Global pay gap will take 257 years to close

Women are making strides around the world. They’re fighting vocally for their rights from Brazil to Saudi Arabia. But in one very important area, women are falling stunningly behind. In 2019, globally, the number of years it will take women to reach equal pay and opportunities with men increased by 55 years. Aka, women won’t achieve workplace parity until the year 2277, up from the year 2222 in 2018. 

A new report from the World Economic Forum looked at 153 countries and measured the gender gap in economics, education, health, and politics. While the wage gap has widened significantly, the report said the “overall global gender gap” has improved, now only requiring 100 years to close it, on average, in 107 countries the organization has tracked since 2006, when it first published the report. Most of that improvement comes as women rise in the political sphere.

The United States ranks at 26 in terms of how far it needs to go to close the economic gap, below countries like Benin (1), Belarus (5), and Jamaica (24). (Worst on the list was Iraq.) In 2018, women in the U.S. earned only 85 percent what men earned for the same job, according to the Pew Research Center. Other organizations put that closer to 80 percent, which equals about four extra months’ worth of work for women.   

“For all the talk about closing the gender wage gap, there has been far too little action among policymakers to seriously tackle a problem that is not only affecting the size of family paychecks, but is also dampening the growth of the economy,” said economist Heidi Hartmann in 2018. 

Black women make only 62 cents on the dollar compared with what white men make, according to the National Women’s Law Center. That number drops to 54 cents for Latina women. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women are at 61 cents, and Native women at 57.

“As progress stagnates, we need to ramp up investment in policies that can close the wage gap, especially for women of color, such as access to good jobs, childcare, and paid leave, along with reduced employment discrimination and the elimination of workplace harassment,” said Hartmann.

The widening wage and employment equality gap are due to a few factors, according to the report. “Women are more highly represented in jobs that have been hit hardest by automation, including those in retail,” it said. “Secondly, not enough women are entering professions, including some in technology, with the most noticeable wage growth. 

“In addition, a ‘lack of care infrastructure’ means women spend at least twice as much time on care and voluntary work as men do, and a ‘lack of access to capital’ often keeps women from entrepreneurship and other workforce opportunities.”

There were just 33 women at the top of Fortune 500 companies in 2019, and women were roughly four times as likely as men to say they have been treated “as if they were not competent because of their gender,” according to Pew. That’s 23 percent of employed women versus 6 percent of men who felt that way.

And, just for the record, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, which authored the report, is a man.