Twenty years after the first Global Gender Gap Report, gender equality in the workplace continues to improve, but not nearly fast enough to achieve economic parity anytime soon. In its 2026 report, the World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that just 61.7% of the global gender gap in economic participation and opportunity has been closed. At the pace of progress recorded since 2006, economic gender parity is still 129 years away. Career data also reveal where the gap widens: women account for 46% of workers in entry-level positions but only 23% of C-suite executives. From leadership and earnings to parenthood, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, the 20th edition of the report shows that women’s access to the workforce has improved much faster than their access to economic power.
The World Economic Forum released the 20th edition of its Global Gender Gap Report on September 16, 2026, providing two decades of data on the evolution of gender inequality around the world.
Launched in 2006, the Global Gender Gap Index measures gender disparities across four key areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The 2026 edition covers 145 economies, while 97 have been included continuously since the index was created, allowing the WEF to track long-term changes over a 20-year period.
Globally, 69.2% of the overall gender gap has now been closed, the highest level ever recorded by the index. Progress, however, remains slow. Among the economies tracked continuously since 2006, the overall gender parity score has improved by just 5.2 percentage points in 20 years.
The results also vary dramatically depending on the area measured. While the world is approaching gender parity in education and health, major inequalities remain in the economy. In 2026, only 61.7% of the gender gap in economic participation and opportunity has been closed.
At the pace of progress recorded over the past two decades, the World Economic Forum estimates that economic gender parity remains 129 years away.
Gender Equality in the Workplace: 20 Years of Progress, but a Persistent Economic Gender Gap
The WEF’s historical data provide a detailed picture of how women’s economic participation has changed since 2006.
Among the 97 economies included in every edition of the report, the economic participation and opportunity parity score increased from approximately 55% in 2006 to 61.1% in 2026.
That six-point improvement is significant, but it remains far behind progress in education. The report highlights a fundamental disconnect: women’s dramatic gains in education and qualifications have not translated into comparable gains in economic outcomes, earnings or leadership positions.
The difference is particularly visible when comparing skilled occupations with senior leadership.
In the 2026 report, 67 economies have reached gender parity — or have more women than men — among professional and technical workers. Yet only two economies have reached parity among legislators, senior officials and managers.
The challenge is therefore no longer simply ensuring that women acquire the education and professional skills needed to succeed. It is increasingly about whether those qualifications translate into career advancement, higher earnings and access to decision-making positions.
Women Are 46% of Entry-Level Workers but Just 23% of the C-Suite
LinkedIn data analyzed by the World Economic Forum offer a particularly revealing look at what happens to women’s representation as careers progress.
Across the 57 economies analyzed for this measure, women account for an average of 46% of entry-level workers but only 23% of C-suite executives.
Women’s representation is therefore cut in half between the beginning of a career and the highest levels of corporate leadership.
The WEF describes this decline as the “drop to the top.”
Rather than a glass ceiling that appears only at the final stage of a career, the data suggest that gender disparities accumulate gradually as employees move through corporate hierarchies.
This distinction matters for workplace gender equality strategies. Hiring women and men in nearly equal numbers at the beginning of their careers does not guarantee balanced representation 10, 15 or 20 years later. Promotion opportunities, access to operational roles, career breaks, caregiving responsibilities and parenthood can all influence who ultimately reaches senior leadership.
Women CEOs, CFOs and COOs Remain a Minority
Gender inequality within corporate leadership is not limited to whether women reach the C-suite. It also affects which C-suite positions women hold.
Women are highly represented in several people-focused leadership roles. They account for 65% of Chief People Officers and 64% of Chief Human Resources Officers. Women also hold 45% of Chief Marketing Officer positions.
Their representation drops sharply in positions associated with overall corporate leadership, finance and operations.
Women account for only 27% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), 24% of Chief Operating Officers (COOs) and 19% of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the data analyzed.
These differences provide important context for corporate diversity statistics. Two companies may report a similar percentage of women on their executive teams while distributing decision-making authority very differently.
Gender equality in leadership therefore involves both how many women reach senior management and which leadership responsibilities they ultimately hold.
Women in Management Have Made Major Gains Since 2006
Women’s access to management positions has nevertheless improved significantly over the past two decades.
Among economies tracked continuously since 2006, the WEF’s gender parity score for legislators, senior officials and managers increased from 24.9% in 2006 to 40.6% in 2026.
That nearly 16-point increase represents one of the strongest improvements among the major economic indicators tracked by the report.
The progress remains incomplete, however. Only two economies have achieved parity in this category, compared with 67 economies that have reached parity among professional and technical workers.
This gap is one of the report’s most important findings for employers: women are far more likely to have the qualifications required for senior positions than they are to actually occupy those positions.
The Gender Income and Pay Gaps Are Closing Much More Slowly
Greater female labor force participation has also failed to produce equivalent progress in earnings.
Among the 97 economies tracked over the full 20-year period, the gender parity score for labor force participation increased from 63.7% in 2006 to 66.5% in 2026.
Over the same period, the parity score for estimated earned income increased only from 50.8% to 53.5%.
The WEF’s indicator for wage equality for similar work rose from 62.8% to 64.5%.
These indicators measure different aspects of women’s economic position and should not be interpreted as a single global gender pay gap. Taken together, however, they show that increasing women’s participation in the workforce has not been enough to eliminate disparities in earnings.
Working hours, occupational segregation, industry, career interruptions and women’s underrepresentation in higher-paying leadership positions can all contribute to the difference.
The “Drop to the Top” Is Particularly Steep in Some Industries
The decline in women’s representation from entry-level jobs to senior leadership varies significantly by industry.
According to the WEF, the decrease is especially pronounced in sectors that have traditionally employed fewer women.
In supply chain and transportation, women’s representation falls by 56.8% between entry-level positions and the C-suite. The decline reaches 56.6% in infrastructure and 55% in real estate.
By contrast, the drop is less pronounced in some sectors where women already have stronger representation, including education and parts of the consumer services industry.
These sector-specific differences are important because they demonstrate that women’s career progression cannot be understood solely through global averages. Industry composition, promotion practices, workplace structures, professional networks and the number of women entering each field can all influence the likelihood that women will reach senior leadership.
Parenthood and Career Breaks Continue to Affect Women Disproportionately
The 2026 Global Gender Gap Report also provides important data on parenthood and career interruptions.
According to LinkedIn data analyzed by the WEF, women are 55% more likely than men to experience a career break.
Among workers who take time away from their careers, 26.5% of women do so to become full-time parents, compared with only 6% of men.
Women are therefore more than four times as likely as men to take this type of career break for full-time parenting.
The disparity does not end when employees return to work.
Among experienced non-managerial employees included in the analysis, men returning from full-time parenting career breaks are 44% more likely than women to receive a promotion during their first year back at work.
Three years after returning, the gap remains substantial: men are still approximately 39% more likely to have advanced professionally.
These findings help explain how relatively modest gender differences at the beginning of a career can become significantly larger over time. Parenthood affects not only the amount of time spent outside the workforce but also promotion opportunities and career trajectories after employees return.
Women in Artificial Intelligence: Fewer Than One in Five AI Engineers Are Women
The Global Gender Gap Report 2026 also examines one of the most important transformations affecting the global labor market: artificial intelligence.
Women currently account for fewer than one in five AI engineers worldwide.
Their underrepresentation extends to corporate leadership. In companies specializing in artificial intelligence, women hold only 13% of C-suite positions.
U.S. hiring data reveal another significant disparity. Over the past year, women accounted for only 26% of new hires in AI-related jobs in the United States, compared with 50% of new hires in non-AI occupations.
The difference matters because artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important source of productivity, investment and job creation. Persistent underrepresentation of women in AI-related occupations could therefore reproduce existing workplace gender gaps in some of the fastest-growing parts of the economy.
Women Are More Exposed to Jobs Being Transformed by Generative AI
The relationship between women and artificial intelligence contains another important imbalance.
According to data cited by the WEF, women account for 57% of workers in occupations most likely to be transformed by generative AI, compared with 43% of men.
Women are therefore underrepresented among those developing and leading artificial intelligence technologies while being overrepresented in jobs that may be significantly changed by their adoption.
For employers and policymakers, this makes access to AI training and new skills a central gender equality issue.
The expansion of artificial intelligence may create new professional opportunities, but there is no guarantee that those opportunities will be distributed equally between women and men.
Women Entrepreneurs: Only 28% of New Founders in the U.S. Are Women
Entrepreneurship provides another measure of women’s access to economic opportunity and decision-making power.
In the United States, the number of professionals adding the title “founder” to their profiles has more than tripled since 2022.
Yet women’s share of these new founders has remained relatively stable at around 28% since 2021.
Artificial intelligence is creating another emerging gap. Among founders analyzed, 15% of men report AI skills, compared with 9% of women.
The difference remains relatively new, but it could become increasingly significant as AI tools influence productivity, business creation, product development and access to high-growth markets.
Women’s Labor Force Representation Has Started to Level Off
Recent data also suggest that improvements in women’s representation in the workforce should not be taken for granted.
Across LinkedIn data covering 62 economies, women accounted for 39.9% of the observed workforce in 2015. Their share gradually increased to 42% in 2025.
By June 2026, it had edged down slightly to 41.8%.
The change is small and does not, by itself, establish a long-term reversal. However, it comes as the report identifies setbacks in several other gender parity indicators.
Among the 143 economies included in both the 2025 and 2026 editions, 36% recorded a decline in their overall gender parity score over the past year.
Global gender parity continues to improve overall, but progress is neither uniform across countries nor guaranteed from one year to the next.
Women Have Nearly Reached Educational Parity. Why Hasn’t Economic Parity Followed?
The gap between educational attainment and economic opportunity is one of the most important findings in the 20th edition of the Global Gender Gap Report.
Global gender parity in education is now close to 97%, compared with only 61.7% in economic participation and opportunity.
At the historical pace of progress measured by the WEF, educational gender parity could be reached in eight years, while economic gender parity would still take 129 years.
This gap changes the way gender inequality in the workplace needs to be understood. In many economies, women’s underrepresentation in leadership can no longer be explained primarily by lower levels of education or professional qualifications.
Women are already widely represented among skilled professionals. The disparity becomes larger when looking at seniority, earnings and access to leadership positions.
The central question has therefore shifted from women’s access to education to whether qualifications translate into equal careers, earnings and decision-making power.
Global Gender Gap Report: Just 5.2 Points of Progress in 20 Years
The 20th anniversary edition of the report provides a rare opportunity to assess the actual pace of change over two decades.
Among the 97 economies continuously tracked since 2006, the overall gender parity score increased from 64.2% to 69.4%, an improvement of 5.2 percentage points in 20 years.
The long-term trend remains positive, and almost all of these economies have improved their scores since the index was created.
None, however, has achieved complete gender parity.
Looking only at the most recent year, the average score among the 143 economies included in both the 2025 and 2026 reports increased from 68.8% to 69.2%, a gain of 0.4 percentage points.
The 2026 report therefore presents two realities at the same time: global gender parity has reached its highest recorded level, but progress remains slow and a significant number of economies are moving in the opposite direction.
Gender Equality at Work Now Depends on What Happens Throughout Women’s Careers
Twenty years of Global Gender Gap Report data make it possible to identify more precisely where gender inequality persists in the workplace.
Women’s access to education has increased dramatically. Their representation in skilled professions has expanded. Women’s labor force participation has improved across many economies, and their representation is approaching parity with men’s at the beginning of the careers analyzed.
Yet gender disparities become larger as careers progress.
Women represent 46% of entry-level workers, 23% of C-suite executives and 19% of CEOs. They are more likely to take career breaks for parenting, remain underrepresented in key operational and financial leadership roles, and account for a small minority of workers in several artificial intelligence occupations.
For companies, the next stage of workplace gender equality therefore goes beyond recruiting more women. It also involves career progression, compensation, promotion after parenthood, access to operational leadership positions and participation in the technologies and skills that are reshaping the global economy.
In 2026, 38.3% of the global economic gender gap remains to be closed. Based on the pace of progress recorded since the Global Gender Gap Report was launched, the World Economic Forum estimates that reaching economic gender parity would take another 129 years.
Two decades of data show that gender equality at work has advanced. They also identify where some of the largest remaining disparities are concentrated: career progression, earnings, senior leadership and access to the jobs shaping the future of the economy.