Gender Equality to Take 120 Years Even as Gap Narrows, WEF Says

The World Economic Forum's annual report indicates that while the gender gap has narrowed to its smallest ever, full global gender parity remains 120 years away. This is an improvement from 170 years measured a decade ago, but it still means that no individual currently alive is likely to witness complete equality between genders.

According to the report, 69.2% of the global gender gap has been closed, a 0.4 percentage point increase from the previous year. Among 97 economies continuously tracked since 2006, the gap has narrowed by 5.2 percentage points to 69.4%. The report benchmarks 145 economies across four dimensions: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

Economic participation and opportunity, at 61.7%, and political empowerment, at 22.1%, are the dimensions furthest from parity. Despite overall progress, political empowerment shows signs of reversal, with its score now lower than in 2016 and declining by 0.4 percentage points over the last year. The share of economies in the constant sample of 97 countries led by a woman head of state peaked at 27% in 2022 but has since fallen back to 2016 levels.

Iceland leads the rankings for the 17th consecutive year, having closed 93% of its gender gap, the only economy to exceed 90%. Finland and Norway retain second and third positions at 87.2% and 85.7% respectively. Namibia climbed to fourth with 84.5%, becoming the highest-ranked country in Sub-Saharan Africa. Europe has reclaimed the top regional position, closing 75.7% of its gender gap, with seven of the top ten global performers being European nations.

Progress in women's share of top-level management has stalled below 30% across 62 economies since 2024, and women's share of new hires into these roles has fallen from 34.8% in 2022 to 32.3% in the first two quarters of 2026. Within the C-suite, women hold 19.1% of CEO roles, around a quarter of CFO and COO positions, but only around one in five Chief Information Officers and fewer than one in ten Chief Technology Officers.