For the tenth consecutive year, the PwC” Women in Work “Index is published. Action needs to be taken to enable women to take advantage of the employment opportunities created by the transition to a zero-emission balance.
According to the latest PwC analysis, the highest rates of female unemployment combined with the higher proportion of women leaving the labor market due to the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed progress towards gender equality at work by at least two years.
The PwC Women in Work Index, published for the tenth consecutive year, assesses the employment of women in 33 OECD countries (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development). After a decade of slow but steady progress in women's employment across OECD countries, for the first time in its history the Index is falling.
The two main factors that contributed to this decline were the increase in female unemployment and the lower participation rates of women in employment during the worst phase of the pandemic. Based on the calculation of the “COVID-19 gap”, which compares job losses with the projected increase in employment before the pandemic, the Index records 5.1 million more unemployed women and 5.2 million fewer women in the labor market compared to the numbers we would have expected if the pandemic had not occurred.
According to an OECD Report on Gender Inequalities in Care and the Impact on the Labor Market 19, women took on more unpaid childcare responsibilities during the pandemic, leaving the labor market at a higher rate than men [1]. & Nbsp;
The Women in Work Index is based on five sub-indices that reflect women's participation in the global labor market and equality in the workplace. Given the slow progress made over the last ten years in relation to each of these five sub-indices, as well as the lost ground due to the pandemic, it is estimated that it will take years – in some cases decades – to bridge the gap and achieve equality between women and men in the global work environment:
● Percentage of women in the labor force (33 years to reach the current corresponding percentage of men, which amounts to 80%)
● Gap between the percentage of women and men in the labor force (30 years to bridge)
γυναι Female unemployment rate (9 years to reach the current corresponding percentage of men)
● Percentage of full-time women (67 years to equal the current proportion of men working full-time)
● Gender pay gap (63 years to bridge).
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Increasing women's participation in the transition to a zero-emission balance is key to bridging the employment gap
Achieving greater gender equality in the workplace globally requires effective policy action. This implies more flexible work choices, which mainly target gender inequalities in unpaid care and domestic work. Policies such as equal paid parental leave are needed to help redistribute the unequal burden of caring for women.
Even more important is the need for government and business support for women to take advantage of the employment opportunities created by the OECD economies' transition to a zero-emission balance. Our analysis shows that the transition & nbsp; of zero-emission economies will increase overall jobs, as more jobs are expected in 2030 in 15 of the 20 sectors in the OECD's total economies. However, the largest proportional increase in jobs will be recorded in utilities, construction and manufacturing, where women are disproportionately represented. These sectors currently employ almost a third of the male workforce in the OECD as a whole, compared to just 11% of the female workforce.
PwC estimates that the employment gap between men and women across the OECD – which records the additional number of men in the labor market as a percentage of the corresponding number of women – will widen by 2030 by 1.7 percentage points (from 20, 8% in 2020 to 22.5% in 2030). [2]
