It will take 217 years to close the economic gender gap even as women are increasingly getting hired across industries

As women increasing contribute as working members in the society and break barriers of perception across industries such as health and manufacturing, it seems like there’s still a long way to go.

LinkedIn and World Economic Forum released a report on Global Gender Gap Analysis that surveyed 12 industries across 20 countries highlighting the progress in making the workplace a gender-diverse place, globally.

The report suggests that women's leadership across industries remains less than 50% even as women are participating more across sectors. In India, the average female hiring has increased by 6% across the twelve industries surveyed.

Key insights from the WEF Gender Gap report include:

The existing female leadership gap globally

• The Education sector emerged as one of the highest industries representing female leadership. Whereas, the Healthcare and Legal industries, show a lower representation relative to the overall percentage of female hires
• Female leadership hiring rate has increased significantly in Finance, Legal, and Real Estate over the past 10 years. Whereas in the Energy & Mining sector, the female leadership roles have not increased at the same pace as non-leadership roles
• In some fields, like energy and mining or manufacturing, representation of women is far lower, with women holding fewer than 20% of leadership positions

The growth in female hiring rates across industries

• Energy & Mining, Manufacturing and Real Estate show the highest change in percentage of female hiring rate in the last ten years. Globally, Software & IT services, Manufacturing and Healthcare industries have shown the highest increases, while the Energy & Mining sector ranks among the lowest
• Surprisingly, the Education industry in India, which initially had the 3^rd highest percentage of females hired showed slow growth over the years and dropped in rank to become the 6^th highest

Female talent pools across industries

• Globally, industries that witnessed a high change in female hiring, have also seen an increase in the female talent pool. Nonprofit and Education industries have peaked in their female talent pools and other industries continue to grow
• Among the industries surveyed globally, large gaps were found in the availability of female talent for entry level positions and the demand for hiring