The biggest election year in history, 2024 will see 2 billion people go to the polls. They will not only determine countries’ ruling parties, but they will shape the gender split of governments and legislatives.
Currently, Political Empowerment is the largest of four gender gaps at only 22.5% closed, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024. The majority of the top 10 most gender-equal countries are in Europe, with Ireland and Spain re-entering the top 10 this year.
We are in 2024, but gender equality remains elusive across the globe. In the last years the proportion of women in senior and middle management positions (SDG Indicator 5.5.2) was lower than 35 per cent in half of the world’s countries. Men still earned more than women in most countries, in nearly all industries, due to various factors including persisting gender segregation in employment by occupation, disruptions to the working lives of women due to motherhood, uneven sharing of family and care responsibilities, and unfair pay practices.
Although no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top nine countries (Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania) have closed at least 80% of their gap. For the 14th year running, Iceland (91.2%) takes the top position. It also continues to be the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap. The global top five is completed by three other Nordic countries – Norway (87.9%, 2nd), Finland (86.3%, 3rd) and Sweden (81.5%, 5th) – and one country from East Asia and the Pacific – New Zealand (85.6%, 4th).
Although the Nordic countries score high in global indexes measuring gender equality, there are gaps in the area of economic gender equality.
Reasons for this include:
- wage inequality, differences in men’s and women’s incomes
- educational and occupational gender segregation, lower pay in many female- dominated sectors and lower amount of women working in higher positions
- social benefits being tied to previous wage income, which leads to pensions and family leave benefits being smaller for those who have lower salaries or who have not been able to work before receiving benefits.
International Equal Pay Day, celebrated on 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. It further builds on the United Nations’ commitment to human rights and against all forms of discrimination, including discrimination against women and girls.
Did you know?
In most countries, women’s wages for work of equal value represent on average between 70-90% of men’s.
In 2010, the OECD reported a gender wage gap in the medium full-time earnings of 17.6% across its members.
In the EU, women earn on average 17.5% less than men during their lifetimes
