Closing the Gender Gap: Action Steps For Change
Part 3 of a 4 part series
Gender Parity Included in Sustainable Development Goals
Gender equality is the fifth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined in the Sustainable Development Agenda by the United Nations. Ten more goals include gender-specific benchmarks, recognizing the link between women’s empowerment and a prosperous society for all. The fifth SDG was “the single most acted-on SDG in Canada in 2017,” according to the UN Global Compact Network in Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed the country’s first gender-balanced cabinet in 2015, resulting in significant progress toward gender parity.
A first step, is to increase investment in women’s human capital. The benefits of granting women equal access to food, healthcare, and education are particularly significant in emerging and developing economies. The true power of a step like this was displayed in Brazil early in the pandemic. The country implemented the Emergency Aid cash transfer program, which provided almost double benefits to women-led households. According to statistics, without Emergency Aid, the rate of poverty among such households would have risen from 11% to more than 30%; instead, it fell to around 8%.
Biases are another issue to address. Only 12 of the 190 countries surveyed by the World Bank found that women had equal legal standing with men. According to the OECD, gender discrimination in social institutions costs the global economy $6 trillion. However, countries have reduced these costs in recent years through social and legal measures such as prohibiting underage marriage, criminalizing domestic abuse, and increasing the number of female elected politicians.
The Impact of Policies to Address Unpaid Childcare
Through legislative changes, fiscal policies, programmatic change, and public-private partnerships, governments can play an essential role in progress toward parity.
Many examples throughout history support that drastic changes to the gender gap of a country can be made through the government. In Singapore, for example, women’s labor-force participation more than doubled from 28% in 1970 to 58% in 2016, owing to a variety of policies that assist women in achieving work-life balance, such as paid maternity leave, paid and unpaid childcare leave, increase in tax relief, tax rebates, and childcare subsidies.
Reforms to taxation, government spending, economic structure and regulations, and labour markets can all help. Access to high-quality, low-cost childcare allows more women to work and directly creates jobs.
Addressing The Gap in Leadership
Following a 10-year process, in November 2022 the European parliament formally adopted a new EU law on gender balance on corporate boards. By 2026, companies will need to have 40% of the underrepresented sex among non-executive directors or 33% among all directors. Member States have two years to transpose its provisions into national law.
Having more women on the board is also financially material. The McKinsey & Company Diversity Wins Report 2020 found that “companies whose boards are in the top quartile of gender diversity are 28 percent more likely than their peers to outperform financially” and the correlations are statistically significant.
Early microeconomic observations by the IMF in 2014 is now supported by research showing that gender diversity in the boardroom matters because it brings a broader collection of experience, viewpoints and backgrounds which result in better decision-making. Having more women on the board also tends to curb excessive risk-taking, decrease aggressive tax strategies and improve firm reputation, earnings quality and sustainability performance.
Reducing The Setback Resulting From COVID 19
Planning for the future and hard wiring gender parity in the recovery from Covid, Closing the Gender Gap Accelerators hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF), work with advanced and developing economies to create public-private collaborations for rapid acceleration to economic parity. Focusing on:
- Increasing women’s participation in the workforce
- Closing the gender pay gap
- Helping more women advance into leadership roles
- Develop in-demand skills
The Hardwiring Gender Parity in the Future of Work initiative works with business to embed parity into the fastest growing emerging professions. Companies will analyze the impact of the future of work in their organizations and identify new emerging job roles to hardwire gender parity. They commit to reach 50–50 gender parity in the hiring pipeline for these new roles and developing inclusive internal rewards that support equal pay and opportunities.
The bottom line is that the government is a policymaker, a source of funding, an employer, and a strong organizer of stakeholders who can collaborate to make gender parity a reality.
Read Part 1 in this special series: “We’re Still 132 Years From Reaching Gender Equity”
Read Part 2: “How Closing the Gender Gap Could Add $12 Trillion to the GDP”
