Women around the globe are seeing slow progress in gaining gender and pay equality and are under-represented at all levels in the workplace and executive boardrooms, a report shows.
Although they make up 40 per cent of the average company’s workforce, women represent only 33 per cent of managers and 26 per cent of senior managers. Even fewer, 20 per cent, have risen to the executive level because companies are slow to build talent pipelines to promote diversity.
The report by consulting firm Mercer, billed as the largest and most comprehensive research of its kind, showed there are still roadblocks preventing women gaining full equality in the workplace, despite advances over the past several decades.
“At this pace and rate of change globally, we won’t see any form of gender equality in the workforce till 2050,” said Mercer’s Patricia A. Milligan after the report was released on Wednesday. She described the under-representation of women as ‘an economic and social travesty’ that will continue if companies do not take action.
“We won’t see any form of real pay equity in our lifetime,” Milligan, Mercer’s global leader, multinational client group, added in an interview. The report, which covers 583 organisations representing 3.2 million employees in 42 countries, showed the number of women in jobs declines as the career level rises. Women are 1.5 times more likely than men to be hired at the executive level, but they are leaving at 1.3 times the rate of men. — Reuters
Report showed there are still roadblocks preventing women gaining full equality in the workplace
