Gender Inequality and Gender Pay Gap

While economic development and technological advances have narrowed gender inequality, more work is needed to accelerate its decline. Policies targeting gender gaps in school enrollment, labor force participation and the distribution of employment across sectors can play a role (Duflo and others, 2012). The gender gap also appears to be shifting toward more subtle and implicit forms, for example, differences in field of study or the distribution of leadership positions. To address these, policies may need to be more targeted and the tradeoffs more carefully assessed.

Gender inequality harms everyone. It keeps girls and women from getting an education, entering professions and building wealth. It leads to violence and ill health, keeps families poor, deprives people of their most basic rights and stifles innovation and growth. It is often driven by deep-rooted gender norms and prejudices.

Achieving equality for women and men requires the support of governments and society as a whole. But it’s not enough to simply pass laws or ratify treaties, we need to take action. We need to support women to stand up for their rights and push back against discrimination in every part of their lives. This can be done through collective action such as collective bargaining, activism and forming alliances with other communities, as well as individual efforts to change their mindset and behaviour.

Despite the challenges, progress is being made. Countries are starting to close their gender gaps in many areas, but it will take a long time to get to parity. This is mainly because of the fact that countries are moving beyond the more obvious, explicit areas where gender policy has worked well (such as school enrollment or labor force participation) and need to address gender inequalities which are more implicit. These are harder to target, as they are often not visible to the public and require changing attitudes (e.g., the distribution of occupations or pay).

While closing these gaps will not be easy, it is possible and will have significant economic benefits. For example, closing the gender wage gap will help reduce income inequality by benefiting women from low-income households more than men from wealthy households. In addition, reducing gender inequality can lead to lower household poverty and greater economic stability.

This visualization shows the available cross-country data on the gender pay gap. It is based on the best source of such data that we know of, from the United Nations’ International Labour Organization. This dataset is growing, but it’s still a limited and incomplete picture of the world. More analysis and data is needed on what policies are effective and how to measure the impact of such interventions, especially if they are targeted at more implicit and subtle forms of gender inequality. The underlying issue here is that while we can make good strides in closing the gap through explicit and targeted policies, fully eliminating gender inequality will require eventually addressing the root causes which are typically social and cultural.