Equality Within Our Lifetimes
In recent years, we have heard various alarming estimates about how long it will take to achieve gender equality. According to UN Women’s most recent report, at the current rate of progress, it will take 286 years for the world to achieve gender equality. Per the World Economic Forum it will take another 132 years to close the global gender gap. Regardless of which projection is most accurate, the bottom line is that the current rate of “progress” is unacceptably slow for something so long overdue.
It was discouraging statistics like these, and the desire to provide actionable ways to accelerate the rate of progress, that served as a catalyst for the newly released analysis and book, Equality Within Our Lifetimes: How Laws and Policies Can Close—or Widen—Gender Gaps in Economies Worldwide, a powerful call to action written by Jody Heymann, Aleta Sprague and Amy Raub of WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD). The book explores how gender equality is both achievable and urgently needed to address some of the greatest challenges of our time.
“Every country worldwide has committed to realizing gender equality, yet vast inequalities persist, and the world has become too complacent about these estimates that it’s going to take centuries to close the gaps,” says Heymann, author, distinguished professor at UCLA and the founding director of WORLD.
Equality Within Our Lifetimes by Jody Heymann, Aleta Sprague and Amy Raub
“What this initiative does is look at how laws and policies have both shaped inequality into our lives and how they can also lower the barriers and make it possible to accelerate progress,” Heymann adds. “Achieving gender equality in our lifetimes is completely feasible if we are truly committed to ensuring half the world isn’t pushed out of the economy.”
Equality Within Our Lifetimes reveals that gender inequality “costs national economies trillions of dollars annually. Yet the global gender gaps in employment, pay and leadership aren’t simply the result of historic discrimination, cultural bias or individual choices—they’re driven directly by laws and policies that derive from and reinforce gender stereotypes.” The book analyzes laws in all 193 countries in the U.N.—spanning topics including girls’ education, employment discrimination of all kinds, sexual harassment and caregiving needs—and exposes the ways in which laws and policies that fail to address discrimination, reinforce unequal gender roles and devalue caregiving strongly contribute to gender inequality.
Caregiving is one key area that requires better policies to drive more equality. “Who cares for everyone in our lives, from infancy to old age, is gendered around the world. It's disproportionately women in every case,” says Sprague, attorney and Senior Legal Analyst at WORLD. “The global numbers are that women worldwide spend over three times as much time on unpaid care as men, and women are nearly 15 times as likely to be out of the workforce for it. And these disparities are reinforced by the law.”
For example, 185 countries provide at least one month of paid leave to mothers of infants, yet only 51 do so for fathers, the study finds. Heymann explains the broader implications: “When countries provide paid leave only to mothers, or when there are vast gender gaps in the duration of leave, employers may discriminate against women of child-bearing age based on the presumption that they will require time away from work that their male counterparts will not. At the same time, when only women can take parental leave, they inevitably do take on greater care responsibilities during the newborn phase. In this way, structural inequality in the law creates a vicious cycle: policies based on gender stereotypes push women into taking on the majority of caregiving responsibilities, and employers then cite these responsibilities to justify further discrimination against all women.”
Policy gaps in support for caregiving are particularly stark in the U.S., which is now one of just seven countries in the entire world without any paid leave for mothers, and is also falling behind when it comes to paid leave for fathers. “The research affirms that gender equality at home is essential for advancing gender equality at work,” says Sprague. “But the U.S. is now among just 37% of countries in the world—and the only country in the OECD—without any paid leave for new fathers.”
The impacts on women’s careers are acute. “Nearly a third of U.S. women quit their jobs after having a child, often because they have no other choice,” Sprague continues. “Yet gaps in caregiving policies affect women at all stages of life. With no paid leave to care for adult family members, American women are also three times as likely as men to retire early to care for an ill spouse or an aging parent.”
Countries that have implemented better policies for caregiving show clear results. Sprague notes, “When Spain reserved just 13 days of paid leave for fathers, women were significantly more likely to return to work after giving birth. When Japan introduced paid leave for family health needs, workers were less likely to quit their job within a year of a parent first needing care. If countries were to take the full set of policy actions shown to make a difference for gender equality, the impacts would be transformative.”
“Moms definitely need support,” continues Sprague, “but it's about supporting all caregivers and all types of families—whether it's one parent or two parents, whether it's different-sex parents or same-sex parents. It's about the support that goes to the entire household to meet the full range of care needs, and structuring policies to really enable all parents and caregivers to be as involved as they can.”
In addition to facing gaps in support for caregiving, women in countries that lack legal protections against workplace gender discrimination, unequal pay, sexual harassment and intersectional discrimination are less likely to climb the leadership ladder and more likely to face workplace harassment. “When countries fail to establish from the start that everyone must be treated equally, they perpetuate inequality. It should come as no surprise that women still aren’t ascending to leadership positions when 88 countries still don’t prohibit the very forms of gender discrimination that matter most to advancement,” says Heymann. “Likewise, we should not be surprised that sexual harassment at work remains widespread when 104 countries either have no law against sexual harassment or don’t ask employers to take any steps to prevent it. Nor should we be surprised that around the world, women earn 80 cents on a man's dollar when in 42% of countries, there is no guarantee of equal pay for work of equal value.”
Another important takeaway from Equality Within Our Lifetimes is that when women are held back, the economy is held back. “The human benefits of achieving gender equality would be innumerable, and the economic benefits enormous,” explains Heymann. “McKinsey projected that if we fully closed the gender gaps in the economy, annual global GDP would rise $28 trillion by 2025. Closing the wage gap would have similarly massive impacts: according to the World Bank, equalizing men’s and women’s lifetime earnings globally would increase per-person wealth by $23,620, over $160 trillion total.”
“This is a lot of money we're leaving on the table,” Heymann continues. “Gender equality is a fundamental human right; we should care about it for that reason. It affects the quality of lives of women and girls, of people of every gender, of communities—lots of human reasons. But achieving gender equality would also, in the U.S. alone, yield between $2.6 and $4.3 trillion dollars a year. These are huge dollars. There is nothing that comes close to this amount of money. We have serious financial needs in this country. We have a big debt. We shouldn't be slashing Social Security. We shouldn't be slashing Medicare. We should actually be increasing our economic base. There's a clear way to do it.”
Of course gender inequality doesn’t only negatively impact women. “Significant research shows that restrictive gender norms hurt everyone, with consequences that begin even before we’re born and that shape our experiences of education, health care and work throughout the life course,” says Sprague. “In contrast, advancing gender equality improves conditions for all. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have for growing the global economy, lifting billions of people out of poverty, reducing the impact of climate change and creating a world where everyone truly has equal opportunities to contribute and to lead at work—where care is valued, supported and celebrated, and where gender poses no barrier to anyone’s life choices or career trajectory.”
“When women’s earnings, educational attainment and access to leadership positions rise, the benefits span generations and genders,” Heymann says. “Both men and women live longer and children are healthier. In the private sector, when there is greater diversity in decision-making, innovation rises, productivity increases and profits go up. In the public sector, when more women are in decision-making roles, investments in public goods like health and education increase and commitments to addressing climate change strengthen. We can’t afford to leave gender inequality unaddressed.”
Importantly, the authors note, countries are strengthening laws. “Since #MeToo took off globally, at least 11 countries have enacted laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace for the first time,” says Sprague. “And some regions have moved forward rapidly across a range of areas that matter to gender equality in the economy. Since 2000, the share of African Union countries with laws addressing sexual harassment grew from 19% to 75%, while the share providing paid leave to fathers increased from 19% to 56%.”
But accelerating the pace of change will be critical to achieving equality in the near term. Equality Within Our Lifetimes provides a comprehensive roadmap to help move the needle on gender equality, with both immediate and long-term solutions. It includes freely downloadable policy data for all 193 countries, policy briefs in three languages, and more than 100 global maps in all six official UN languages.
“If you’re a decision maker,” urges Heymann, “adopt policies that will make your country and your workplace more equal and more economically successful. If you’re a community leader, mobilize the evidence of what’s feasible to advocate for change. And if you’re a community member, know that your voice in advocating for equality matters.”
A free ebook version of Equality Within Our Lifetimes is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Global maps, multilingual factsheets, infographics and other resources are available at worldpolicycenter.org/genderequality.
