Pay gap narrows only slightly for women

A new report finds the employment gender gap has closed by less than 1% over the past two decades, despite some modest gains in some parts of the world. Barriers to women’s employment include the high cost of childcare, which is especially pricey in Switzerland.  The report on data for up to 178 countries compiled by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) “shows the enormous challenges women continue to face in finding and keeping decent jobs,” said Guy Ryder, the Geneva-based agency’s director. There has been significant progress made by women in education since 1995 but that hasn’t translated into comparable improvements in their position at work, according to the ILO report issued on Monday. As the first specialised agency of the United Nations in 1946, the ILO monitors global trends in the workplace and unemployment. It found the gender gap closed by just 0.6 percentage points since 1995, with an employment-to-population ratio of 46% for women and nearly ...