Gender equality, Europe surpasses North America but Italy loses 16 positions

Globally, gender equality has returned to pre-Covid levels, but the pace of change is stagnating as converging crises slow progress, reports the World Economic Forum in its ‘Global Report on Gender Inequality 2023’ .
In the global ranking, Europe overtakes North America, while Italy falls back significantly. Out of 146 countries included in the survey, our country, in fact, loses as many as 16 positions, going from 63rd place in 2022 to 79th today with a 70% share of the gender gap that the media appears to have “filled”. This is because while economic participation and employment scores improve, with 62% of the gender gap closed, we lose ground on the political empowerment side where we go from 31% of the gap closed to just 24%.
More generally, the report notes that the overall gender gap has decreased by 0.3 percentage points compared to last year’s edition. The projected year of achieving gender equality therefore remains the same as in the 2022 edition, i.e. 2154.
The overall progress in 2023 is partly due to the narrowing of the educational attainment gap, with 117 out of 146 countries indexed closing at least 95% of that gap. Meanwhile, the gap in economic participation and opportunity has narrowed by 60.1% and that in political empowerment by only 22.1%.
Parity has progressed by just 4.1 percentage points since the first edition of the report in 2006, with a significant slowdown in the overall rate of change. It will therefore take 131 years to close the overall gender gap. At the current rate, it will take 169 years for economic parity and 162 years for political parity.
“Although there have been encouraging signs of a recovery to pre-pandemic levels, women continue to bear the brunt of the current cost-of-living crisis and labor market disruptions,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director of the World Economic Forum. «For an economic recovery, all the power of creativity and of different ideas and skills is needed. We cannot afford to lose momentum on women’s participation and economic opportunity.”
The Global Report on Gender Disparities, now in its 17th edition, analyzes the evolution of gender-based inequalities in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. It is the longest-running index, tracking progress towards closing these gaps since its inception in 2006. It also explores the impact of recent global shocks on the gender inequality crisis in the labor market.
For the 14th consecutive year, Iceland remains the first country in the world for gender equality and the only one to have closed more than 90% of the gender gap. While no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top nine finishers have closed at least 80% of their gap. Behind Iceland in that order are Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia, Lithuania and Belgium.
Compared to the 2022 edition, Europe surpasses North America with the highest gender parity of all regions, at 76.3%. A third of countries in the region rank in the top 20, and over half (56%) have achieved at least 75% parity. However, progress is mixed: 10 countries, led by Estonia, Norway and Slovenia, have recorded an improvement of at least 1 percentage point, while another 10 countries – including Austria, France and Bulgaria – have recorded declines of at least 1 percentage point.
North America is in second place, with 75% of the gap closed, down 1.9 percentage points from the previous edition. This can be partially attributed to the 7.7 percentage point drop in the political empowerment gap, which now stands at 26.1%. North America achieved the highest gender parity score among all regions, at 77.6%, in closing the economic participation and opportunity gap.
As for the other areas of the world, Latin America and the Caribbean closed 74.3% of the overall gender gap (+1.7 points). Eurasia and Central Asia are stationary at 69%, progress on parity in East Asia and the Pacific has stagnated for more than a decade and the region is down 1.6 percentage points since the last edition. Sub-Saharan Africa is at 68.2% (+0.1), South Asia at 63.4% (+1.1 points). Finally, the Middle East and North Africa remain the regions furthest from parity with 62.6% of the gender gap closed.