The International Labour Organization (ILO) released its report on Women and the Economy: 30 Years After the Beijing Declaration (March 2025). The report marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark document adopted by 189 countries in 1995 to advance women’s rights and gender equality.
Human Level’s Take:
- The top-line finding of the ILO in its progress report on gender inequality in employment: at the current rate, it will take more than 190 years to reach gender parity in the world of work.
- A few other data points: women are underrepresented in leadership roles in trade unions with only 34% of trade unions globally having women on executive committees; women (and in particular young and migrant women) are 1.6 times more likely than men to experience sexual violence and harassment at work; and unequal care responsibilities are keeping 708 million women outside of the labour force globally
- While progress has been made in some areas, key barriers remain. Some of the key challenges include persistent wage gaps, especially for women at heightened vulnerability like women with disabilities; lower rates of formal employment compared to men; higher rates of informal work in low-income and lower-middle-income countries; and higher rates of unpaid care work. Undermining progress further is a lack of worker voice for some sectors where women are overrepresented, like domestic work.
- Where do companies come in? As employers, they can implement strong policies and initiatives that address gender inequalities in wages, hiring, promotion and worker voice, along with approaches to address the risks of harassment and violence at work.
- Companies can also play a greater role in advancing systemic change for women across the full value chain. This can include implementing and supporting suppliers to implement egalitarian parental leave and flexible work policies, which may entail going beyond what governments require. It can also include strengthening worker voice in their own operations and with suppliers, especially when it comes to ensuring that women’s voices are heard in worker engagement and collective bargaining processes. And, it can include applying a gender lens to supply chain human rights due diligence, to make sure that women are not disproportionately impacted by business decisions.
Some key takeaways:
- Gender parity will take more than 190 years: The ILO predicts that, at the current rate, achieving global gender parity in employment will take over 190 years. Gender gaps in employment remain significant, with slow progress over the past 30 years: the gender gap has only narrowed by 4% in that time frame, with the most gains in high-income and lower-middle-income countries. Young women experience higher rates of being out of employment, education or training compared to young men. In addition, although there has been some progress in earnings equality, gaps remain: in 2024 female workers earned 77.4 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. What’s more, different dimensions of discrimination are putting some women even further back on the road to equality. For example, looking at data from 14 countries, women with disabilities in high-income countries are earning 6% less on average than men with disabilities, and women with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries are earning 5% less. When it comes to equality of opportunity for promotion, there has been modest improvement over the past 30 years, although as of 2023 women hold only 30% of managerial positions globally.
- Barriers to labour participation and job quality: The ILO finds that the greatest challenge to women’s equal participation in the workforce is family responsibilities and unpaid work. In 2024, women in paid employment worked an average of around 6.5 hours less per week than men, however, women spent 3.2 times more hours on unpaid care work compared to men. The ILO estimates that unequal care responsibilities are keeping 708 million women outside of the labour force globally. In addition, in some economies women are more likely than men to be in informal work, which tends to be more precarious than formal employment. In low-income and lower-middle-income countries, which have higher rates of informal work, women have higher informal employment rates than men by 4.9% and 2.3%, respectively. At the same time, there are significant gaps in social protection that increase barriers to decent work for women and put women at heightened risk for poverty, like maternity and paternity leave, child/family benefits, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, pensions and other cash benefits, and social health protection. As a key step, the ILO calls on governments to adopt policies that “recognize, reduce and redistribute” unpaid care and guarantee reward and representation for care workers. It also advises applying alternatives to GDP to adequately account for the economic value of unpaid care work.
- Mixed progress on women’s worker voice: Women are increasingly present in social partner organisations like trade unions and worker representative bodies, and currently have a higher rate of participation than men in these bodies—18% compared to 16%. At the same time, women are underrepresented in leadership roles within these organisations, with only 34% of trade unions globally having women on executive committees. Women are also overrepresented in unorganised sectors like domestic work, where they have less or no ability to bargain collectively or exercise other forms of worker voice. Women are also more likely to experience other barriers to worker voice, like sexual violence and harassment in the workplace. Women overall are 1.6 times more likely than men to experience this at work, with young and migrant women at even greater risk. The ILO recommends that governments adopt systematic approaches to addressing gender violence in the workplace and advancing egalitarian gender norms.
