A girl born today will be 81 years old before she will have the same chance as a man to be CEO of a company and she will have to wait until 50 to have an equal chance to lead a country, according to the head of the U.N. agency promoting gender equality.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of U.N. Women, said that not a single country has reached gender parity and equality even though 20 years have passed since 189 countries adopted a declaration to achieve equality for women.
Although there has been some progress from the U.N. women’s conference in Beijing in 1995, today there are less than 20 female heads of state and government, and the number of women lawmakers has increased from 11 percent to just 22 percent. The under-representation of women in decision-making and violence against women is a result of male domination in the world that needs to change if women are ever to be truly equal, Mlambo-Ngcuka told Associated Press, according to Huffington Post.
The head of U.N. Women also stated that the key to gender equality is for men and boys to give up the privileges of patriarchy that they are born with.
Meanwhile, other statistics show that difference in earnings between men and women has barely changed in 20 years and female workers across the world will continue to earn less than men for another 70 years. A report from the UN’s International Labour Organization also shows that women across the world earn 77% of the amount paid to men and the figure has improved by only 3 percent in the past 20 years, the Guardian reports.
Analysts say that women face even a “motherhood pay gap” because mothers can earn less than childless women when they return to work, with an increasing difference for every child they have. Some progress was recorded in the percentage of countries that offer maternity leave, with an increase from 38% in 1995 to 51% today.