To put it another way, if current trends hold, no one alive today will see economic or political gender parity in their lifetime.
“We hope that this report will serve as a call to action to leaders to embed gender parity as a central goal of our policies and practices to manage the post-pandemic recovery, to the benefit of our economies and our societies,” wrote WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi in the report.
In a news release, the WEF noted that a number of factors drove women into further economic precarity during the pandemic, including “the growing ‘double shift’ of work and care,” which pushed women in many countries, including the United States, out of the workforce. Long-standing occupation segregation also played a role. Women were overrepresented in industries severely disrupted by the pandemic, including retail and hospitality.