Study: Hundreds Of Years Still Needed To Achieve Global Gender Equality

JAKARTA - The World Economic Forum (WEF) released the Global Gender Gap Report 2021. This report describes the hard road to achieving true global gender equality. It took 136 years, the report says.

That figure also shows a setback. In a previous report, the WEF estimated the achievement of global gender equality in a century or a hundred years. There are four indicators used by the WEF to calculate its predictions, namely economic participation and opportunity, education, health, and political empowerment.

Global Gender Gap Report 2021 data shows a significant increase in the gap on the side of political empowerment. Meanwhile, economic participation was recorded to have improved, although not significantly.

WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi wrote in the report: We hope this report will serve as a call for policymakers to make gender equality a central goal of policies and practices that support the post-epidemic recovery process, for the benefit of our economy and society.

Even though there are improvements, gender equality in the economy is still a long way off. WEF estimates that gender equality in the economic sector will only be fully achieved in 268 years.

And the WEF notes that the real situation could be even worse because the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report does not show the impact of the pandemic as a whole. "Progress towards creating gender equality has stalled in several major economies and industries."

"This happens because some women work more in sectors that are more affected by the pandemic and on the other hand are under pressure to do homework," WEF.

Regarding the presence of women in the professional world, the 2021 Global Gender Gap Report has actually shown an increase. There is a growing proportion of women in professional circles.

However, the WEF also found a high gap in income and the number of women at the managerial level. The report also notes that women lose more jobs in high positions than men.

Furthermore, women are also known to be slower to return to work than men. The pandemic has become even tougher for women if you refer to this report.

The report also highlights the additional burden women must support in times of a pandemic. This burden includes how women are given greater responsibility for caring for their children, including escorting them through online schooling.

In addition, women are also required to do various household chores. It is believed that this will increase stress, which causes the productivity of women to decrease.

On the positive side, the COVID-19 pandemic is also accelerating the adoption of automation and digitization. The positive side is meaningless without problems. The adoption of automation and digitization increases the potential for interference from computation to artificial intelligence for women.

"Women are not sufficiently represented in roles that are currently developing very rapidly, meaning that we have a deeper problem in terms of gender representation as we emerge from the pandemic," said LinkedIn's Head of Global Public Policy Sue Duke, quoted by CNN.

* Read other information about GENDER EQUALITY or read other interesting writings from Yudhistira Mahabharata.