Working women are facing a long road towards closing the wage gap, with a new World Economic Forum report suggesting it could take another 118 years before females are earning the same wage as their male counterparts.
Canada ranked 30 out of 145 countries listed in the 2015 , released Thursday – dropping 11 spots from the 19th spot in 2014.
The report looks at whether men and women have the same rights and opportunities in four areas: health, education, economic participation and political empowerment.
Despite an additional 250 million women entering the global work force since 2006, when the gender gap report was first published, women are only now earning what men did a decade ago.
Since 2006 the economic gap has closed by just three per cent, which suggests that at this rate, it will take another 118 years to close the gap completely.
Canada's numbers
- The average estimated earned income for women in Canada in 2015 is US$35,014 for compared to US$40,000 for men.
- 26.6 per cent of working women are in part-time roles, compared to 11.8 per cent of men.
- Women spend an average of 254 minutes a day on unpaid work, which includes routine housework, shopping and caring for family members, compared to 160 minutes for men.
With no one country having closed its overall gender gap, Nordic nations remain the most gender-equal societies in the world, according to the report. Iceland took the top spot in the 2015 index, followed by Norway, Finland and Sweden. At the bottom of the index was Chad followed by Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, which took the 145th spot.
