Economic gender gap: Which countries are falling behind?

Abstract

Economic parity continues to be one of the main challenges to achieving gender equality worldwide, even though disparities between countries in the economic gender gap are frequently neglected. In this paper, we use a fuzzy logic approach to measure the extent to which countries are narrowing this gap. Specifically, we evaluate the degree to which 110 countries evolved from 2006 to 2019 in each of the three dimensions of the World Economic Forum’s Economic Participation and Opportunity Index (remuneration, participation and advancement). We focus on which countries have been left behind and to what extent they have pulled away from the rest. The findings reveal that differences across countries in advancement gender gaps are more evident than in the other dimensions. Moreover, while there are signs of convergence in the closure of the gender gaps in remuneration, we do not find such evidence for the advancement and participation gender gaps.

Keywords

• economic gender gap
• fuzzy approach
• “leaving no one behind”