Gender economic equality to remain elusive for 80 years, says report

Published Oct 29, 2014

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Catherine Bosley Zurich

ECONOMIC equality between men and women globally will not be achieved for another eight decades, the World Economic Forum (WEF) concluded in a report.

The study of 142 countries, published annually by the Geneva-based organisation, found that women’s attainments and opportunities in the workplace are 60 percent; those of men, up from 56 percent in the first such report in 2006. On this basis, parity will be achieved only in 81 years.

“Much work still remains to be done,” said Saadia Zahidi, the head of the WEF’s gender-parity programme and lead author of the report. “The pace of change must in some areas be accelerated.”

While not a single country has yet closed the overall gender gap entirely, Nordic countries have fared best.

Iceland, Finland, Norway – where the government recently made military service compulsory for women – and Sweden top the ranking this year, as they did last. Denmark was fifth. Also in the top 10 are Nicaragua, Rwanda, Ireland, the Philippines and Belgium.

“Achieving gender equality is obviously necessary for economic reasons,” said Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder and executive chairman. “But even more important, gender equality is a matter of justice.”

The criteria for the WEF’s ranking include economics, politics, education and health.

The US climbed three places to 20th, having narrowed the pay gap and having increased the number of female legislators and senior government officials, the forum said.

Both in Europe and the US, there has been a push for women to be appointed to corporate boards on the grounds that more diverse bodies make better decisions. Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have quotas for women on boards.

South Africa ranked 18th, with Brazil at 71, Russia at 75, and China at 87. At 114 came India, where violence against women became a major election topic this year after a series of rape cases that reverberated around the world. The forum said India was one of the few countries where the participation of women in the labour force was diminishing.

Kuwait proved the Middle East and north Africa’s best- ranked country at 113th. Yemen was given the lowest ranking of any country. – Bloomberg

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