iRise Africa Magazine

Africa and Gender Equality Outlook in 2020

By Lanre Oloyede

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igeria came a distance 128^th in the latest Global Gender Gap ranking out of 153 countries, ranking behind Rwanda, Namibia and South Africa which ranked 9^th, 12^th and 17^th respectively.

According to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index report released by the Word Economic Forum (WEF), Iceland is once again the most gender-equal country in the world for the 11th time in a row. The country has closed almost 88% of its overall gender gap, further improving upon its last year performance.

Iceland is closely followed by Norway (2nd, 84.2%), Finland (3rd, 83.2%) and Sweden (4th, 82.0%). The only African country in the top 10 is Rwanda (9th, 79.1%), which has closed 79.1% of its gender gap. Nigeria, ‘the giant of Africa,’ has only been able to close 63.5% of its gender gap. Though Nigeria is not doing too badly, there is however a lot of ground still to be covered.

On the average, the report revealed that Africa, particularly, sub-Saharan Africa is lagging behind with the poorest record of global gender parity.

Although No country to date has yet achieved full gender parity, the top five countries have closed at least 80% of their gaps, and the best performer (Iceland) has closed 82% of its gap so far.

The global top ten features four Nordic countries (Iceland, 1st, Norway 2nd, Finland 3rd and Sweden 4th), one Latin American country (Nicaragua, 5th), one country from the East Asia and the Pacific region (New Zealand, 6th), three other countries from Western Europe (Ireland, 7th, Spain, 8th and Germany, 10th) and one country from Sub-Saharan Africa (Rwanda, 9th).

The report shows that on the average, the largest gender disparity is—once again—the Political Empowerment gap. Despite being the most improved dimension this year (driving the overall positive performance) only 24.7% of the global Political Empowerment gap has been closed in 2020.

The second-largest gap is on Economic Participation and Opportunity; 57.8% of this gap has been closed so far, which represents a slight step back since last year. Progress towards closing the Educational Attainment and Health and Survival gaps is more advanced: 96.1% and 95.7%, respectively, of these gaps have been closed to date, both marginally improved since last year.

With regard to the Political Empowerment subindex, 108 countries of the 149 covered in both current and last year’s editions have improved their overall scores, driven mainly by a significant increase in the number of women in parliaments compared to the last assessment.

Notably, in some countries such as Latvia, Spain and Thailand the number of women in parliament has increased substantially. Nonetheless, to date only 25% of these 35,127 global seats are occupied by women and only 21% of the 3,343 ministers are women; and in some countries, women are not represented at all. In addition, over the past 50 years, in 85 of the 153 countries covered by this report there has never been a female head of state.

In parallel to improving representation of women among political leaders, the number of women in senior roles within the Economic Participation and Opportunity dimension has also increased. Globally, 36% of senior private sector’s managers and public sector’s officials are women (about 2% higher than the figure reported last year). Despite this progress, the gap to close on this aspect remains substantial as only a handful of countries are approaching parity.

Educational Attainment gaps are relatively small on average but there are still countries where investment in women’s talent is insufficient. While in 35 countries gender parity in education has been achieved, a few developing countries have yet to close over 20% of the gaps. Ten percent of girls aged 15–24 in the world are illiterate, with a high concentration in developing countries.

Further, in these countries, education attainment is low for both girls and boys, which calls for greater investment to develop human capital in general. Even in countries where education attainment is relatively high, women’s skills are not always in line with those required to succeed in the professions of the future. In addition, they encounter barriers to employment in the most dynamic and in-demand occupations. 

Based on data from the LinkedIn platform, women are underrepresented in six of the eight micro-clusters with the highest employment growth rate (people and culture, content production, marketing, sales, specialized project managers, data and AI, engineering and cloud computing). Further, comparing where women are currently employed with the skills they possess, it turns out that there are some occupations where women are under-utilized even if they have the needed skills. Women could further contribute to many of them— including some high-tech and managerial roles—if current barriers could be addressed.

Projecting current trends into the future, the overall global gender gap will close in 99.5 years, on average, across the 107 countries covered continuously since the first edition of the report.

Lack of progress in closing the Economic Participation and Opportunity gap leads to an extension of the time it will be needed to close this gap.

At the current pace, gender gaps can potentially be closed in 54 years in Western Europe, 59 years in Latin America and the Caribbean (thanks to accelerated speed registered across some countries in the region this year), 71 and a half years in South Asia, 95 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, 107 years in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 140 years in the Middle East and North Africa, 151 years in North America (reflecting lack of progress in the region this year), and 163 years in East Asia and the Pacific. 

While the increased speed in some regions has reduced the estimated time to close gender gaps, progress remains slow and uneven across countries and regions. Policy-makers and other stakeholders need to further adopt policies and practices to accelerate this process going forward.

The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time.

Since 2006 the Global Gender Gap Index has been measuring the extent of gender-based gaps among four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment) and tracking progress towards closing these gaps over time.

The rankings are designed to create global awareness of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them.

The benchmark for the ranking is hinged on 4 key criteria which are: economic, education, health and political. This provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups.

The Global Gender Gap Report groups countries into eight broad geographical groupings: East Asia and the Pacific; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; Middle East and North Africa; North America; South Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; and Western Europe.

To be included, a country must have data available for a minimum of 12 indicators out of the 14 that compose the index.

This year’s edition of the report benchmarks 153 countries and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across and within regional peers.