PwC Report: Global Progress on Achieving Gender Parity Sluggish

Ugo Aliogo

To mark International Women’s Day 2024, PwC has released two studies, the Women in Work Index and Inclusion Matters, which revealed that global progress on achieving gender parity at work continues at a sluggish rate.

According to the professional services firm, the studies which is in its 12th edition, revealed that the latest data from the 2024 Women in Work Index (WiW Index), indicated that at the current pace, it would take more than half a century to close the average gender pay gap across all 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The studies also noted that the WiW Index measures progress towards gender equality at work across the OECD, taking in five indicators that frame PwC’s analysis and measures various indicators of gender equality in the workplace, one of which was the gender pay gap.

The studies further explained that despite some progress over the past decade, this year’s analysis showed that there was still considerable way to go to reach gender parity at work across all five indicators.

The studies also showed that over the last decade, the average Index score increased from 56.3 in 2011 to 68 in 2022, adding that in the latest Index update, the average OECD score improved by approximately two points from a score of 66 in 2021 to 68 in 2022.

The studies espoused that between 2021 and 2022, the majority of the improvement across the OECD was driven by an increase in the female labour force participation rate from 70.8 per cent to 72.1 per cent and a fall in the female unemployment rate from 6.4 per cent to 5.3 per cent.

The studies stated that the average gender pay gap across the OECD widened from 13.2 per cent to 13.5 per cent over this period, adding that it showed that despite greater participation, women remained in a considerably weaker position in terms of labour market returns as compared to men.

The studies stated that since the inception of the Index in 2011, the gender pay gap has been one of the indicators with the slowest improvement, narrowing only three percentage points between 2011 and 2022 across the OECD.

The Partner and Workforce Transformation Leader, West Market Area, PwC, Olusola Adewole, stated that PwC as a company believes in inclusion matters in driving progress towards gender parity, adding that their research showed workplace inclusion was an important lever in propelling women’s development and advancement.

According to the report, “Luxembourg ranks first on the Index, followed by Iceland and Slovenia. The top five countries on the Index in 2021 continue to rank in the top five in 2022, but the ordering has changed. “Luxembourg’s strong performance was driven by an improvement on all indicators and especially by the fact that the country continues to have the lowest gender pay gap across the OECD. At -0.2 per cent, Luxembourg’s gender pay gap is negative, meaning that on average, the median level of pay is higher for women than men. The Nordic countries, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, all appear in the top 11.

“Mexico has scored the lowest on the Index since 2018. Its poor performance in 2022 was mainly driven by a high gender pay gap of 17 percent along with a low female labour force participation rate of 50 percent compared to a 14 percent gender pay gap average across the OECD and 72 percent female participation rate.

“Australia recorded the biggest improvement in its rank, rising seven places from 17th place in 2021 to 10th place in 2022, with a 6.6-point increase in its Index score. This was driven by an improvement across all five indicators and in particular, the gender pay gap, which fell from 14.2percent in 2021 to 9.9 percent in 2022.

“Conversely, the UK experienced the largest fall in the ranking, dropping four places from 13th in 2021 to 17th in 2022. This was largely a relative change despite a 1.1-point increase in the UK’s Index score, implying that the UK is being outpaced by other countries in terms of progress made towards achieving gender equality at work.

“The UK’s gender pay gap also increased from 14.3 per cent in 2021 to 14.5 per cent in 2022.”