Around the world, economies are grappling with growing uncertainty. One truth remains constant, however: the economic potential of a society depends on whether its people have the equal footing to thrive. Yet despite decades of progress, investments in improving gender parity, across multiple facets of society, remain constrained, imposing a hidden but heavy tax on global growth, weakening the very foundations of economic resilience. The collective cost of gender gaps manifests in underutilized talent, lost productivity, slower innovation and frayed social cohesion.

This chapter delves into the shifting dynamics of economic and political participation through the lens of gender, examining how these spheres intersect and evolve in the context of a changing global economy. Building on long-standing data collaboration with LinkedIn and integrating insights from the World Bank’s Women Business and the Law dataset, this chapter explores how gender differences shape and are shaped in a changing world. It considers how gender gaps in the labour-force are evolving, and whether investments in skilling are effectively generating dividends for economies. It also explores how career trajectories are shifting beyond the traditional ladder, and whether leadership representation in both public and private sectors is balanced. The chapter also highlights the importance of reducing implementation gaps that stand in the way of meaningful progress and delves into how the rewiring of global trade flows could impact men and women differently.

With talent availability already ranked as one of the top barriers to economic and business strategy, countries that draw from their full talent pool and integrate the vast, underutilized potential of women will have a clear advantage, building a stronger foundation for long-term growth. For economies across the income spectrum, higher female labourforce participation can have an outsized positive impact on productivity by increasing the size and diversity of the workforce.4 This is a continued incentive for government and business to enhance women’s footprint in the economy beyond 40.2% in the workforce and 28.8% in management.

Over a 10-year period, women’s workforce participation has increased at both workforce and leadership levels, as illustrated by Figure 2.1. As of 2024, for the population covered in the LinkedIn dataset underlying the subsequent analysis, women represented 41.2% of the overall workforce, having increased their presence across nearly every industry – with notable jumps in Infrastructure (+8.9 percentage points) and Government and Public Sector (+6.5 percentage points). However, industry patterns reveal that men and women continue to cluster around specific sectors, with women being highly concentrated in “people-focused” industries. According to 2024 data, women remain overrepresented in Healthcare and Care Services (58.5%) and Education (52.9%) – sectors critical to social infrastructure but that often have lower pay, capital intensity and long-term economic scaling potential (Figure 2.2).

Better gender balance across sectors can boost innovation, address talent shortages and close wage gaps – in both industries that drive future economic growth and industries that sustain growth as part of the care economy. This becomes even more critical in a context where AI and automation are rapidly shifting industry baselines, redefining the skills and roles that will shape the next generation of jobs. Recent LinkedIn data suggests that women are more likely to hold roles disrupted by GenAI and less likely to experience augmentation. Women’s participation in the technology, information and media industry has grown to 35.X%, yet retention remains a challenge. Men are more highly represented at every career stage, especially in the STEM C-suite. Yet the dynamism of AI transformation also offers an opportunity to break with longstanding gender disparities. LinkedIn data shows female AI talent on the platform has expanded significantly between 2018 and 2025, and the gender gap in AI talent has narrowed in 74 of 75 economies. (source: Gender Parity in the Intelligent Age, World Economic Forum and LinkedIn, 2025). Ensuring women are not left out of these emerging sectors is key to building resilient, future-ready economies.

Integrating women’s skills and experience into the workforce contributes to stronger and more balanced economies,5 yet many economies are failing to translate educational attainment into full workforce utilization. This signals a largely untapped return on education investment: talent is being siphoned inefficiently, leaving valuable human capital underleveraged.

In 2024, men continue to be better represented in the workforce across all levels of educational attainment – comprising 65% of workers without a tertiary degree and 60% with tertiary diplomas (Figure 2.3). This is despite the fact that women graduate from tertiary education at higher rates than men. Importantly, among tertiary-educated women in the workforce, just 29.5% make it to top leadership, despite representing 40.3% of the workforce. Even for women with master’s or bachelor’s degrees, top-level representation plateaus at 30.7% and 30.8%, respectively.

In other words, the gap between women’s representation in the total workforce and in senior leadership widens as education levels increase, signalling a clear disconnect between educational attainment and economic engagement.This disparity underscores the inefficiency of current systems in translating women’s skills into leadership and economic decision-making roles.

Demographic shifts suggest that workforce transformation will also see gender parity dynamics change. Women aged 16-28 years now represent 45.7% of the workforce, while the representation of women from those aged 61-79 years stands at 26.8%, indicating that younger women are finding their way into the workforce and offering a demographic dividend for economies that can, in the decades ahead, retain and nurture the career progression of a highly educated labour force.

For nearly a decade, women have steadily gained ground in workplace leadership. Between 2015 and 2024, the share of women in top-management roles increased from 25.7% to 28.1%, with midlevel management also rising from 31.5% to 33.4%. These are important gains, but the momentum has slowed. Since 2020, the gap between women in mid-level and top-level leadership has stalled at 5.4 percentage points, indicating persistent drains in the leadership pipeline.

Notably, in 14 sectors – such as Supply Chain and Transportation, Financial Services, and Healthcare and Care Services – women’s representation is growing faster in top management than in mid-level management (Figure 2.4). Heterogenous leadership is directly linked to higher profitability, innovation and talent retention. However, in some industries, the rate at which women are being hired into top leadership roles now outpaces their hiring into middle management suggesting a need for building a more diverse middle management bench.

The share of women among new hires to top- level management roles has declined in the postpandemic era. Across the 16 economies with available data, the share steadily increased from 31.6% in 2019 to 34.8% in 2022. However, by 2024, it has fallen slightly to 33.7% as illustrated in Figure 2.5.

This contraction comes at a time when the shortage of skilled workers is becoming more severe, just as economic resilience depends on broader and more robust talent pools. Limiting women’s full workforce participation, especially in emerging and strategic sectors like Technology, Energy, and Infrastructure, is a risk to economic growth. Furthermore, industries that have a higher share of women in top-level management roles are also the ones that are the most likely to hire more women into these positions (Figure 2.6). This is especially evident in the Healthcare and Care Services sector, where women hold over 40% of senior management positions, and new hires into leadership roles exceed 45%. In contrast, industries such as Oil, Gas and Mining as well as Infrastructure see women occupying fewer than 20% of senior roles, with similarly low hiring rates for these positions.

LinkedIn data reveals that it is now over twice as common for leaders, regardless of gender, to have worked in at least two different industries, functions or companies. While career linearity has declined in general, it has been and has grown increasingly more pronounced for women. As Figure 2.7 illustrates, the share of women in the C-suite with more than two prior industry experiences has been increasingly higher than the share of men over the past five years.

Possessing cross-industry experience can bring multiple advantages to C-suite leadership, building up a leader’s strategic overview and thinking. At the same time, factoring gender disparities into cross-industry experience can also suggest the presence of barriers to advancement – from differential assessments for leadership potential to slower promotion rates and greater scrutiny on the path to leadership.

Data also reveals new career pathways, for women and men alike, with some differences. With longer work lives and career spans, in addition to increasing care loads, workers are facing careers that are more cyclical, marked by lateral moves, sector transitions and re-entry after breaks. Linkedin research shows that women, in fact, are 55.2% more likely to take career breaks than men and spend longer time away from work – on average, 19.6 months compared to 13.9 months.7 While men and women cite similar reasons for stepping back, women are far more likely to name full-time parenting as the driver, as Figure 2.8 shows. These breaks carry long-term economic costs: they shrink lifetime earnings, widen pension gaps and weaken economic security into retirement.

Care work sits at the centre of this challenge—but also presents economies around the world with an opportunity. Contributing directly to nonlinear career trajectories are insufficient, inaccessible and unaffordable care services that force women to step off their career paths and into caring roles. The shortage of care professionals also contributes to this phenomenon, despite care being one of the few sectors resilient to automation.

While AI and augmentation are expected to transform up to 60% of today’s jobs, care work is expected to remain human-centric.8 Globally, the care economy is worth at least over six times the value of the space economy.9 Yet governments and businesses remain slow to position care as a core pillar of workforce planning and economic productivity.

Age-group data shows that in 2025, women ages 16-28 hold 34.8% of leadership roles, while women ages 61-79 years represent just 18.6%. This suggests generational change is beginning, but not yet widespread or systemic. As the nature of work shifts – driven by demographic trends, economic restructuring and technological change – so must our understanding of what successful career paths look like in this new context.

Moving towards a recognition of non-linear career pathways can be a strategic shift towards building a more resilient, equitable workforce for tomorrow. Unlike the rigid, upward-only model of conventional career progression, considering careers in non-linear terms can valorise diverse experiences and flexible re-entry points, benefiting workers who are temporarily disengaged from the workforce and the global economy.

Globally, women remain significantly underrepresented in key positions of political power. Data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) shows that in 2025, women serve as parliamentary speakers in 61 of the 187 parliamentary chambers tracked – fewer than one-third globally. As an indicator for women’s representation in parliamentary leadership, this number shows that while it has been nearly a century since a woman first held the role of parliamentary speaker in 1927, appointments have only become more frequent in recent decades, as Figure 2.9 shows. Of the 148 economies covered in this year’s Global Gender Gap Index, 99 have had a woman serve as parliamentary speaker – 60 of whom were appointed in the last 25 years.

Meanwhile, legislative bodies continue to make strides in institutionalizing a focus on gender equality. As of 2025, there are 161 parliamentary bodies, across 114 economies, with a gender equality mandate. Of these, 100 are chaired by women and 44 by men. Figure 2.10 offers a regional overview of how chairpersonship is distributed between men and women. The data shows that leadership of these bodies is shared equally between men and women only in Eastern Asia and the Pacific, and in Central Asia. In SubSaharan Africa and Southern Asia, the responsibility for advancing gender equality through legislation is nearly balanced. In every other region, it is women who hold the prime role and responsibility for gender equality legislation. From a generational perspective, only 29 of the 161 bodies are chaired by individuals under the age of 45 – but only 10% of the bodies with younger leadership are in lower- and low-income economies, where demographic dividends would likely be greater. This not only highlights a gender gap but also a generational gap in shaping the policy frameworks that will define future progress.

Data from UN Women further shows that women in cabinet positions are still most commonly appointed to portfolios related to gender, health and social affairs, while they remain underrepresented in ministries that shape economic strategy, defence and infrastructure (Figure 2.11). This distribution is more than symbolic; it has tangible economic consequences, shaping national priorities, fiscal policy and the allocation of public investment in ways that often fail to account for half the population’s contribution to economic growth. Achieving equal political representation is not a goal for women alone to pursue; it requires those who already hold power to actively create pathways for others to follow. This includes not only opening doors to formal leadership but also embedding equality into the institutions that shape public decision-making.

To achieve gender parity across spheres of life, economies need to advance framework conditions and administer resources at their disposal to make and sustain progress. When the conditions necessary to support these frameworks—such as policies, services and budgets — are missing, insufficient or lack continuity, economies are limited in their ability to reach their parity goals within a given time frame. This tension, often referred to as the “implementation gap”, illustrates the practical distance between the high standards set by legal frameworks and the on-the-ground capacity to deliver on them. It also remains one of the most critical challenges for economies to overcome.

In 2024, the World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law 2.0 dataset introduced the “supportive framework” indicator for the first time to capture these enabling conditions. This indicator reflects the existence of policies, plans, budgets, institutions, data systems and access to justice mechanisms intended to operationalize legal rights. It complements the “legal framework” component, which assesses whether laws support gender equality in areas such as work, pay, marriage and parenthood. Legal frameworks reflect ambition, while supportive frameworks reflect implementation capacity.

Many countries have better developed legal systems but continue to lack the mechanisms to enforce or support those laws. Conversely, a few economies with modest legal frameworks have invested in supportive conditions to meet legal requirements. Across the 148 economies covered in this edition of the Global Gender Gap Report there is a near-universal implementation gap, where supportive framework scores lag behind those of the legal framework. Only five economies —Belize, Bangladesh, Canada, Jordan and the United Kingdom—have higher supportive framework scores than legal ones. This suggests that, relative to their legal environment, these economies have a more developed infrastructure (programs, institutions, and policies) to promote gender equality. However, this group is highly heterogeneous: legal framework scores range from 33% to over 90%, while supportive framework scores range from 35% to 98%. More importantly, the presence of a reverse gap does not necessarily mean strong legal protections are in place— only that efforts to operationalize laws may be comparatively better advanced.

While wealthier economies generally display a more developed legal framework, they do not consistently demonstrate narrower implementation gaps (Figure 2.12). A striking example is the contrast between Denmark and Panama. Both countries have a legal framework score of 80% yet differ significantly in their supportive framework scores: 60.0% for Denmark and just 33.3% for Panama. Many low-income economies also experience some of the widest gaps between what laws promise and what is implemented in practice.

Figure 2.13a illustrates that economies with stronger institutional foundations for gender equality tend to achieve higher gender parity scores. This relationship is partly influenced by income level, as most highincome and upper-middle-income economies generally score higher on both the legal framework index and the gender parity index. However, a strong legal framework alone does not guarantee genderequal outcomes. For instance, 15 economies share the same legal framework score of 82.5%, yet their gender parity scores range from 68.6% in Czechia to 92.6% in Iceland—a disparity of over 20 percentage points. Figure 2.13b underscores the importance of implementation capacity in achieving gender parity. Economies with more favourable enabling conditions —as reflected in higher supportive framework scores—tend to also have higher gender parity scores. While income level remains a relevant factor, the positive correlation between supportive framework scores and gender parity holds across income groups. Taken together, Figures 2.13a and 2.13b highlight that the true effectiveness of gender-equal legislation lies not only in its existence on paper but in the presence of robust, well-aligned mechanisms that ensure these laws are put into practice.

As the world move into increasingly uncharted economic waters, the global gender gap cannot be separated from broader shifts already underway. For nearly two decades, this report has assessed how gender parity is both shaping and being shaped by social and economic outcomes. This lens is now more urgent than ever before, given how current global economic, technological and geopolitical dynamics are impacting the conditions for achieving gender parity.

Over the past few decades, trade has been a central pillar of global economic integration, relying on cooperation – at national, regional and organizational levels – as a stabilizing force. However, in 2025, the design and underlying logic of economic flows is changing, and with it the effects that trade can have on growth, jobs and the attainment of socioeconomic goals, including gender parity.

Governments have increasingly approached inclusive trade as a catalyst for broader economic development – particularly in trade-dependent economies, where women’s participation in trade has become central to national economic strategies. While trade has yet to offer fully comprehensive solutions to fair, inclusive and decent employment, it has nonetheless had positive effect on women’s economic empowerment. Furthermore, international financial institutions have found that through these initial gains, international trade flows have contributed to advancing gender equality.

Women in low- and middle-income countries in particular have benefited economically from the past 30 years of global trade integration in a number of ways. For example, many have moved out of the informal economy or the domestic economy into formal jobs that have been created in fast-growing export sectors. Overall, women’s representation in firms that are integrated into global value chains is higher (33%) than in firms that are not integrated (24%). Since export-related jobs tend to be better remunerated, these shifts have helped close wage gaps between men and women. Moving out of the informal economy into formal jobs created by trade integration has also improved working conditions for women in terms of access to social safety nets, including pensions. In addition, globalization has lowered the prices of goods and services, reducing the cost of living and therefore benefiting those with the lowest incomes. Finally, lower trade costs can improve access to international markets, particularly for smaller economic actors such as women-led and -owned businesses.

A dampening of global trade integration could risk many of the gains of recent decades. One estimate shows that a 1% contraction in global trade volumes could put as many as 11 million jobs at risk – of which almost 4.5 million would likely be held by women.17 A significant impact of such an employment contraction would fall on export-related jobs, which lie at the heart of women’s economic gains from trade integration as described above. It is also unclear whether those who could loose their jobs in export-related activities under such a scenario will, in the long-run, be able to re-integrate into the domestic economy and under what conditions.

In lower-income economies, women are disproportionately employed in tradable sectors – particularly Manufacturing and Agriculture – while in high-income economies, they are more likely to work in non-tradable sectors such as healthcare and education. Of the 148 economies included in the 2025 edition of the Global Gender Gap Index, 146 have available data suggesting only one-third of female workers in high-income economies are employed in tradable sectors (Figure 2.14). This share increases to 45% in upper middle-income economies, 59% in lower-middle income economies, and up to 72% in low-income economies. With the exception of high-income economies, women in tradable sectors are more likely to be employed in tradable merchandise sectors (e.g. Agriculture, Manufacturing, and Mining) than in other tradable sectors, including tradable services and other activities.

As evidenced by the COVID-19 emergency, while both men and women suffer under trade shocks, effects for women tend to last longer and are harder to reverse, exacerbating pre-existing disparities in earnings, assets and wealth. It will therefore be important to keep gendered impacts of trade fragmentation and their effects on growth and prosperity top of mind as trade policy evolves in 2025.