Context:
Recently, the International Labour Organization (ILO) released a significant report titled “Women and the Economy: 30 Years after the Beijing Declaration.”
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The report released on the occasion of International Women’s Day (IWD).
- IWD is celebrated globally on March 8 to honour women’s achievements and advocate for gender equality.
- In 2025, the theme is “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality.
This report sheds light on the slow pace of gender equality in the global workforce and emphasizes the need for urgent reforms to address gender disparities in employment, wages, and workplace safety.
The International Labour Organization said that though progress towards equality has occurred over the past 30 years but has been modest and uneven.
Key Findings of the ILO Report:
Women in Leadership:
- Women currently hold only 30% of managerial positions globally, marking only a modest improvement over the past two decades.
- Low-income countries have demonstrated significant progress, with the percentage of women in managerial positions rising from 24.7% to 36.5%.
Gender Employment Gap:
- In 2024, 46.4% of working-age women were employed, compared to 69.5% of men, which highlights a persistent gender employment gap.
- Over the last 30 years, this gap has narrowed by only 4 percentage points, with high-income and lower-middle-income countries showing the largest reductions in gender disparity.
- At the current pace, the report suggests that global gender parity in employment rates could take over 190 years to achieve.
Gender wage gap:
- Between 2004 and 2024 progress has been made in reducing gender inequalities in annual earnings per worker, across all country income groups, particularly in low-income countries.
- However, employed women globally still earn significantly less on average than men, work fewer paid hours, and are overrepresented in informal employment in low- and lower-middle income countries.
Unpaid care work:
- Women worked approximately 6 hours and 25 minutes less per week than men in paid employment in 2024.
- However, women spend 3.2 times more hours on unpaid care work than men, which contributes to the unequal distribution of labor.
- The report found that 708 million women are kept outside the labor force globally due to excessive and unequal care responsibilities.
Overrepresentation in Low-Paid Sectors:
- Women are still overrepresented in low-paid sectors like nursing and childcare, while men dominate higher-paying sectors such as transport and mechanics. This division contributes to the persistent gender wage gap.
Women are more prone to risks:
- Women are 1.6 times more likely than men to experience sexual violence and harassment in the workplace, with young women and migrant women being at higher risk.
- The report notes that global crises, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, have interrupted progress toward gender equality.
The ILO calls for Urgent reforms are needed to address unequal care responsibilities, wage gaps between women and men, and violence and harassment in the world of work, factors which continue to make workplaces more unequal and less safe for women.