Women Will Need To Wait 131 Years Until They Achieve Gender Parity Worldwide

Generally speaking, women in India make 27% less money than males for doing same work. Women everywhere may relate to this as well. Gender discrimination persists in most nations, and among other reasons, males continue to earn more than women in almost every industry.

Eight years ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Because it’s 2015,” in response to a question on why attaining gender parity in the Cabinet he had assembled. Twenty-four months from now, in two months, gender parity will still be hard to achieve worldwide.

Twenty percent of men and fourteen percent of women worldwide, respectively, still think it is improper for a woman to work a paid job outside the house, according to a research published by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Many women said that choosing to work outside the house was not supported by their immediate relatives. Because of this, in addition to discriminatory pay practices, gender inequality, and unequal distribution of childcare and household duties, women often get less money than men for doing equivalent work.

The most “gender-neutral” nation also exhibits this kind of gender inequality. For the last 14 years running, Iceland has been ranked first in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Gender Report. However, tens of thousands of women and non-binary people in the nation bemoan the fact that, after 48 years, the demand that women’s labor be valued on par with that of males, has not been satisfied. When the world’s first female president was elected 48 years ago, it marked a turning point in history since 90% of Icelandic women chose not to work on “kvennafrí,” or women’s day off.

Last week, women from this so-called “paradise for equality” stopped the country in its tracks by demanding their full compensation.

Global parity between genders
Stories like this come from women throughout the globe. According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) research, India ranks a dismal 108th out of 153 nations in terms of the gender pay gap, with women earning just 71% of what men earn. Even while women make up about 30% of the Indian technology industry, the pay gap is especially pronounced in certain fields, including the technology sector, where women only make 60% of what men do.

In India, there has been considerable progress in reducing the gender wage gap, but the figures remain appalling by global standards. Based on statistics from the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) labor force survey, Indian women earned, on average, 48% less money in 1993–1994 than did males. Since then, the difference has shrunk to 28% in 2018–19.

The top nine nations—Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia, and Lithuania—according to WEF have reduced at least 80% of their gender disparity, despite the fact that no nation has yet attained complete parity.

According to the WEF’s 2023 rankings, Norway is ranked second, with a projected 87.9% of the worldwide gender gap filled. In the Women’s Peace and Security Index for 2021, it came in top place as well.

New Zealand is the best performance in the Southern Hemisphere, ranking fourth overall in the WEF report. Its female parliamentary members make up almost half of the total, and female enrollment in basic and secondary school is almost equal to that of male enrollment.

Namibia, the only African nation in the top 10, with an estimated 80.2% closed gender gap. It is placed eighth, higher than leading nations in other regions of the globe, such as the UK (15th), Spain (18th), Canada (30th), and the US (43rd).

Gender equality does not follow from being ranked first.
However, the report’s optimistic assessment varies depending on the factors examined. Iceland comes in top for political women’s empowerment, but it comes in 79th for educational attainment and 128th for the survival and health of women.

Even New Zealand has several shortcomings. According to the WEF, males make $52,370 annually on average, while women make $33,620 on average. Regarding salary equality for equal labor, it comes in at number 37. It placed 109th in the survey and did not do well on female life expectancy either.

In the survey, the Philippines comes in at number sixteen. The WEF said that the disparity in the proportion of female lawmakers (37.6% parity) increased, so “effectively decreasing overall parity on the political empowerment subindex (40.9 per cent) by 0.7 percentage points since 2018”.

Although the number of men and women working as senior executives and technical personnel in the Philippines reached complete parity, the research states that there is still a pay disparity since women’s salary is only 71.6% of men’s.

There will be more waiting. According to the WEF, women may need to wait an additional 131 years to reach gender parity with males.

The long-standing Women’s Reservation Bill was enacted by India in September, allocating one-third of all seats in the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies to women. However, the fact that the much-needed law is contingent upon the approval of another exercise pertaining to a census and delimitation, which has unavoidably been postponed for years and may not be addressed until the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, indicates that the goal of gender parity is still far off. Not just in the “paradise of equality,” but also in India.