more difficult.

Russia has closed less than 10% of its Political Empowerment gap so far and ranks only 122nd on this subindex.
Not only has there never been a woman as a head of state, but there are few women among ministers (12.9%) and parliamentarians (15.8%).

As a result, despite the fact that Russian society provides women with broad access to education and some segments of the labour market, a glass ceiling is preventing most of them from accessing positions of power either in politics or in the business sector.
The United States’ progress towards gender parity is stalling and the country registers a similar overall score to last year (72.4% of the gap closed so far).

Due to this lack of progress, the United States loses two positions in the rank- ing and is now 53rd.

The standstill is mostly explained by a small retraction in its Economic Participation and Oppor- tunity performance, where the progress towards equal wages takes a step back and at the same time income (wages and non-wages) gaps remain large.
The United States has only closed 69.9% of its wage gap and 65.6% of its income gap so far.

While monetary disparities are the main source of gender inequality in the workplace, labour force participation and the presence of women in skilled and senior positions women are relatively better: 66.8% of adult women are in the labour market, with an equal split between men and women in technical occupation and a 41/59 split among senior roles, ranking 22nd.

Despite 32 case for gender equality.


This year, the report introduces a deeper analysis of gender gaps across industries and the role of gender-based occupational and skills imbalances.

The report highlights the message to policy-makers that countries that want to remain competitive and inclusive will need to make gender equality a critical part of their nation’s human capital development.
In particular, learning between countries and public-private cooperation within countries will be critical elements of closing the gender gap.

The information contained in the Global Gender Gap Report series hopefully serves as a basis for continued benchmark- ing by countries on their progress towards gender equality, to help support the case for closing gender gaps and to encourage further research on policies and practices that are effective at promoting change.
Based on this information, the World Economic Forum also engages in country-level action, which takes place through various regional activities, including the “country-accelerator” project described in Box 2. being relatively well represented in middle and high man- agement roles, American women still struggle to enter the very top business positions: only 21.7% of corporate man- aging board members are women.

Similarly women are under-represented in political leadership roles.
Even with a significant increase in the number of women in parliament and ministerial positions compared to previous years, con- gresswomen are just 23.6% of the available seats (67th), and female minsters are only 21.7% of the cabinet (76th).

In addition, there has never been a woman president to date.
On a more positive note, gender parity is virtually achieved in Health and Survival and Educational Attainment, where female enrolment rates are above 90% across education levels, and outnumber the men in tertiary education.

Viet Nam has bridged 70% of its gender gap.

The country ranks 87th in 2020, down 10 positions from the pre- vious edition.
Its performance across the four dimensions of the index is mostly unchanged, but several countries have improved over the past year and, consequently, overtaken Viet Nam.

The country ranks 31st, up two positions, on the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex (score of 75.1%).

Estimates indicate that 45% of labour income accrue to women, one of the largest shares among countries stud- ied.
Limited data availability provides only a partial picture of the educational gender gap but suggests that there is almost parity in this area.

The literacy rate is 94% for women and 96% for men, and a larger share of women attends ter- tiary education (32% compared with 26% for men).

In terms of the Health and Survival subindex (94.2, 151st), Viet Nam gets penalized for the heavily skewed sex ratio at birth (89 girls for every 100), which is the lowest in the world and on par with China and Azerbaijan.
Finally, female participation in political life remains limited.

Women represent one-quar- ter of the parliament, but there is only one woman in the cabinet of 25 ministers, one of the world’s lowest ratios.

Conclusion The Global Gender Gap Report 2020 provides a compre- hensive overview of the current state of the global gender gap and of efforts and insights to close it.

The index offers a benchmarking tool to track progress and to reveal best practices across countries and subjects.
This year the report finds that the gender gap has closed slightly since last year, yet it will still require 99.5 years to achieve full parity at the current pace.

The report also highlights wide performance variation across countries that are due to a diverse array of under- lying factors.
The report’s detailed Country Profiles and online Data Explorer tool—available on the report website (https://wef-gender-gap.netlify.com/)—not only allow users to understand how close each country has come to the equality benchmark in each of the four subindexes, but also provide a snapshot of the legal and social framework within which these outcomes are produced.
The report continues to highlight the strong correlation between a country’s gender gap and its economic perfor- mance and summarizes some of the latest research on the 33 Box 2 Closing the Gender Gap Country Accelerators The Accelerators drive change by working on initiatives at three levels: changing institutional structures and policies, working on norms and attitudes and building public and pri- vate sector leaders’ collective commitment.
Each country works towards the following four objectives across all coun- tries through the country specific action plan: 1.

Increasing female labour force participation broadly and in selected sectors 2.

Increasing the number of women in leadership positions 3.

Closing gaps in wage and remuneration 4.


Building parity in emerging high-demand skills and jobs Accelerators are currently active in nine countries, of which seven are in Latin America and in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank.

We are inviting additional countries on board and aim to have 15 Accelerators by the end of 2020.
While there is growing knowledge of public policy and business actions that can help close aspects of the economic gender gap, there are no pre-existing change templates for how government and business can work together to acceler- ate change.

As countries strive for gender parity, there must be greater public-private collaboration, access to the latest knowledge on effective interventions, and improved learning and exchange between countries on the new methods they are applying.
The World Economic Forum Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society’s Closing the Gender Gap Country Accelerators provide a solution.

Each Accelerator is a national public-private collaboration plat- form to help governments and businesses identify, scale and accelerate initiatives to close gender gaps.

The Accelerator model helps focus the different existing efforts by bringing together relevant stakeholders onto one platform.
The Accelerators’ local leadership structure consists of 2 Ministers and 2–4 CEOs as Co-Chairs, a Country Coordinator who runs the initiative locally and 50–100 of the countries’ largest employers who drive the in-country change.

Coun- tries sign up to the model for three years and drive impact through a locally adapted action plan based on the Forum’s global framework.
In addition to in-country work, countries join the Global Accelerators Learning Network, which helps create informal exchange on successful local initiatives between countries.

The World Economic Forum maintains the global framework while each country leads its Accelerator independently, driving action against objectives in the local context.

34 Notes References 1 See World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS).
This figure refers to the share of women among the firms and countries where the survey is conducted.

2 See OECD, Gender, institutions and development database, female share of seats on boards of the largest publicly listed companies.

3 For more analysis on this aspect see Chapter 2.

4 Based on information provided by the OECD’s Gender, institutions and development database.

5 These figures refer to year 2018 and are computed and aggregated by UNESCO.
6 These figures refer to net enrolment rates in 2018 as computed and aggregated by UNESCO.

7 These figures refer to gross enrolment rates in 2018 as computed and aggregated by UNESCO.

8 9 It must be noted that the literacy rate data is for 2004 and therefore it is likely that literacy rates of men and women have increased significantly since then and that the gap has possibly reduced.
In the computation of the population-weighted regional average, the weight of the United States is approximately that of Canada.

The regional performance reflects to a very large extent the performance of the United States.

Albanesi, S., Changing Business Cycles: The Role of Wom- en’s Employment (CEPR Discussion Paper 13578), Center for Economic Policy and Research, 2019.

Blau, F. and L. Kahn, The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations (NBER Working Paper No.
21913), National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016, http:// www.nber.org/papers/w21913.

Chaaban, J. and W. Cunningham, Measuring the Economic Gain of Investing in Girls: The Girl Effect Dividend (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper), World Bank, 2011.

Coale, A., “Excess Female Mortality and the Balance of the Sexes in the Population: An Estimate of the Number of Missing Females”, Population and Development Review, vol.

17, no.

3, 1991, pp.

517–523.


Flabbi, L., et al., Do Female Executives Make a Difference?

The Impact of Female Leadership on Gender Gaps and Firm Performance (IZA Discussion Paper No.

8602), Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2014.

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25311), National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., 2018.

Ghani, E., M. Anandi and S. O’Connell, Can Political Empow- erment Help Economic Empowerment?
Women Leaders and Female Labor Force Participation in India (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 6675), World Bank, 2013.

Greig, F., R. Hausmann, L. D. Tyson and S. Zahidi, “The Gender Gap Index 2006: A New Framework for Mea- suring Equality” in The Global Gender Gap Report 2006, World Economic Forum, 2006.

Hausmann, R., Learning Without Theory, Project Syndicate, 2016.
Hunt, A. and E. Samman, Women’s Economic Empower- ment: Navigating Enablers and Constraints (Research Report), Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2016. International Labour Organization (ILO), Economic Impacts of Reducing the Gender Gap (What Works Research Brief No.

10), 2017.

——— , Global Wage Report 2018/19: What lies behind gen- der pay gaps, 2018.

Inter-Parliamentary Union, Women in Politics, 2019.
35 Jütting, J., et al., Measuring Gender (In)equality: Intro- ducing the Gender, Institutions and Development Data Base (GID) (Working Paper No.

247), OECD Development Centre, 2006. http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/17/49/36228820.pdf.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), “Cooking and Caring, Building and Repairing”, Society at a Glance 2011, 2011, pp.

9–27.

——— , Gender Equality in Politics in Government at a Glance, 2019.
——— , Comparable Estimates of Average Wages per Full- Time Equivalent Employee, available at http://www.

oecd.org/employment/emp/average_wages.pdf.

Schwab, K., The Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Eco- nomic Forum, 2016.

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead to 2030, 2016.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Global Assessment of Sex-Disaggregated ICT Employment Statistics: Data Availability and Chal- lenges on Measurement and Compilation (UNCTAD Technical Notes on ICT for Development no.

4), 2016.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “Technical Notes” in Human Development Report 2015, 2015.

——— , The State of the World’s Children 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health, 2008, http://www.unicef.org/ sowc09/docs/SOWC09-FullReport-EN.pdf.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, World Population Prospects, 2017 Revision, 2017.

World Economic Forum, The Global Competitiveness Report 2019, 2019.

——— , Accelerating Gender Parity: A Toolkit, 2017.

——— , The Global Gender Gap Report 2018, 2018.

36 CHAPTER 2 The Future of Gender Parity A Labour Market Shift In recent decades women have entered tertiary education and formal employment at an unprecedented pace.
The Global Gender Gap Index shows that gender gaps in professional roles have been narrowing – nearly 76% of the gap in these roles has been closed globally.

However, structural changes to labour markets are set to threaten those gains.

In 2018 the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report projected that, in the lead up to 2022, 75 million jobs might be lost and 133 gained in some of the largest advanced and emerging markets as the nature of work changes across the global economy.
The report¹ also demonstrated rising demand for roles in fields such as data analysis, human resources and sales, roles that are the frontier of the new economy.

In con- trast, the occupations facing declining demand are ones in data entry, accounting and administrative functions—roles which contain highly routinized tasks which are being rapidly displaced by technological advancement.

This chapter goes further in depth in the roles of the new economy and examines the gender gaps within them.
The analysis provided here reveals the set of growing professions which will be at the forefront of the emerging economy and cautions that they already exhibit nascent segregation along gender lines.

Without effective strategies aimed at closing gender gaps in frontier roles such trends are likely to impact the nature and quality of women’s employment prospects and entrench gender gaps into the future of work.
Gender Gaps in Frontier Roles A series of new metrics developed in collaboration between LinkedIn and the World Economic Forum can shed light on the gender dynamics of professional segregation at the frontiers of the new economy.
Analysis of the roles with a growth outlook as observed in five-year hiring trends across the LinkedIn platform identified eight clusters² of professions with increasing employment prospects across 20 leading economies.³ Those clusters span People and Culture, Con- tent Production, Marketing, Sales, Product Development, Data and AI, Engineering as well as Cloud Computing.
Among those eight micro-clusters, only two exhibit greater Figure 1 Share of male and female workers across professional clusters Share of workers (%) Notes All data except for “General – Professional and Technical Roles” is sourced from LinkedIn.

The additional data point is provided for context and sourced from ILO.
Male Female 37 100%020%20%40%60%80%40%60%80%100%65%57%49%40%37%35%26%15%12%People and CultureContent ProductionSalesProduct DevelopmentMarketingData and AIEngineeringCloud ComputingOverall - Professional andTechnical Roles employment of women as compared to men—People and Culture, and Content Production.

Figure 1 illustrates the extent of gender gaps across the professions at the frontier of the new economy.
For contrast, the figure also includes the share of women employed in pro- fessional and technical roles—a statistic which summarizes in the aggregate the degree to which women are employed in skilled roles in contrast to low-skilled or manual work across the global economy.

Through LinkedIn data we can observe that gender gaps are evident in specific skilled roles.
In par- ticular, across the three technical frontier role clusters defined by LinkedIn, female workers make up an estimated 26% of workers in Data and AI roles, 15% of workers in Engineer- ing roles and 12% of workers in Cloud Computing roles.

Data and AI, the newest technology profession, is poised to see greater parity than the more established technology professions of Engineering and Cloud Computing.
Roles in Marketing, Sales and Product Development stand closer to gender parity, with women making up 40%, 37% and 35% of the workforce, respectively.

In addition, we were able to anal- yse professions with highly distinctive skill sets which do not fit within those professional clusters.

These also exhibit sig- nificant gender gaps.

For example, women make up 12% of Automation Engineers, 13% of Android Developers, 18% of Robotics Engineers and 19% of Cyber Security Specialists.
Gender Gaps in Frontier Skills To understand the needed next steps for tackling gender gaps across the professions of the future, this report presents a method to identify whether professions are under- or over- utilizing the available talent pool for the professions of the future.

LinkedIn data scientists identified a set of professions which have high skill similarity with the professions of the future and compared women’s participation in that theoreti- cal talent pool and in frontier professions.
The results reveal that some professions are constrained by the availability of relevant talent, while others could effectively expand gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclu- sive managerial practices.
The data outlines an opportunity to bring the share of women in frontier roles closer to parity by targeting recruitment of women in professions with high skill similarity to frontier jobs, and by demonstrating new career path opportunities to female workers with frontier skill sets.

The Marketing cluster has the most potential to utilize a larger breadth of existing talent pools.

The estimated average share of women employed in the Marketing micro-cluster is 40%.
The same figure for the talent pool is 47%.

Data and AI, Sales, and Product Development professions similarly under-utilize available talent pools.

Figure 2 demonstrates those opportunities by each occupation.

Examining the data reveals that in the Data and AI micro-cluster women make up 25% of Data Scientists professionals but 31% of those with a relevant skill set in all other occupations.

In Marketing today 41% of Digital Specialists are women, yet 53% of those in the talent pipeline are female.
Such figures suggest there is scope to expand the share of women employed as Data Scientists and Digital Specialists.

In fact, all professions fea- tured above the dashed line in Figure 2 currently under-utilize their available talent pools and thus can make further gains through a diversity and inclusion agenda.

Cultural norms and practices underpin the higher edu- cation degree specialization of men and women and are a key driver of occupational segregation.
Figure 3 exhibits the regional variation of women’s participation across frontier professions.

Three factors underpin the share of men and women across the countries presented: differences in labour force participation of men and women, differences in the par- ticipation of men and women on the professional networking platform LinkedIn, and differences in the participation of men and women across frontier professions.
Gender Gaps in Frontier Roles and Frontier Skills by Geography Across the 20 countries covered in this analysis women make up 40% of the labour force.

This figure is at its lowest in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and India, where women are 16%, 20% and 22% of the labour force, respectively.

Parity comes closest in Canada, Sweden, New Zealand and France, where women make up 48% of the labour force.
On average the participation of women on the LinkedIn plat- form closely mirrors labour force participation figures, with an average across the 20 countries of 39%.

Regional varia- tions in participation in online professional networks underlie and influence the data.

Specific care should be taken with interpreting the figures for Germany and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, where the figures diverge.
Insights for these two countries may not provide as full a picture as other countries; as such, we would discourage cross-coun- try comparison for those economies.

Across all countries—irrespective of labour force partici- pation—the data reveals consistent variation in gender gaps across professional clusters, but the severity of that profes- sional segregation varies according to economy.
Singapore, the United States and India demonstrate larger shares of women across the most segregated professions – Engi- neering and Cloud Computing.

In Argentina, New Zealand and Singapore the Marketing profession has reached gen- der parity.

Cloud Computing, the most ‘male’ profession of the future, is closer to gender parity in India and Italy, two countries that have distinctively small gender gaps in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) higher education.
38 Figure 2 Share of women in occupations by professional cluster contrasted with share of women in the talent pipeline 1.0 e n i l i e p p t n e a t n l i n e m o w f o e r a h S Share of women working in the profession 1.0 People and Culture Content Production Sales Product Development Data and AI Engineering Cloud Computing Marketing There is one talent shortfall that consistently influences the ability of men and women to participate equally in roles of the future: women continue to be under-represented among workers with disruptive technical skills.
Disruptive technol- ogy skills are the capabilities associated with developing new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Genetic Engineering.

Figure 4 (page 42) details the share of men and women who possess different types of skills.

The data reveals that women make up a relatively larger share of those who state they have ‘soft skills’, and a relatively lower share of those with disruptive technology skills, although across both sets women make up a smaller share than men.
39 0.00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.90.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9Business PartnerChief CommercialOfficerChief Strategy OfficerTechnology AnalystSoftware Quality Assurance EngineerSocial Media CoordinatorSocial Media AssistantScrum MasterQuality Assurance EngineerInsights AnalystHead Of PartnershipsHead Of DigitalEnterprise Account ExecutiveDigital Product ManagerDigital Marketing ConsultantDevelopment SpecialistGrowth ManagerDigital SpecialistArtificial IntelligenceSpecialistData ScientistData EngineerCommercial Sales RepresentativeCommerceManager Figure 3 Share of men and women by professional cluster and country Jobs All Argentina Australia Brazil Canada France Germany India Ireland Italy 40 Male Female No data AllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent Production61%39%All60%40%Marketing35%65%People and Culture43%57%Content Production88%12%Cloud Computing63%37%Sales74%26%Data and AI65%35%ProductDevelopment85%15%Engineering57%95%91%50%74%32%62%62%58%43%5%9%50%26%68%38%38%42%AllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent Production59%95%89%59%82%29%62%72%50%41%5%11%41%18%71%38%28%50%54%88%84%60%70%29%64%64%38%46%12%16%40%30%71%36%36%62%67%92%85%58%76%35%68%64%55%33%8%15%42%24%65%32%36%45%AllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent Production56%88%81%56%73%30%61%64%43%44%12%19%44%27%70%39%36%57%59%91%89%66%73%31%61%72%33%41%9%11%34%29%69%39%28%67%57%86%80%74%30%51%62%51%43%14%20%26%70%49%38%49%75%83%80%73%76%42%73%72%51%25%17%20%27%24%58%27%28%49%55%83%81%51%69%32%56%64%35%45%17%19%49%31%68%44%36%65% Jobs Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Saudi Arabia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Male Female No data 41
 64%90%89%60%72%42%61%69%49%36%10%11%40%28%58%39%31%51%59%92%89%64%75%40%64%72%38%41%8%11%36%25%60%36%28%62%55%91%83%48%69%29%46%60%48%44%9%17%52%31%71%54%40%52%53%86%77%58%68%34%66%59%35%47%14%23%42%32%66%34%41%65%59%91%86%58%78%41%66%68%48%41%9%14%42%22%59%34%32%52%57%88%88%55%75%34%64%68%42%43%12%12%45%25%66%36%32%58%57%82%84%54%76%26%62%63%32%43%8%16%46%24%74%38%37%68%72%87%67%76%54%66%46%28%13%33%24%46%34%54%87%85%71%80%76%82%13%15%29%20%24%18%55%81%73%55%67%41%50%60%37%45%19%27%45%33%59%50%40%63%57%86%86%55%72%25%50%64%44%43%14%14%45%28%75%50%36%56%AllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent ProductionAllMarketingPeople and CultureContent ProductionCloud ComputingSalesData and AIProductDevelopmentEngineeringAllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent ProductionAllCloud ComputingEngineeringMarketingData and AIPeople and CultureSalesProductDevelopmentContent Production Figure 4 Share of men and women by skills cluster Skills cluster All - - Male Female The Road to Gender Parity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Research on labour market segregation along gender lines has revealed that professional segregation of men and women into differentiated sectors contributes not only to lower innovation levels in professions which lack gender diversity, but also that this professional divergence has a compounding effect on gender pay gaps.4 Monitoring gen- der parity in the professions of the future provides a critical opportunity to guide the emerging labour market to more equitable outcomes in the future of work.
Additionally, a wide range of studies have shown that the preferences for certain jobs and skill sets among men and women are shaped by both the expectation and experience of diversity and inclusion across occupations.5 Over time such divisions signal preferred labour market progression to men and women, contributing to the selection of higher edu- cation degrees, progression from higher education degrees into entry level roles, and the attrition of female workers from predominantly ‘male’ fields.
The insights provided in this chapter showcase key met- rics which can be used to track progress towards gender parity in the future of work and indicate a set of key strate- gies for closing gender gaps.

First among those strategies is an urgent need to increase the supply and visibility of women with disruptive technical skills.
To ensure that the professions of the future can target gender parity within the coming decade, reskilling and up skilling efforts for women interested in expanding their skills range should be focused on those already in the labour market or looking to re-enter the labour market after a period of inactivity.
In tandem, a rigorous diversity and inclusion agenda within organizations can direct hiring practices to fully utilize existing talent pools and ensure that inclusive working environments retain and develop the women already employed in frontier professions.

It is tempting to consider that such actions should be taken in sequence—that first, the supply of equally skilled female professionals should increase and further efforts on diversifying employment in frontier professions should fol- low.
Yet it is critical to ensure that women and young girls deliberating whether to make the investment of gaining new, technical skills can look to efforts underway in frontier profes- sions and be assured that this investment can be realized in a future career trajectory.

The World Economic Forum is sup- porting an emerging action agenda in this space (see Box 3).
42 58%42%Soft71%29%Technology, Disruptive59%41%Specialized Industry61%39%All60%40%Technology61%39%Business Box 3 Hardwiring gender parity in the future of work While many gender parity efforts have focused on the sup- ply side of future-skills for girls and women, there have been few demand side efforts to create incentives for women and girls to enrol in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programmes or to create an accelerated pathway for women to be hired into the highest-growth roles of the future—particularly those apply- ing STEM skills.
As labour markets go through a period of intense change there is a unique opportunity to embed parity into the future by balancing efforts between the demand side of growing jobs and the supply side of future-ready skills.

The World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the New Economy and Society aims to provide a solution through the “Hardwiring Gender Parity into the Future of Work” initiative, starting with a business commitment frame- work.
The framework aims to ensure that women are equally represented in all phases of the talent pipeline in emerging roles by asking companies to: • Identify their top five emerging high-growth roles, including high-volume roles and leadership roles • Recruit 50% female talent into their top five emerging high-growth roles by 2022, across all seniority levels • Develop a strong gender-equal reward system by 2022 that addresses unconscious bias and includes equal pay and equal opportunities Starting with a target of 50 pioneering companies over the course of 2020, the initiative aims to expand in the future to cover a variety of professions and skills, engage a wider range of global and local companies, and better connect supply and demand side initiatives.
Notes 1 World Economic Forum, 2018.

References 2 Micro-clusters are identified by bundling emerging jobs according to skills similarity.

3 South Africa, India, Singapore, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

4 5 The World Bank, 2019.

Ensmenger, 2010, Cardador, 2017, and Seron, et al., 2016.

Cardador, M.T., “Promoted Up But Also Out?


The Unintended Consequences of Increasing Women’s Representa- tion in Managerial Roles in Engineering”, Organization Science, vol.

28, no.

4, 2017, pp.

597–617, https:// doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1132.

Ensmenger, N., The Computer Boys Take over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise (History of Computing), MIT Press, 2010.
Seron, C., S. Silbey, E. Cech and B. Rubineau, “Persistence Is Cultural: Professional Socialization and the Repro- duction of Sex Segregation”, Work and Occupations, vol.

43, no.

2, 2016, pp.

178–214.

The World Bank, Tackling the Global Profitarchy : Gender and the Choice of Business Sector”, The World Bank, May 24, 2019. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/734371558715932769/Tackling-the-Global-Prof- itarchy-Gender-and-the-Choice-of-Business-Sector.
World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2018, 2018.

43 APPENDIX A Regional Classifications Table A1 Regional classifications, 2020 The following regional classifications are used for creating the regional performances tables and figures in Chapter 1.
East Asia and the Pacific Latin America and the Caribbean Sub-Saharan Africa Australia Brunei Darussalam Cambodia China Fiji Indonesia Japan Korea, Rep. Lao PDR Malaysia Mongolia Myanmar New Zealand Papua New Guinea* Philippines Singapore Thailand Timor-Leste Vanuatu* Viet Nam Eastern Europe and Central Asia Albania Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Argentina Bahamas Barbados Belize Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Suriname Trinidad and Tobago* Uruguay Venezuela Bosnia and Herzegovina Middle East and North Africa Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Estonia Georgia Hungary Kazakhstan Kyrgyz Republic Latvia Lithuania Moldova Montenegro North Macedonia Poland Romania Russian Federation Serbia Slovak Republic Slovenia Tajikistan Ukraine North America Canada United States Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran, Islamic Rep. Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Mauritania Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates Yemen South Asia Bangladesh Bhutan India Maldives Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Chad Congo, Democratic Rep. Côte d'Ivoire Eswatini Ethiopia Gambia, The Ghana Guinea Kenya Lesotho Liberia Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritius Mozambique Namibia Nigeria Rwanda Senegal Sierra Leone South Africa Tanzania Togo Uganda Zambia* Zimbabwe Western Europe Austria Belgium Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Iceland Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom 44 * New countries in 2020 APPENDIX B The Global Gender Gap Index: Methodology and Technical Notes Section A: Computation and Composition of the Global Gender Gap Index The methodology of the index has remained stable since its original conception in 2006, providing a basis for robust cross-country and time-series analysis.
This year’s edition doesn’t introduce any change in the methodology.

The 2020 results, therefore, can be seamlessly compared with those from previous years.

Three Underlying Concepts There are three basic concepts underlying the Global Gender Gap Index, forming the basis of how indicators were chosen, how the data is treated and how the scale can be used.

First, the index focuses on measuring gaps rather than levels.

Second, it captures gaps in outcome variables rather than gaps in input variables.
Third, it ranks countries accord- ing to gender equality rather than women’s empowerment.

Gaps vs. levels The index is designed to measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in countries, rather than the actual levels of the available resources and opportu- nities in those countries.

We do this to disassociate the Global Gender Gap Index from countries’ levels of development.
In other words, the index is constructed to rank countries on their gender gaps not on their development level.

For exam- ple, rich countries, generally speaking, are able to offer more education and health opportunities to all members of soci- ety, although this is quite independent of the gender-related gaps that may exist within those higher levels of health or education.
The Global Gender Gap Index rewards countries for smaller gaps in access to these resources, regardless of the overall level of resources.

Thus, in the case of education, for example, the index penalizes or rewards countries based on the size of the gap between male and female enrolment rates, but not for the overall levels of education in the country.
Outcomes versus inputs The second basic concept underlying the Global Gender Gap Index is that it evaluates countries based on outcomes rather than inputs or means.

Our aim is to provide a snap- shot of where men and women stand with regard to some fundamental outcome indicators related to basic rights such as health, education, economic participation and political empowerment.
Indicators related to country-specific pol- icies, rights, culture or customs—factors that we consider “input” or “means” indicators—are not included in the index but are discussed further in the analytic sections of this chap- ter, as well as featured in the report’s Country Profiles.
For example, the Index includes an indicator comparing the gap between men and women in high-skilled jobs such as legis- lators, senior officials and managers (an outcome indicator) but does not include data on the length of maternity leave (a policy indicator).
This approach has contributed significantly to the Index’s distinctiveness over the years and, we believe, continues to provide the most objective basis for discussing underlying contextual factors.1 Gender equality vs. women’s empowerment The third distinguishing feature of the Global Gender Gap Index is that it ranks countries according to their proxim- ity to gender equality rather than to women’s empowerment.
Our aim is to focus on whether the gap between women and men in the chosen indicators has declined, rather than whether women are winning the so-called “battle of the sexes”.

Hence, the index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men in particular indicators in some countries.
Thus, a country that has higher enrolment for girls rather than boys in secondary school will score equal to a country where boys’ and girls’ enrolment is the same.

The Four Subindexes The Global Gender Gap Index examines the gap between men and women across four fundamental catego- ries (subindexes): Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
Table B1 displays all four of these subin- dexes and the 14 indicators that compose them, along with the sources of data used for each.

Economic Participation and Opportunity This subindex contains three concepts: the participation gap, the remuneration gap and the advancement gap.

The participation gap is captured using the difference between women and men in labour force participation rates.
The remuneration gap is captured through a hard data indica- tor (ratio of estimated female-to-male earned income)2 and 45 Table B1 Structure of the Global Gender Gap Index, 2020 Subindex Indicator Source Economic Participation and Opportunity Labour force participation rate (%) International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT, Modelled Estimates Economic Participation Wage equality for similar work (survey, 1–7 World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) 2018–2019 and Opportunity scale) or latest available Economic Participation and Opportunity Economic Participation and Opportunity Economic Participation and Opportunity Estimated earned income (PPP, int.$) International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT Legislators, senior officials and managers ( %) International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT Professional and technical workers (%) International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT Educational Attainment Literacy rate ( %) UNESCO, UIS Education Statistics Data portal.
2017 or most recent available; when not available, data is sourced from United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports 2009, most recent year available between 1997 and 2007 Educational Attainment Enrolment in primary education ( %) UNESCO, UIS Education Statistics Data portal, 2017 or most recent available Educational Attainment Enrolment in secondary education ( %) UNESCO, UIS Education Statistics Data portal, 2017 or most recent available Educational Attainment Enrolment in tertiary education ( %) UNESCO, UIS Education Statistics Data portal, 2017 or most recent available Health and Survival Sex ratio at birth ( %) United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2019 Revision, Estimates for 2015–2020 Health and Survival Healthy life expectancy (years) World Health Organization (WHO), Global Health Observatory database, 2016 or most recent year available Political Empowerment Women in parliament ( %) Inter-Parliamentary Union, situation as of 1 September 2019 Political Empowerment Women in ministerial positions ( %) Inter-Parliamentary Union, situation as of 1 September 2019 Political Empowerment Years with female head of state (last 50), share World Economic Forum calculations, taking into account the period of tenure years 11 July 1970–1 July 2019 46 a qualitative indicator gathered through the World Economic Forum’s annual Executive Opinion Survey (wage equality for similar work).3 Finally, the gap between the advancement of women and men is captured through two hard data statistics (the ratio of women to men among legislators, senior officials and managers, and the ratio of women to men among tech- nical and professional workers).
Educational Attainment This subindex captures the gap between women’s and men’s current access to education through ratios of women to men in primary-, secondary- and tertiary-level education.

A longer-term view of the country’s ability to educate women and men in equal numbers is captured through the ratio of the female literacy rate to the male literacy rate.

Health and Survival This subindex provides an overview of the differences between women’s and men’s health through the use of two indicators.
The first is the sex ratio at birth, which aims spe- cifically to capture the phenomenon of “missing women”, prevalent in many countries with a strong son preference.4 Second, we use the gap between women’s and men’s healthy life expectancy.

This measure provides an estimate of the number of years that women and men can expect to live in good health by taking into account the years lost to violence, disease, malnutrition and other relevant factors.
Political Empowerment This subindex measures the gap between men and women at the highest level of political decision-making through the ratio of women to men in ministerial positions and the ratio of women to men in parliamentary positions.

In addition, we’ve included the ratio of women to men in terms of years in executive office (prime minister or president) for the last 50 years.
A clear drawback in this category is the absence of any indicators capturing differences between the participation of women and men at local levels of gov- ernment.

Should such data become available at a globally comparative level in future years, it will be considered for inclusion in the index.

Construction of the Index The overall Global Gender Gap Index is constructed using a four-step process, outlined below.
Some of the indicators listed in Table 1 require specific standardization or modification in order to be used in the Index.

For further information on the indicator-specific calculations, please refer to Section B of this Appendix.

Step 1.

Convert to ratios: Initially, all data is converted to female-to-male ratios.

For example, a country with 20% of women in ministerial positions is assigned a ratio of 20 women to 80 men, thus a value of 0.25.
This is to ensure that the Index is capturing gaps between women and men’s attainment levels, rather than the levels themselves.

Step 2.

Data truncation at equality benchmark: The ratios obtained above are truncated at the “equality benchmark”.

For all indicators, except the two health indica- tors, this equality benchmark is considered to be 1, meaning equal numbers of women and men.
In the case of sex ratio at birth, the equality benchmark is set at 0.944,5 and in the case of healthy life expectancy the equality benchmark is set at 1.066 to capture that fact that women tend to naturally live longer than men.

As such, parity is considered as achieved if, on average, women live five years longer than men.

Trun- cating the data at the equality benchmarks for each assigns the same score to a country that has reached parity between women and men and one where women have surpassed men.
The type of rating scale chosen determines whether the Index is rewarding women’s empowerment or gender equal- ity.7 To capture gender equality, two possible scales were considered.

One was a negative-positive scale capturing the size and direction of the gender gap.

This scale penalizes either men’s advantage over women or women’s advantage over men and gives the highest points to absolute equality.
The second choice was a one-sided scale that measures how close women are to reaching parity with men but does not reward or penalize countries for having a gender gap in the other direction.

We find the one-sided scale more appro- priate for our purposes, as it does not reward countries for having exceeded the parity benchmark.

However, disparities in either direction are recorded in the Country Profiles.

Step 3.
Step 3.

Calculation of subindex scores: Each of the four subindexes is computed as the weighted average of the underlying individual indicators.

Averaging the different indi- cators would implicitly give more weight to the measure that exhibits the largest variability or standard deviation.

We there- fore first normalize the indicators by equalizing their standard deviations.

For example, within the Educational Attainment subindex, standard deviations for each of the four indicators are calculated.
Then we determine what a 1% point change would translate to in terms of standard deviations by dividing 0.01 by the standard deviation for each indicator.

These four values are then used as weights to calculate the weighted average of the four indicators.

This way of weighting indicators allows us to make sure that each indicator has the same relative impact on the sub- index.
For example, an indicator with a small variability or standard deviation, such as primary enrolment rate, gets a larger weight within the Educational Attainment subindex than an indicator with a larger variability, such as tertiary enrolment rate.

Therefore, a country with a large gender gap in primary education (an indicator where most countries have achieved near-parity between women and men) will be more heavily penalized.
Similarly, in the case of the sex ratio at birth indicator (within the Health and Survival subindex), where most countries have a very high sex ratio and the spread of the data is small, the larger weight will penalize more heavily those countries that deviate from this value.

Table B2 dis- plays the values of the weights used.8 Step 4.
Calculation of final scores: For all subindexes, the highest possible score is 1 (gender parity) and the lowest possible score is 0 (imparity), thus binding the scores between inequality and equality benchmarks.9 47 Table B2 Calculation of weights within each subindex Economic Participation and Opportunity Ratio Labour force participation rate, % (females to males ratio) Wage equality for similar work (survey), 1-7 scale (females to males ratio) Estimated earned income, PPP, int.$ (females to males ratio) Legislators, senior officials and managers, % (females to males ratio) Professional and technical workers, % (females to males ratio) Educational Attainment Ratio Literacy rate, % (females to males ratio) Enrolment in primary education, % (females to males ratio) Enrolment in secondary education, % (females to males ratio) Enrolment in tertiary education, % (females to males ratio) Health and Survival Ratio Sex ratio at birth, % (females to males ratio) Healthy life expectancy, Years (females to males ratio) Political Empowerment Ratio Women in parliament , % (females to males ratio) Women in ministerial positions, % (females to males ratio) Years with female head of state (last 50), Share of tenure years (females to males ratio) Standard deviation Standard deviation per 1% point change Weight 0.160 0.103 0.144 0.214 0.262 0.063 0.199 0.097 0.310 0.069 0.221 0.047 0.149 0.038 0.121 Standard deviation Standard deviation per 1% point change Weight 0.145 0.060 0.120 0.228 0.069 0.191 0.167 0.459 0.083 0.230 0.044 0.121 Standard deviation Standard deviation per 1% point change Weight 0.010 0.023 0.998 0.693 0.441 0.307 Standard deviation Standard deviation per 1% point change Weight 0.166 0.208 0.116 0.060 0.310 0.048 0.247 0.086 0.443 Notes Population-weighted averages, including the 107 economies featured throughout all the 2006-2020 editions of the Global Gender Gap Index.
A simple average of each subindex score is used to calculate the overall Global Gender Gap Index score.

Similar to subindex scores, this final value ranges between 1 (parity) and 0 (imparity), thus allowing for comparisons relative to ideal standards of equality in addition to relative country rankings.10 The parity and imparity benchmarks remain fixed across time, allowing the reader to track individual country progress in relation to an ideal standard of equality.
Furthermore, the option of roughly interpreting the final index scores as a percentage value that reveals how a country has reduced its gender gap should help make the index more intuitively appealing to readers.11 48 Section B: Indicators Definitions and Sources Indicators Composing the Global Gender Gap Index Labour force participation rate, % Proportion of a country’s working-age population (15–64) female population that engages actively in the labour market, either by working or looking for work.

(i.e.
(i.e.

ratio of the num- ber of women participating in the labour force to total labour force).

Labour force data doesn’t take into account workers employed abroad.

It includes ILO estimates for missing data.

Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT, modelled estimates.
Wage equality for similar work, 1–7 (best) Response to the survey question, “In your country, for similar work, to what extent are wages for women equal to those of men?” (1 = not at all, significantly below those of men; 7 = fully, equal to those of men).

Period: 2018–2019 or most recent edition available Source: World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey (EOS).
Estimated earned income, int’l $ 1,000 The estimated female earned income is a proxy to com- mand by women over a country’s economic resources.

For each country, it is computed using female and male shares of the economically active population, the ratio of the female to male wages (both indicators are sourced from the ILO), gross domestic product valued at constant 2011 international dol- lars (IMF), and female and male shares of population (World Bank).
The methodology used to compute this indicator is adapted from the methodology developed by the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report Office for computing the Gender Development Index (UNDP, 2018, page 6 ).

Female and male wage measures used in the computation of the gender wage ratio corre- spond to the mean nominal monthly earnings of female and male employees, respectively.

In the absence of wage data, a gender wage ratio of 0.75 is used in the computation of the wage bill.
The ILO’s measure of earning corresponds to the mean of monthly earnings of all employees in nominal terms.

The earnings of employees relate to the gross remuneration in cash and in kind paid to employees, as a rule at regular intervals, for time worked or work done together with remu- neration for time not worked, such as annual vacation, other type of paid leave or holidays.
Earnings exclude employers’ contributions with respect to their what employees paid to social security and pension schemes as well as the benefits received by employees under these schemes.

Earnings also exclude severance and termination pay.

Statistics of earn- ings relate to the gross remuneration of employees, i.e.

the total before any deductions are made by the employer.

The measurement period of this indicator corresponds to that of the wage data.
In the Country Profiles, the values reported are the estimated average annual earned income per capita in constant 2011 international dollars for women and men, respectively, and the ratio of the two values.

Period: 2018 or most recent year available Sources: International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT database (accessed 28 October 2019); International Mon- etary Fund (IMF), World Economic Outlook (October 2019 edition); World Bank, World Development Indicators data- base (accessed 28 November 2019).
Legislators, senior officials and managers, % Ratio of women to men employed in senior roles, defined by the International Labour Organization as those who plan, direct, coordinate and evaluate the overall activ- ities of enterprises, governments and other organizations, or of organizational units within them, and formulate and review their policies, laws, rules and regulations.
It corresponds to Major Group 1 of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08).12 Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT database (accessed 28 October 2019).
Professional and technical workers, % Ratio of women to men employed in professional and technical roles, defined by the International Labour Organiza- tion as those who increase the existing stock of knowledge, apply scientific or artistic concepts and theories or those who perform technical and related tasks that require advanced knowledge and skill.

It corresponds to the sum of Major Groups 2 and 3 of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08).
Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT database (accessed 28 October 2019).

Literacy rate, % Percentage of the adult population (over 15 years of age) of each gender with the ability to both read and write and make simple arithmetic calculations.

Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: UNESCO, UIS.Stat Education statistics data por- tal.
When not available, data is sourced from United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Reports 2009, most recent year available between 1997 and 2007.

Enrolment in primary education, % Percentage of girls and boys in the official primary school age range (net rate) who are enrolled in primary education (International Standard Classification of Education [ISCED]).13 Period: 2017 or most recent year available Source: UNESCO, UIS.Stat Education statistics data portal.
Enrolment in secondary education, % Percentage of girls and boys in the official primary school age range (net rate) who are enrolled in secondary education (ISCED 2 and 3).

It excludes ISCED 4, which is post-second- ary, non-tertiary education.

Whenever data on this indicator is not available, the “Percentage of students in secondary education (ISCED 2 and 3) who are female” variable is used instead.

Period: 2017 or most recent year available Source: UNESCO, UIS.Stat Education statistics data portal.
Enrolment in tertiary education, % Total enrolment in tertiary education (gross rate), regard- less of age, expressed as a percentage of the most recent five-year age cohort that has left secondary school.

Ter- tiary education consists of ISCED levels 5 to 8, and gross enrolment data should be examined within the context of a country structure regarding military service as well as pro- pensity of students to seek education abroad.
Period: 2017 or most recent year available Source: UNESCO, UIS.Stat Education statistics data portal.

49 Sex ratio at birth, % Ratio of the number of boys born alive per 100 girls born alive.

Data is converted to a female-over-male value.

Biologi- cally, the ratio is relatively constant, and female births should be about 94.4% of male births.

Significant departure from this ratio indicates differences in treatment between newborn girls and newborn boys.
Period: Estimates for 2015–2020 Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2019 Revision.

Healthy life expectancy, years Average number of years that a person of each gen- der can expect to live in full health, calculated by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury.

Period: 2016 or most recent year available Source: World Health Organization (WHO), Global Health Observatory database.
Women in parliament, % Percentage of women holding parliamentary seats as a share of total parliamentary seats.

In instances where a par- liamentary system is bicameral, the figure used is the one for the lower house.

Period: Situation as of 1 September 2019 Source: Inter-parliamentary Union.

Women in ministerial positions, % Percentage of women holding ministerial portfolios as a share of total ministry positions in each government.
Some overlap between ministers and heads of government that also hold a ministerial portfolio may occur.

Period: Situation as of 1 January 2019 Source: Inter-parliamentary Union.

Years with female/male head of state (last 50) The number of years in the past fifty-year period for which a woman has held a post equivalent to an elected head of state or head of government in the country.

It takes into account prime ministers and/or presidents, royalties are not considered.
Period: 11 July 1970–1 July 2019 Source: World Economic Forum’s calculations.

Contextual Indicators General indicators GDP, US$ billions Gross domestic product in billions of current US dollars.

Period: 2018 Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook (WEO), October 2019 edition.

GDP per capita, constant ‘11, intl.

$1,000 Gross domestic product per person at 2011 constant purchasing power parity (PPP).

Period: 2018 Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook (WEO), October 2019 edition.
Total population, million people Estimate of the number of people of all ages living in a country, regardless of residency status or citizenship (except for refugees not permanently settled in the country of asy- lum who are generally considered part of the population of their country of origin).

Period: 2018 Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Pros- pects: The 2019 Revision.
Population growth rate, % Year-on-year percentage change in total population, calculated based on current and previous year.

It reflects the number of births and deaths during a period and the number of people migrating to and from a country.

Period: 2018 Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Pros- pects: The 2019 Revision.
Population sex ratio (female/male), female/male ratio Ratio of the number of females (thousands) to males (thousands) in the population of a society.

Period: 2018 Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Pros- pects: The 2019 Revision.

Work participation and leadership Labour force, million people Total number of people (by gender) participation in the labour force.
The ratio is the percentage of women participat- ing in the labour force to the total labour force.

Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: World Economic Forum’s calculations based on International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT database (accessed 20 November 2019).

Unemployed adults, % of labour force (15–64) Share of the labour force aged 15–64 of each gender that is without work but available for and seeking employ- ment.

Definitions of labour force and unemployment differ by country.
Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: International Labour Organization, ILOSTAT data- base (bulk download, accessed 17 November 2019).

Workers employed part-time, % of employed people The incidence of part-time employment, also known as the part-time employment rate, represents the percentage of employment that is part time.

Part-time employment in this table is based on a common definition of less than 35 actual weekly hours worked.
It is derived from both the indicator on employment by sex and actual weekly hours worked.

50 Period: 2018 or most recent year available Source: World Economic Forum’s calculations based on International Labour Organization (ILO), ILOSTAT database (accessed 20 November 2019).

Gender pay gap (OECD only), % The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between male and female median wages divided by male median wages.
Wages are computed for full-time equiva- lent dependent employees and are expressed in US$ using current exchange rates and US$ Purchasing Power Parity rates (PPPs) for private consumption expenditures as con- version factors.

For more details about the computation of wage estimates, refer to http://www.oecd.org/employ- ment/emp/average_wages.pdf.

Period: 2018 Source: OECD, Employment database.


Proportion of unpaid work per day, female/male ratio Share of average time spent on unpaid domestic work by women relative to that of men.

Unpaid domestic work includes care and volunteer work and is expressed as a share of a 24-hour period.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Database (GID-DB).
data refers to the proportion of seats held by women on boards for companies covered by the MSCI ACWI index—an index of around 2,400 large- and mid-cap firms from devel- oped and emerging countries.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Employment database.

Firms with female majority ownership, % firms Percentage of firms answering, “More than 50%” to the question “What percentage of the firm is owned by females?”.
For African countries surveyed in 2009–2011, this indicator is the percentage of companies answering, “Majority are women” or “All women” to the question “Are the owners of the firm?”.

For more details refer to: https:// www.enterprisesurveys.org/content/dam/enterprisesurveys/ documents/methodology/Indicator-Descriptions.pdf.

Period: 2013 Source: World Bank Enterprise Survey.

Firms with female top managers, % firms Percentage of firms answering “yes” to the question “Is the Top Manager female?”.
For more details refer to: https:// www.enterprisesurveys.org/content/dam/enterprisesurveys/ documents/methodology/Indicator-Descriptions.pdf.

Period: 2013 Source: World Bank Enterprise Survey.

Advancement of women to leadership roles, 1–7 (best) Access to finance Response to the survey question: “In your country, to what extent do companies provide women with the same opportunities as men to rise to positions of leadership?” 1=not at all; 7=to a great extent.
Period: 2018–2019 Source: World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Sur- vey (EOS).

Gender parity in tech roles, 1–7 (best) Response to the survey question: “In your country, to what extent are women entering information technology roles (across all sectors)?” 1=not at all; 7=to a great extent, the rate is equal to that of men.

Period: 2018–2019 Source: World Economic Forum, Executive Opinion Survey (EOS).

Boards of listed companies,% board members Share of board members of listed companies that are women.
Data differs slightly by country.

For EU countries, Iceland, Norway and Turkey, data refers to the proportion of seats held by women on boards for the largest 50 mem- bers of the primary blue-chip index in the country concerned (including only those companies that are registered in the given country).
“Board members” refers to all members of the highest decision-making body in the given company, such as the board of directors for a company in a unitary system or the supervisory board in the case of a company in a two-tier system.
For countries with data based on MSCI (https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/239004/ 2017 MSCI_Women+on+Boards+Progress+Report+2017.pdf), Right to hold a bank account and get credit, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same legal rights to open a bank account and obtain credit in a formal financial institution.
For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Women and men have the same rights to open a bank account and obtain credit at a formal financial institution, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.
Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against women’s above legal rights; 0.25 = Women and men have the same rights to open a bank account and obtain credit at a formal financial institu- tion to women and men, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.
However, some customary, religious or traditional practices or laws discriminate against women’s legal rights; 0.5 = Women and men have the same rights to open a bank account and obtain credit at a formal financial institution to women and men.

However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Women and men have the same rights to open a bank account at a formal financial insti- tution.
However, women do not have the same rights as men to obtain credit; 1 = Women do not have the same rights as men to open a bank account at a formal financial institution.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

Inheritance rights for daughters, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same legal rights to inheritance of land and non-land assets.
For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Widows 51 and daughters enjoy the same rights as widowers and sons to inherit land and non-land assets.

This applies to all groups of women.

Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against women’s inheritance rights; 0.25 = Widows and daughters enjoy the same rights as widowers and sons to inherit land and non-land assets.

This applies to all groups of women.


However, there are some customary, religious or traditional laws that discriminate against women’s inheritance rights; 0.5 = Widows and daughters enjoy the same rights as widowers and sons to inherit land and non-land assets.
However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Widows or daughters do not enjoy the same rights as widowers and sons to inherit land and/or non-land assets; 1 = Widows and daughters do not enjoy the same rights as wid- owers and sons to inherit land and/or non-land assets.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).
Women’s access to land use, control & ownership, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to land assets.

For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to land assets, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.

Customary, religious and traditional laws or prac- tices do not discriminate against women’s legal rights.
0.25 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to land assets, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.

However, some customary, reli- gious or traditional practices or laws discriminate against women’s legal right; 0.5 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to land assets.
However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Women and men have the same legal rights to own land assets, but not to use, make decisions and/or use land assets as collateral; 1 = Women do not have the same legal rights as men to own land assets.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).
Women’s access to non-land assets use, control & own- ership, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to non-land assets.

For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to non-land assets, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.
Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against women’s legal rights; 0.25 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to non-land assets, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.

However, some custom- ary, religious or traditional practices or laws discriminate against women’s legal right; 0.5 = Women and men have the same legal rights and secure access to non-land assets.
However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Women and men have the same legal rights to own non-land assets, but not to use, make decisions and/or use non-land assets as collateral; 1 = Women do not have the same legal rights as men to own non-land assets.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

Civil and political freedom Year women received right to vote Year women received right to vote.
Refers to the year in which the right to vote or stand for election on a universal and equal basis was recognized.

Where two years are shown, the first refers to the first partial recognition of the right to vote or stand for election.

Period: Situation as of 2019 Source: World Economic Forum’s calculations.

Number of female heads of state to date The number of women who have ever taken office over the past fifty-year period as head of state or head of govern- ment in a country.
Period: 2019 Source: World Economic Forum’s calculations.

Election list quotas for women, national, yes/no Reports if a country has in place electoral laws specify- ing quotas for female candidates in national elections to the lower parliamentary house.

Period: 2019 Source: Quotaproject.org.

Party membership quotas, voluntary, yes/no Reports if a country has in place voluntary quotas spec- ifying the number of women for political party membership.

Period: 2019 Source: Quotaproject.org.


Seats held in upper house, % total seats Percentage of women holding seats in the higher house of representatives as a share of total seats.

Applies only to bicameral parliamentary systems.

Period: 2019 Source: Inter-parliamentary Union.

Right to equal justice, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same rights to provide testimony in court, hold public or political office in the judiciary and sue.
For each case, the fol- lowing scores are assigned: 0 = A woman’s testimony holds the same evidentiary weight as a man’s in all types of court cases and women have the same rights as men to sue and to hold public or political office in the judiciary.
Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against women’s legal right to sue, to provide testimony in court or to be a judge, advocate or other court officer; 0.25 = A woman’s testimony holds the same evidentiary weight as a man’s in all types of court cases and women have the same 52 rights as men to sue and to hold public or political office in the judiciary.

Women’s testimonies carry the same eviden- tiary weight in customary/religious courts/tribunals.
However, some customary, traditional or religious practices or laws discriminate against women’s legal right to sue, to provide testimony in court or to be a judge, advocate or other court officer; 0.5 = A woman’s testimony holds the same eviden- tiary weight as a man’s in all types of court cases and women have the same rights as men to sue.

However, women do not have the same right as men to hold public or political office in the judiciary; 0.75 = Women and men have the same rights to sue.
However, a woman’s testimony does not hold the same evidentiary weight as a man’s in all types of court cases; 1 = Women and men do not have the same rights to sue.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

Measures the average number of children a hypothetical cohort of women would have at the end of their reproduc- tive period if they were subject during their whole lives to the fertility rates of a given period and if they were not subject to mortality.
Period: 2015–2020 estimates Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects 2019 - Special Aggregates, Online Edition.

Rev.

1.

Women’s unmet demand for family planning, % women 15–49 Percentage of currently married or in-union women of reproductive age (15–49) who want to stop or delay child- bearing but are not using any method of contraception.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).
Right to travel outside the country, 0–1 (worst) Right to divorce, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether women and men have the same rights to apply for national identity cards (if appli- cable) and passports and travel outside the country.

For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Women and men have the same rights to apply for national identity cards (if applicable) and passports and to travel outside the country, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.
Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against these rights; 0.25 = Women and men have the same rights to apply for national identity cards (if applicable) and passports and to travel out- side the country, without legal exceptions regarding some groups of women.
However, some customary, traditional or religious practices or laws discriminate against these rights; 0.5 = Women and men have the same rights to apply for national identity cards (if applicable) and passports and to travel outside the country.
However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Women do not have the same rights as men to apply for national identity cards (if appli- cable) or passports or to travel outside the country; 1 = Women do not have the same rights as men to apply for national identity cards (if applicable) or passports and to travel outside the country.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).
Family and care Mean age of women at birth of first child The mean age of mothers at first child’s birth is defined as the average completed year of age of women when their first child is born.

Period: 2015–2020 estimates Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects 2019 - Special Aggregates, Online Edition.

Rev.

1.
Rev.

1.

Average number of children per woman Index measuring whether women and men have the same legal rights to initiate divorce and have the same require- ments for divorce or annulment.

For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = Women have the same rights to initiate divorce and the same requirements to finalize divorce or annulment as men, without negative repercussions from their parental authority.

This applies to all groups of women.


Customary, religious and traditional laws or practices do not discriminate against women’s rights regarding divorce or parental authority after divorce; 0.25 = Women have the same rights to initiate divorce and the same requirements to finalize divorce or annulment as men, without negative repercussions from their parental authority.

This applies to all groups of women.


However, there are some customary, religious or tra- ditional laws or practices that discriminate against women’s rights regarding divorce and/or parental authority after divorce; 0.5 = Women have the same rights to initiate divorce and the same requirements to finalize divorce or annulment as men, without negative repercussions from their parental authority.
However, this does not apply to all groups of women; 0.75 = Women do not have the same rights over divorce as men: either their rights to initiate divorce and/or the requirements to finalize divorce or annulment are unequal, or their freedom from parental authority after divorce is restricted; 1 = Women do not have the same rights over divorce as men: their rights to initiate divorce and/or the requirements to finalize divorce or annulment are unequal, and their freedom from parental authority after divorce is restricted.
Period: 2017 Source: OECD Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

Child marriage, % women 15-19 Percentage of girls aged 15–19 years who are or have ever been married, divorced, widowed or in an informal union.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

53 Length of maternity/paternity leave (days), weeks Education, attainment % Number of weeks of job-protected leave available for mothers/fathers just before and after childbirth.
For countries where there is no separate legislation for maternity leave, the weeks of parental leave reserved for the exclusive use of mothers around childbirth are reported.
Paid father-specific leave refers to the number of paid weeks reserved for the exclusive use of fathers, including entitlements to paid pater- nity leave, ‘father quotas’ or periods of paid parental leave that can be used only by the father and cannot be transferred to the mother, and any weeks of paid sharable leave that must be taken by the father in order for the family to qualify for ‘bonus’ weeks of parental leave.

Period: 2018 Source: OECD, Employment database.


Wages paid during maternity/paternity leave, % annual gross wage Average share of gross annual wage paid.

It refers to the proportion of previous earnings replaced by the benefit over the length of the paid leave entitlement for a person earning 100% of average national full-time earnings.

For maternity leaves, it refers to paid parental leave and subsequent peri- ods of paid home care leave to care for young children.
For paternity leave rates, information refers to entitlements to paternity leave, ‘father quotas’ or periods of parental leave that can be used only by the father and cannot be transferred to the mother, and any weeks of sharable leave that must be taken by the father in order for the family to qualify for ‘bonus’ weeks of parental leave.

Period: 2018 Source: OECD, Family database.

Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from Education programmes.
Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Engineering, Manuf.

& Construction, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education gradu- ates from Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Health & Welfare, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from Health and Welfare programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Information & Comm.
Information & Comm.

Technologies, attainment % Percentage of male/female graduates from tertiary edu- cation graduating from Information and Communication Technologies programmes Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Natural Sci., Mathematics & Statistics, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education gradu- ates from Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.


Services, attainment % Education and skills Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates STEMS, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathe- matics) programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.


Agri., Forestry, Fisheries & Veterinary, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Veterinary programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Arts & Humanities, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from Arts and Humanities programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Business, Admin.
Business, Admin.

& Law, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education graduates from Business, Administration and Law programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

from Services programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

Social Sci., Journalism & Information, attainment % Percentage of male/female tertiary education grad- uates from Social Sciences, Journalism and Information programmes.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.


Vocational training, attainment % Percentage of girls/boys aged 15–24 who are enrolled in vocational education relative to the total 15–24 year-old population.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.

PhD graduates, attainment % Percentage of 25+ year-old women/men who have attained a doctoral degree or equivalent (ISCED 8) relative to the total population of over 25-year-olds.

Period: 2017 Source: UNESCO, Education indicators.


54 Health Maternal mortality, deaths per 100,000 live births Number of female deaths in a specific year from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its man- agement (excluding accidental or incidental causes) during pregnancy and childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the preg- nancy, per 100,000 live births.
Period: 2017 estimates Source: World Health Organization, Global Health Observa- tory (GHO) database, “Maternal deaths” indicator (accessed 18 November 2019).

Prevalence of gender violence in lifetime, % women Percentage of ever-partnered women who ever suffered intimate partner physical and/or sexual violence.

Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).
Law permits abortion to preserve a woman’s health, 0–1 (worst) Index measuring whether the legal framework protects women’s reproductive health and rights.
For each case, the following scores are assigned: 0 = The legal framework protects women’s reproductive health and rights in case of unwanted pregnancy, without any justifications; 0.25 = The legal framework protects women’s reproductive health and rights in case of unwanted pregnancy, but requires justifi- cations; 0.5 = The legal framework only protects women’s reproductive health and rights in case of unwanted preg- nancy with some justifications; 0.75 = The legal framework only protects women’s reproductive health and rights in case of unwanted pregnancy with strict justifications; 1 = The legal framework does not protect women’s reproductive health and rights in case of unwanted pregnancy.
Period: 2017 Source: OECD, Gender, Institutions and Development Data- base (GID-DB).

Births attended by skilled personnel, % live births Share of live births attended by skilled health personnel to total live births in a given year.

Period: 2017–2018 or most recent period available Source: World Health Organization, Global Health Observa- tory database, “Births attended by skilled health personnel” indicator (accessed 18 November 2019).
Antenatal care, at least four visits, % women 15–49 Percentage of women aged 15–49 with a live birth in a given time period that received antenatal care provided by skilled health personnel (doctors, nurses or midwives) at least four times during pregnancy.

Period: 2017 or most recent year available Source: WHO, Global Health Observatory (GHO) database, “Maternal health” indicator.

55 men (highest score is assigned to the country with the biggest gap in favour of women).
8 As in previous editions of the index, weights derived for the 2006 index were used again this year to allow for comparisons over time.

They may be revised in future editions to reflect the evolution of the gender gap over the past decade.

9 This is not strictly accurate in the case of the Health and Survival subindex, where the highest possible value a country can achieve is 0.9796.
However, for purposes of simplicity, we will refer to this value as 1 throughout the chapter and in all tables, figures and Country Profiles.

10 Because of the special equality benchmark value of 0.9796 for the Health and Survival subindex, it is not strictly accurate that the equality benchmark for the overall index score is 1.

This value is in fact (1 + 1 + 1 + 0.9796) / 4 = 0.9949.
However, for purposes of simplicity, we will refer to the overall equality benchmark as 1 throughout the chapter and in all tables, figures and Country Profiles.

11 Since the indicators in the subindexes are weighted by the standard deviations, the final scores for the subindexes and the overall Index are not a pure measure of the gap vis-à-vis the equality benchmark, and therefore cannot be strictly interpreted as percentage values measuring the closure of the gender gap.
However, for ease of interpretation and intuitive appeal, we will be using the percentage concept as a rough interpretation of the final scores.

12 International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO), www.ilo.org/ public/english/bureau/stat/isco/.

13 International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), www.uis.unesco.org/ Education/Documents/isced-2011-en.pdf.

Notes 1 For some further discussion of this point see Hausmann, 2016.
2 Following a methodology originally developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Gender Gap Index estimates the average income earned by women, relative to income earned by men, in a calculation that takes into account a country’s GDP per capita (US$), the share of women and men in the labour force, and their mean nominal wages.
To account for globally rising income levels, beginning with last year’s edition, the report no longer caps the maximum income per capita value considered in the calculation.
This follows UNDP’s own adjustment of the methodology and the fact that the US$40,000 cap formerly used in previous editions of the Global Gender Gap Index had increasingly lost some of its ability to discern the level of gender-based income disparities among high-income nations such as the Nordics, the United States and the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
For a full overview of the 2016 methodology change, please refer to that report edition’s Appendix D. 3 For more information about the Executive Opinion Survey, see World Economic Forum, 2019, Appendix B.

4 Beginning with last year’s edition, the report utilizes the United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects as its sole reference source for the sex ratio at birth indicator.
Previous editions of the report had utilized data from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook as an alternative data source.

With the exception of Haiti, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, discrepancies in reported values between the two data repositories are no more than 2% for all countries covered by the index, resulting in minimal score differences in all cases.

5 This ratio is based on what is considered to be a “normal” sex ratio at birth: 1.06 males for every female born.
See Klasen and Wink, 2003.

6 This ratio is based on the standards used in the UNDP’s Gender-Related Development Index, which uses 87.5 years as the maximum age for women and 82.5 years as the maximum age for men.

7 A first attempt to calculate the gender gap was made by the World Economic Forum in 2005; see Lopez-Claros and Zahidi, 2005.
The 2005 index, which was attempting to capture women’s empowerment, used a “feminist” scale that rewarded women’s supremacy over 56 References Hausmann, R., “Learning Without Theory”, Project Syndi- cate, 30 March 2016, https://www.project-syndicate.

org/commentary/learning-without-theory-by-ricar- do-hausmann-2016-03?barrier=accesspaylog.

Klasen, S. and C. Wink, “Missing Women: Revisiting the Debate”, Feminist Economics, vol.

9, no.

2–3, 2003, pp.

263–299.


Lopez-Claros, A. and S. Zahidi, Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Global Gender Gap, World Economic Forum, 2005.

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical Update, 2018, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ hdr2018_technical_notes.pdf.

World Economic Forum, The Global Competitiveness Report 2019, 2019.
57 General Indicators GDP, US$ billions Education and skills STEMS, attainment % – – 17.18 2.11 GDP per capita, constant '11, intl.

$ 1000 Agri., Forestry, Fisheries & Veterinary, attainment % Total population, million people Population growth rate, % 9.55 19.10 Arts & Humanities, attainment % 3.08 Business, Admin.
& Law, attainment % Population sex ratio (female/male), female/male ratio 50.06 49.94 Education, attainment % Workers employed part-time, % of employed people 25.80 Services, attainment % Engineering, Manuf.

& Construction, attainment % Health & Welfare, attainment % Information & Comm.
Technologies, attainment % Natural Sci., Mathematics & Statistics, attainment % Social Sci., Journalism & Information, attainment % Vocational training, attainment % PhD graduates, attainment % 2.92 0.01 4.16 0.22 0.70 0.04 Gender parity in tech roles, 1-7 (best) Health Boards of listed companies,% board members n/a n/a Maternal mortality, deaths per 100,000 live births Firms with female majority ownership, % ﬁrms 9.10 90.90 Prevalence of gender violence in lifetime, % women Firms with female top managers, % ﬁrms 11.60 88.40 Law permits abortion to preserve a woman’s health, 0-1 (worst) Births attended by skilled personnel, % live births Antenatal care, at least four visits, % women 15-49 MLI n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a – – – – – n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a – – – – – 562 34.6 0.50 43.70 38.00 0.621 / 139 SELECTED CONTEXTUAL DATA – – 9.53 3.00 2.71 8.02 – n/a – – – – – – – n/a n/a n/a n/a – – n/a n/a – – – 3.04 1.00 0.44 1.17 2.92 n/a n/a 3.93 3.11 n/a 0.10 0.13 0.25 0.50 0.25 0.25 1 Yes Yes n/a 0.75 0.00 3.47 6.83 8.84 – n/a – – – – – – n/a n/a n/a n/a – – n/a n/a 29.0 5.92 – – – 17.20 0.50 44.00 Work participation and leadership Labour force, million people Unemployed adults, % of labour force (15-64) Gender pay gap (OECD only), % Proportion of unpaid work per day, female/male ratio Advancement of women to leadership roles, 1-7 (best) Access to ﬁnance Right to hold a bank account & get credit, 0-1 (worst) Inheritance rights for daughters, 0-1 (worst) Women’s access to land use, control & ownership, 0- 1 (worst) Women’s access to non-land assets use, control & ownership, 0-1 (worst) Civil and political freedom Year women received right to vote Number of female heads of state to date Election list quotas for women, national, yes/no Party membership quotas, voluntary, Yes/no Seats held in upper house,% total seats Right to equal justice, 0-1 (worst) Right to travel outside the country, 0-1 (worst) Family and care Mean age of women at birth
 of ﬁrst child Average number of children per woman Women's unmet demand for family planning, % women 15-49 Right to divorce, 0-1 (worst) Child marriage, % women 15-19 Length of maternity/paternity leave (days), weeks n/a n/a n/a Wages paid during maternity/paternity leave, % annual gross wage n/a n/a n/a rank out of 153 countries 90 1.00 = parity 0.693 score 0.00 = imparity Global Gender Gap Index Economic participation and opportunity Educational attainment Health and survival Political empowerment 71 91 26 65 48 0.652 0.510 0.998 0.974 0.126 90 106 1 116 78 0.693 0.621 1.000 0.969 0.184 Malta s c i t i l o P Economy Health E d u c a t i o n COUNTRY SCORE CARD – 1956 Wage equality for similar work, 1-7 (best) 58 0.682 0.613 – – 4.77 Economic participation and opportunity 106 0.621 0.582 Labour force participation rate, % 104 0.701 0.661 57.4 81.9 0.70 Estimated earned income, int'l $ 1,000 113 0.521 0.499 22.5 43.3 0.52 Legislators, senior oﬃcials and managers, % 91 0.356 28.9 71.1 0.41 Professional and technical workers, % 103 0.778 0.756 43.8 56.2 0.78 Educational attainment Literacy rate, % Enrolment in primary education, % Enrolment in secondary education, % Enrolment in tertiary education, % 1 1 1 1 1 1.000 0.954 1.000 0.899 96.0 93.0 1.03 1.000 0.757 – – - 1.000 0.954 91.8 87.5 1.05 1.000 0.931 56.6 41.3 1.37 Health and survival Sex ratio at birth, % 116 0.969 0.958 112 0.943 0.925 – – 0.94 Healthy life expectancy, years 124 1.028 1.034 73.3 71.3 1.03 Political empowerment Women in parliament , % Women in ministerial positions, % Years with female/male head of state (last 50) 78 130 102 17 0.239 0.298 11.9 88.1 0.14 0.255 14.3 85.7 0.17 0.190 9.2 40.8 0.23 239 femalemalevaluefemalemalevaluefemalemalevaluefemalemalevaluefemalemalevaluefemalemalevaluefemalemalevalueMalta scoreaverage score 2006 score 2020 scoredistance to parityrankscoreavgfemalemalef/m0.001.002.000.4060.1840.1360.1670.2270.001.002.00