Women's challenges with gender equality cover a broad variety of issues that limit their rights, opportunities, and well-being. Since women frequently experience uneven compensation, little possibilities for job growth, and prejudices in hiring and promotion choices, workplace discrimination is a recurring problem. This maintains gender disparity in the workplace and fuels gender-based economic disparities.

Domestic, sexual, harassing, and trafficking violence against women restricts their freedom and social involvement. Women's participation in leadership and decision-making is somehow, hampered by political underrepresentation, which may result in laws and policies that don't sufficiently address gender inequality.

The average gender disparity worldwide across several metrics (including economic involvement, educational achievement, health and survival, and political empowerment) was 31.4%, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender disparity Report 2020. This indicates that, on average, there was a 31.4% disparity in these indices between men and women.

According to research released on 21^st June, 2023 by the World Economic Forum, countries in the East Asia and Pacific area will take 58 years longer than the world average to bridge the gender gap.

East Asia needs more years to achieve gender equality

According to the annual WEF report that tracks progress towards achieving gender equality in areas like economic and political participation, education, and health, it will take women in the East Asia and Pacific region 189 years to catch up with men at the current rate of progress, as opposed to the global average of 131 years.

The gender gap has nearly reached pre-pandemic levels globally after narrowing by 68.6%, although the study noted that the "overall rate of change has slowed down significantly."

"The tepid progress on persistently large gaps...creates an urgent case for renewed and concerted action," stated WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi in the report. Accelerating the path to gender parity will benefit economies and communities more broadly, revitalising growth, fostering innovation, and enhancing resilience, in addition to improving outcomes for women and girls.

In the 146 nations included in the survey, the gender disparities in health and education have decreased, closing to 96.0% and 95.2%, respectively. However, the percentages are just 60.1% and 22.1%, respectively, in the economy and politics.

The East Asian and Pacific area, which includes Japan, China, South Korea, and Indonesia, has mostly seen sluggish development. The difference increased by 0.2 percentage points in the previous year to 68.8%, and the WEF estimates that it will take 189 years to close the gap completely.

Gender Equality Challenges

The WEF calculated that it would take 67, 95, and 53 years, respectively, to close the gender gap in the top three regions of Europe, North America, and Latin America. Although Latin America's parity level now lags behind that of Europe and North America, advancements are occurring more quickly.

The WEF estimates that it will take South Asia 149 years to attain gender equality, lagging behind other areas. It has narrowed the gap by 63.4%, an increase of 1.1 points since the report's 2022 release, thanks to developments in affluent nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India.

The three nations made progress in categories like labour force participation and projected earned income, even if economic parity remains a distant objective. The Philippines came in second with 79.1%, followed by Australia with 77.8%, Singapore with 73.9%, and New Zealand with an average score of 85.6% in the Asia-Pacific area.

With a score of 64.7%, Japan fell nine places to 125th position from previous year, considerably below other wealthy democracies. This weekend, the country will host a Group of Seven summit on advancing gender equality in Nikko, north of Tokyo, where participants will talk about ways to further the cause and empower women.

Only 5.7% of the gender gap has been closed, making the lone Asian member in the G7 one of the least empowered countries overall. Although female candidates have been increasingly visible in elections over the last year, males still hold roughly 90% of parliamentary and cabinet seats, and Japan has not yet had a female prime minister.

With projected earned income moving 1.1% closer to parity, the country's economic performance improved somewhat, but its score of 56.1% was still below the average for the world. According to the survey, women hold just 12.9% of top jobs in Japan. The objective established by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is for there to be 30% more women working in the nation's largest firms by 2030.