Gender parity still 120 years away despite narrowing gap: WEF report

On a geographical basis, Europe leads in closing the overall gender gap, followed by North America, while the Middle East and North Africa lag.

Global gender parity remains more than a lifetime away for women even though the gap with men is now smaller than ever, according to the World Economic Forum.

The Geneva-based organization’s annual report on the matter, released on Wednesday, found that current progress means it will still take 120 years to reach full equality. That’s a marked improvement, and up from 170 years measured a decade ago, but it still means that no-one alive today is likely to experience it.

The WEF’s report combines indexes of political empowerment, economic participation and opportunity, health and survival and educational attainment to assess gender disparity across the world. The overall gap across 145 economies has narrowed to 69.4%, the best result recorded in two decades of such reports.

“Gender parity is achievable — economies at every income level have made progress, so the barrier is not a lack of resources,” said Saadia Zahidi, managing director at the WEF. “To accelerate, governments and employers need to learn from the policies that work and apply them faster.”