Context:

• The World Economic Forum has mentioned that it could take 202 years for women to earn as much as men.

Details:

• This is due to huge gender pay gap and slow change taken by all the stakeholders to bridge the gap.
• The annual report from WEF found that women on average make 63% of what men earn.
• According to the report, there was not a single country out of the 149 assessed where women on an average made more or as much as men.
• In 2017, the WEF estimated that it would take 217 years to close the pay gap.
• According to the report, Laos, in southeast Asia, was the closest to achieving parity with women earning 91% of what men were paid.
• Yemen, Syria and Iraq had the biggest pay gaps, with women being paid less than 30% the level of men’s wages
• The U.K. has been ranked at 50th out of the 149 countries, with women collecting 70% of that paid to men
• The report also mentioned that it was only 34% of global managers are women and they also encounter significant obstacles in taking on managerial or senoir official roles
• The report provided insights on women in politics and said that it would take 107 years to fill the gender gap in politics
• Across the 149 countries assessed, there are just 17 that currently have women as heads of state, while, on average, just 18% of Ministers and 24% of parliamentarians globally are women

Important Facts:

• India ranked 108th in World Economic Forum (WEF) Gender Gap Index 2018, same as 2017.
• India fell 21 places on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap index to 108 which is far below the global average and much behind its neighbors China and Bangladesh.

About the Global Gender Gap:

• Introduced by the World Economic Forum to examine four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
  • Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
  • Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher-level education
  • Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
  • Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio.
• In addition, this year’s edition studies skills gender gaps related to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

About World Economic Forum:

• The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
• It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests.
• The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance.
• The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
• It is committed to improve state of world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
• The WEF meeting brings together some international political leaders, 2,500 top business leaders, selected intellectuals, and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world.