Gender Gap

A century after International Women’s Day was founded to promote gender equality a stark gender gap still exists in the workplace in countries across the world. “A new report by the World Economic Forum finds that even though more women are employed around the world than ever before, and now make up 52 percent of U.S. workers, major multinational companies are failing to capitalize on their talents. In surveys with human-resources executives at 600 companies across 16 industries and 20 countries, the Forum’s Corporate Gender Gap Report found that disparities in education and health have all but disappeared worldwide, but when it comes to political empowerment and economic participation, women haven’t advanced much. ‘Women are as healthy and as educated as men,’ the study’s author, Saadia Zahidi explains, but ‘no country, and few companies, have actually reached gender equity.’ In the United States, the study shows that female employees still tend to be concentrated in entry- or mid-level positions, and that the biggest barrier to female leadership isn’t parenthood or opting out (as conventional wisdom would have it), but ‘masculine or patriarchal corporate culture’ and a ‘lack of mentors’. Women still make 78 cents for every dollar a man earns in the United States, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity—an inequity that is repeated the world over—and one that is often blamed on motherhood.”