According to a World Bank assessment, there is a significant gender gap that exists across all nations, including the wealthiest economies in the world. Women do not have equal prospects for employment and enjoy fewer legal rights than men. Women receive only 77 cents in compensation for every $1 earned by men, and this disparity continues until retirement. The report also emphasises that the age at which men and women can retire differs in 62 economies.
According to the report, two main obstacles limit women’s growth at work: safety at the workplace and access to childcare services. It states that ‘women enjoy just 64 per cent of the legal protections that men do—far lesser than the previous estimate of 77 per cent. There is a significant discrepancy between the intended and actual results of legal reforms in 190 economies worldwide, along with the gender gap.
The gender gap is primarily because men and women are treated differently in terms of participation, wages, benefits, and rights. Today, economists define the gender gap as structural disparities between the outcomes that men and women attain in the labour market.
India is placed 127th out of 146 nations in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2023 Global Gender Gap (GGG) Index. The World Inequality Report 2022 indicates that in India, men make up 82 per cent of labour income and women earn 18 per cent.
According to a study conducted by McKinsey, women with the same bachelor’s degree and attrition rate are less likely to get hired for entry-level positions than their male counterparts. The gap widens as workers climb the corporate ladder. As per the report, for every 100 men promoted to the position of manager, only 86 women receive the same promotion. Therefore, fewer qualified women are promoted as a result of the lack of women at entry-level positions.
Only 35 countries had policies in place to guarantee that the wage gap eventually closes, despite 95 having passed laws pertaining to equal pay. According to the report, women’s participation in the labour market rises by a percentage point initially and then doubles over the next five years when an organisation enhances access to childcare. Just 78 economies offer tax or financial assistance to parents of young children, while 62 nations have quality standards for childcare that make daycare unaffordable for parents, leaving women to bear the brunt of it.
Child marriage, femicide, sexual harassment, and domestic abuse is another barrier for women. Despite 151 economies implementing laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, just 39 have laws prohibiting the same in public spaces. This frequently makes it difficult for women to take public transport to get to work.
Post the pandemic, gender wage disparities increased in the financial services, healthcare, and technology sectors. According to survey statistics from the National Sample Survey Office, women in India still make 28 per cent less than men in 2018–29, after years of effort to close the gender pay gap, as compared to 1993–94, where the difference was 48 per cent. The International Labour Organisation estimates that women draw about 20 per cent less than men worldwide. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute found that closing gender pay gaps could add $12 trillion to the global GDP by 2025.