Gender gap in economic, political participation remain wide: WEF
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E-mail Xinhua, October 28, 2014
The gaps between women and men in business and politics remained wide, said the latest report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday.
The 2014 Global Gender Gap Report ranked 142 economies on their ability to close the gender gap in four key areas: health and survival, educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, and political empowerment.
The annual report, which began in 2006, found that in 2014, the gender disparity was slim in terms of health and survival, with 96 percent of the gap having been closed globally; major progress was also seen in educational attainment, with 94 percent of the gender gap narrowed.
But the picture for the other two areas of economics and politics was less promising: 60 percent of the economic gender gap and only 21 percent of that of political participation have been closed.
The report predicted that it would take 81 years to achieve gender equality in economic participation.
Nordic nations continued to top this year's ranking, with Iceland being the most gender-equal society, followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Mali, Syria, Chad, Pakistan and Yemen (with Yemen taking the last place) have the biggest gender gaps among the surveyed economies, said the report.
The United States climbed three notches up to 20th place this year after reducing its wage gap and improving the number of women in parliamentary and ministerial level positions, according to the report.
Among the BRICS countries, South Africa (18th) led the group due to its strong scores in political participation, followed by Brazil (71st), Russia (75th), China (87th) and India (114th).
It's the ninth consecutive year the WEF has issued the report on how well resources and opportunities are divided among men and women. Enditem
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