The PeopleAlchemist Edit: change & transformation, business & lifestyle experimentation for TheWomanAlchemist

Gender Pay Gap 2021: what is the verdict? What are the developments, or is it now a forgotten thing?

GLOBAL GENDER GAP REPORT 2021

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2021, "another generation of women will have to wait for gender parity ... closing the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years." The Global Gender Gap Index (a framework that records gender-based disparities and tracking the progress benchmarking on economic, political, education and health-based criteria on a total of 14 indicators from these categories) indicates more females than males believe that closing the gender pay gap is important and should be a top priority to tackle. Shocking! In 2021 the Global Gender Gap index benchmarked 156 countries, measuring scores on a 0 to 100 scale, representing the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed. This report comes following the COVID-19 pandemic. Covid-19 had a massive and disproportionate impact on women worldwide. With the closures of childcare facilities and women continuing to shoulder most of the childcare and housework responsibilities, this is not a surprise. And domestic violence on the rise, to name just a few.

GENDER GAP TRENDS

• 2021 has seen the average distance completed to parity at 68%.
• Iceland is the most gender-equal country for the 12th year in a row, with the percentage of gender gap closed to date at 89.2%
• Neither the US nor the UK is in the top ten most gender-equal countries.

GENDER PAY GAP V EQUAL PAY

• Equal pay stands for equal pay for equal work (e.g. men and women performing the same work)
• The gender pay gap is the difference between men and women's average earnings across a company.

Equal pay is against the law; the gender pay gap is indicative of a much wider socio-economic situation.

THE GENDER PAY GAP

• In the US on average women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men (18% less)
• On the other hand, in the EU on average, women earn 14.1% less an hour than men
  • In practice, it means women have to work an additional 51 days to earn the same wages as their male colleagues.

Doesn't look like much progress was made, does it? It seems that "Gender Equality Is The Unfinished Business of the 21st century" indeed. See you next week for Part 2. Other articles I wrote on the subject:

• Achieving Gender Diversity in practice
• Achieving Gender Balance at work

I could go on and on about this subject ...