By Lin Taylor
LONDON, Dec 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Women must wait 202 years before they can earn the same as men and have equal job opportunities, according to a global report released on Tuesday, which said the rise in robots and the lack of childcare were keeping many women out of work.
Women earn about half as much as men, said the World Economic Forum (WEF), reporting a gender pay gap of 51 percent in 2018.
“It’s still a long way from parity, and it’s still a long way from reaching a point where women and men are being paid the same for the same job,” said report co-author Saadia Zahidi, head of WEF’s Centre for the New Economy and Society.
There were fewer women working this year than men, mostly due to the lack of childcare which kept women from jobs or from progressing to senior roles, according to the annual index ranking 149 countries on their progress to close the gender gap.
“Most economies still have not made much progress in providing better infrastructure for childcare,” said Zahidi in a phone interview.
“This continues to be a major source of why women don’t enter the labour market at all or aren’t able to progress as much as they should given the talent that they have,” she added.
Women were missing at the top, the report found, with only a third of all managerial roles taken by women.
There were also just 17 female heads of state this year, with women occupying 18 percent of ministerial positions and 24 percent of parliamentary roles globally, it added.
