Understanding how men and women participate in the global workforce is one of the most important lenses through which we can evaluate economic progress, social equity, and the health of labour markets worldwide. In 2025 and 2026, the data tell a story of meaningful, but far from complete, change. Women have entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers over the past century, yet persistent gaps in participation rates, pay, and leadership representation remain.
Key Takeaways
- 1.4 billion women vs 2.1 billion men are currently employed globally, roughly 3 male workers for every 2 female workers (ILO, 2025).
- The global female labour force participation rate stands at 48.8%, compared to 72.9% for men, a gap of 24.1 percentage points that has barely moved in 20 years (ILO modelled estimates, 2025).
- Women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men among those who are employed; when total labour income is calculated (including non-employment), women collectively earn just 52 cents on the dollar (ILO ILOSTAT, November 2025).
- At the OECD median, full-time working women earn 11% less than full-time working men, though this has improved from a 19% gap in 1995 (OECD, September 2025).
- Women hold only 30.6% of leadership positions globally despite representing 43.4% of the workforce (WEF / McKinsey, 2025).
- At the current rate of progress, achieving gender equality in employment rates would take almost two centuries (ILO, March 2025).
- Closing gender gaps in labour force participation could boost GDP per capita by 8.8% by 2060 across the OECD (OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps, September 2025).
- The Arab States have the widest labour income gender ratio globally: women earn just 14 cents for every dollar earned by men (ILO ILOSTAT, 2025).
1. Global Male vs Female Labour Force Participation (2025)
The Size of the Workforce Gap
As of 2025, the ILO ILOSTAT database records 1.4 billion employed women and 2.1 billion employed men worldwide — a ratio of approximately 3:2 in favour of male employment. This is not simply a reflection of population differences; it reflects structural, cultural, and policy barriers that limit women’s access to paid work across the globe.
The global female labour force participation rate (LFPR) stands at 48.8% in 2025, according to ILO modelled estimates. The male LFPR stands at 72.9% — a gap of 24.1 percentage points. Remarkably, this gap has narrowed by only 2.3 percentage points over the past two decades (from 26.4 percentage points in 2005), despite enormous global investment in gender equality programmes, education, and legislative reform.
The ILO notes that almost 320 million women have joined the labour market in the past 20 years — yet women still account for just 40.2% of the global labour force, a figure that has remained largely static over this period.
Sources: ILO ILOSTAT — What Labour Income Reveals About Gender Inequalities at Work (November 2025) | IZA World of Labour — Female Labor Force Participation and Development (updated 2025)
OECD Countries: Record Highs, But Persistent Gaps
Within the OECD’s 38 member countries — which represent the world’s most developed economies — the picture is more positive but still unequal. According to the OECD Labour Market Situation report for Q2 2025, the OECD employment rate reached a record high of 70.3%, and the labour force participation rate hit 74.1%.
Broken down by gender, the OECD female LFPR reached a record high of 67.1% in Q3 2024, while the male LFPR stood at 81% — a gap of approximately 14 percentage points. Men’s participation rates exceeded women’s in every single OECD country, with the largest gaps recorded in Türkiye and Mexico (30+ percentage points) and the smallest in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden (under 3 percentage points).
In 2023, the OECD recorded record female employment rates of 63.2% compared to 76.9% for men — both historical highs, with the gap representing the narrowest on record.
Source: OECD Labour Market Situation — January 2025 Update
Countries with Highest and Lowest Female Participation
Within OECD nations, Iceland leads with a female LFPR of 70.29%, followed by Sweden (89.3% combined LFPR, among the world’s highest for both sexes). At the lower end, Türkiye records a female LFPR of just 36.31% — the lowest in the OECD — with Mexico and Italy also significantly below average.
Globally, the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 identifies the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as the region with the most extreme gender employment disparities, with structural gaps persisting in Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Sudan, where men participate in the workforce at nearly four times the rate of women. In contrast, Eastern Asia and the Pacific has seen impressive advances, with 17 of 19 economies reporting female labour force participation rates above 40%, and Cambodia recording the highest in the region at 73.7%.
Sources: WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2025 — Benchmarking Gender Gaps | World Population Review — Labour Force Participation Rate by Country 2026
2. Employment Rates: Male vs Female by Country (2024–2025)
The ILO’s 2025 brief on gender equality, published to mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, found that only 46.4% of working-age women were employed in 2024, compared to 69.5% of men. This gap of 23.1 percentage points, while an improvement from 27.1 percentage points in 1991, still translates into hundreds of millions of women who are either unemployed or outside the labour force entirely.
The ILO’s sobering assessment: at the current pace of progress, achieving equality in employment rates between men and women would take almost two centuries.
The table below shows employment rates by gender for major economies, based on the most recent available national data.
| Country | Male Employment Rate | Female Employment Rate | Gap (pp) | Data Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden | ~82% | ~79% | ~3 pp | 2025 |
| Germany | ~79% | ~74% | ~5 pp | 2025 (Destatis) |
| United Kingdom | ~79% | ~72% | ~7 pp | 2025 (ONS) |
| United States | ~78% | ~67% | ~11 pp | 2024–2025 (BLS) |
| Japan | ~84% | ~73% | ~11 pp | Q2 2025 (OECD) |
| India | ~75% | ~25% | ~50 pp | 2023–24 (ILO/PLFS) |
| Saudi Arabia | ~79% | ~33.7% (LFPR) | ~45+ pp | Q3 2025 (GASTAT) |
| Global Average | 69.5% | 46.4% | 23.1 pp | 2024 (ILO) |
Note: Employment rates refer to the employed share of the working-age population (aged 15–64). Some figures are rounded. India’s female LFPR reflects formal sector participation; informal workforce inclusion raises the figure.
Sources: ILO — Achieving Gender Equality in Employment Rates Would Take Almost Two Centuries (March 2025) | OECD — Labour Market Situation October 2025 | GASTAT — Labour Market Statistics Q3 2025
For professionals working in industries where gender representation is particularly unequal, understanding these dynamics is essential for workforce planning. You may also find our analysis of women in oil and gas — statistics and leadership programmes a useful companion resource, as the energy sector shows some of the starkest employment gender gaps of any industry.
3. Male vs Female Unemployment Rates (2025)
Historically, women have faced higher unemployment rates than men in most regions. According to the WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2023 data (the most granular global breakdown available), the global unemployment rate stood at approximately 4.5% for women and 4.3% for men. The disparity is highest in the Middle East and North Africa region, where the female-to-male unemployment parity ratio was 2.69 — meaning women were nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than men.
Within the OECD, unemployment rates for women and men have been broadly stable in 2025. The OECD Labour Market report for October 2025 recorded the overall OECD unemployment rate at 5.0% in August 2025, with the rate “broadly stable for both women and men.” In the European Union, the rate reached a near-record low of 5.9% in 2025, with women accounting for a slightly larger share of recent unemployment upticks in countries such as Czechia and Finland.
An important nuance: the ILO has developed a broader “Jobs Gap” measure, which captures all individuals who want employment but currently do not have it — including those not actively seeking work. This measure paints a significantly bleaker picture: 15% of working-age women globally fall into the jobs gap category, compared to 10.5% of men — and this gap has remained almost unchanged for two decades.
Sources: WEF — Gender Gaps in the Workforce 2023 | ILO/Cinterfor — Employment-related gender gaps greater than previously thought
4. The Gender Pay Gap: Global and Country-Level Data (2025)
Global Income Gap
The most striking headline from the ILO’s November 2025 analysis is this: collectively, women received only 52 cents for every dollar received by men in 2025. This figure — the gender ratio in labour income — reflects the combined effect of both lower employment rates among women and lower earnings per worker. It has improved from 47 cents in 2004, but progress over 21 years amounts to just 5 cents on the dollar.
Among those who are employed, the picture is better but still unequal. Female workers earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by male workers in 2025 (ILO annual earnings ratio). This gap arises from differences in hours worked, job type, sector segregation, and unpaid care responsibilities. Women worked an average of 6 hours and 25 minutes less per week in paid employment than men in 2025 — a gap that has remained largely unchanged since 2005.
Source: ILO ILOSTAT — What Labour Income Reveals About Gender Inequalities at Work (November 2025)
OECD: Median Full-Time Pay Gap (2025)
For full-time workers specifically, the OECD’s September 2025 report “Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work Persist” found that the median full-time working woman earned 11% less than the median full-time working man across OECD countries — equivalent to 89 cents on the dollar or euro. This is an 8-percentage-point improvement from the 19% gap recorded in 1995, showing that progress is real but slow.
The gender wage gap varies dramatically across OECD countries, ranging from just 1.2% in Belgium to 31.1% in South Korea. Luxembourg reported a negative gender pay gap of -0.7%, meaning women on average earned slightly more than men in full-time roles. Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Estonia all recorded gaps above 17%.
Sources: OECD — Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work Persist (September 2025) | Equal Pay Today — Gender Pay Gap Statistics 2026
Country Snapshots: US, UK, and Australia
United States: In 2024, women earned 83.6% of what men earned across all employment types, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among younger workers aged 25 to 34, the gap is narrower, with women earning approximately 95 cents for every dollar earned by male counterparts — suggesting generational improvement. A 2025 analysis by Pew Research found women earned about 85% of men’s wages across hourly earnings when including both full- and part-time workers.
United Kingdom: The UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported in its April 2025 data release that median pay for all employees was 12.8% less for women than for men. The full-time gender pay gap specifically was 6.9%, while the part-time gap was marginally in women’s favour at -2.9% (part-time women earning slightly more per hour than part-time men). The overall gap has been declining steadily since 1997.
Australia: Women’s earnings averaged 83% of men’s earnings in 2024 (Workplace Gender Equality Agency), with a persistent pay gap across industries.
Sources: UK House of Commons Library — The Gender Pay Gap (December 2025) | Equal Pay Today — 2026 Comprehensive Analysis
Regional Extremes: The Arab States
The most extreme regional gender income gap globally is found in the Arab States. According to ILO ILOSTAT 2025, women in this region earned just 14 cents for every dollar earned by men in total labour income — the lowest ratio worldwide. This figure combines both dramatically lower female participation rates and lower earnings per worker. Africa recorded the second-lowest ratio at 35 cents, while the Americas, Europe/Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific showed more substantial progress.
For HR professionals and organisations operating across the Middle East, tracking these dynamics is increasingly important. Tools like the HR analytics dashboards now used by senior people managers can help organisations identify and address internal gender pay disparities in real time.
5. Occupational and Sectoral Gender Segregation
One of the most persistent drivers of gender pay and participation gaps is occupational segregation — the tendency for men and women to be concentrated in different industries and roles. This operates on two levels: horizontal segregation (different industries) and vertical segregation (different levels within the same organisation).
Horizontal Segregation: Which Sectors Are Most Imbalanced?
According to the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025, women hold over 40% of senior management positions in Healthcare and Care Services, and new leadership hires in that sector exceed 45% female. By contrast, the Oil, Gas and Mining sector and Infrastructure see women occupying fewer than 20% of senior roles, with similarly low hiring rates.
The ILO notes that contributing family work — low-paid or unpaid work within family enterprises — accounts for 19.3% of female employment in low- and middle-income countries, versus just 7.7% for men. This form of vulnerable employment offers no social protection, no formal wages, and no career ladder.
Out of every five jobs created for women in the post-pandemic period, four were in the informal economy. For men, the ratio was two out of every three informal jobs — still high, but significantly lower. Informal work is often a “last resort,” characterised by a lack of legal protections and social security.
If you work in a sector with high occupational segregation, structured workforce development is one of the most effective tools for building gender balance. Programmes such as monitoring and evaluation training equip HR and project teams with the frameworks needed to measure, track, and close workforce gender gaps systematically.
Sources: WEF — Labour Markets, Political Leadership and Supporting Frameworks (2025) | WEF — Gender Gaps in the Workforce (2023)
6. Women in Leadership: Statistics and the Pipeline Problem (2025)
The Global Leadership Gap
Women represent 43.4% of the global workforce but hold only 30.6% of leadership positions globally — a disparity that reflects what researchers call the “leadership gap.” This figure comes from a January 2026 synthesis of WEF, McKinsey, and ILO data.
In the United States, women hold approximately 34.7% of leadership positions despite comprising roughly half the overall labour force. In the corporate pipeline, McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace 2025” report found that women make up 49% of entry-level employees but only 29% of C-suite roles — unchanged from 2024 and representing a dramatic attrition through the career ladder.
The “broken rung” phenomenon, identified and tracked annually by McKinsey and LeanIn.org, is a key structural barrier: for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 81 women receive that same first promotion. This single bottleneck compounds at every successive level, explaining why the gap is widest at the top.
Sources: McKinsey — Women in the Workplace 2025 (December 2025) | High5Test — Women in Leadership Statistics 2024/2025
| Leadership Level | Women’s Share (2025) | Change vs 2021 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry level (corporate) | 49% | ≈ flat | McKinsey WitW 2025 |
| Manager | 42% | ▲ slight | McKinsey WitW 2025 |
| Senior manager / director | 39% | ▲ +4 pp vs 2021 | McKinsey WitW 2025 |
| Vice president | 35% | ▲ +5 pp vs 2021 | McKinsey WitW 2025 |
| C-suite | 29% | Unchanged vs 2024 | McKinsey WitW 2025 |
| Fortune 500 CEOs (female) | ~11% (55 of 500) | No growth past year | Fortune 500, 2025 |
| Senior management globally (Grant Thornton) | 33.5% | ▲ +1.1 pp vs 2023 | Grant Thornton WiB 2024 |
| Cabinet / ministerial positions (global) | 22.9% | N/A | UN Women, 1 Jan 2025 |
The Business Case for Gender-Balanced Leadership
The evidence for the business value of gender-balanced leadership is now extensive. Companies in the top quartile for gender and ethnic diversity are 9% more likely to outperform peers financially, and those with gender-diverse boards are 27% more likely to outperform. Accenture research links gender-balanced leadership to significantly stronger digital maturity — firms with higher female representation in senior roles are 38% more likely to rank in the top quartile of digital maturity.
Women aged 16–28 now represent 45.7% of the workforce globally (WEF 2025), the highest representation of young women ever recorded — a demographic dividend that organisations can capture through intentional retention and promotion strategies. This generational shift is already reflected in top-performing companies: at top-quartile firms, women now hold 38% of C-suite roles (projected 2025 figure, McKinsey) — compared to just 23% at bottom-quartile companies.
Building the infrastructure to support women’s career progression — from structured mentorship and promotion frameworks to pay equity audits — is increasingly a leadership competency in its own right. Understanding how to design a competency framework from scratch is one of the foundational skills for HR leaders seeking to operationalise gender equity in talent pipelines.
Sources: Grant Thornton — Women in Business 2024 | UN Global Compact — Closing the Gap at the Top (2025) | McKinsey — Women in the Workplace 2025
7. The Hidden Dimension: Unpaid Care Work
Any analysis of male vs female employment statistics is incomplete without addressing unpaid care work — the cooking, cleaning, childcare, and elder care that women disproportionately perform outside the formal economy. This work is economically valuable (the global care economy is worth at least six times the value of the space economy, per WEF 2025) but largely invisible in GDP and employment statistics.
The ILO’s data is stark: women work more total hours than men when both paid and unpaid work are combined, yet earn less from paid work because they spend fewer hours in formal employment. This “time poverty” compounds income poverty. Women spend an average of 6 hours 25 minutes less per week in paid work than men — not because they work less overall, but because a larger share of their total working time is unpaid.
The OECD’s September 2025 analysis identifies unequal family leave systems, inadequate childcare access, and gendered tax-benefit systems as the primary structural drivers of this imbalance. The G7’s Apulia Communiqué (2024) committed member nations to supporting 200 million more women into the workforce by 2035 through investment in childcare and care infrastructure.
The OECD estimates that closing gender gaps in labour force participation and paid working hours could increase annual GDP growth by 0.22 percentage points, boosting GDP per capita across the OECD by 8.8% by 2060.
Sources: OECD — Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work Persist (September 2025) | OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps (September 2025)
8. How Long Will It Take? Progress Timelines
One of the most sobering findings in contemporary gender economics research is how slow the pace of change has been, and how far away full parity remains. Key projections from credible sources as of 2025 and 2026 include the following:
- Employment rate equality: At the current pace of change, the ILO projects it would take almost two centuries to achieve equal employment rates between men and women globally (ILO, March 2025).
- Senior management parity: At the current rate of 0.5% annual growth in women’s share of managerial roles, reaching 48% representation in senior management would require acceleration far beyond current trends. Grant Thornton’s 2024 Women in Business report calculated that at the current pace, women would not reach parity in senior management until 2053.
- Global gender gap overall: The WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025 found that the global gender gap has been closed by 68.8%. At the rate of progress since the index began in 2006, closing the remaining 31.2% would take 134 years.
- Pay gap: Researchers from Harvard Business Review (July 2025) noted that the gender wage gap has “barely budged over the past two decades,” with women earning 83 cents on the dollar — consistent across OECD countries.
These timelines underscore why targeted interventions — in policy, organisational practice, and professional development — are essential rather than optional. Leadership training ROI research from McKinsey and Gartner consistently finds that organisations which invest in structured development programmes for underrepresented groups — including women — see measurable returns in retention, performance, and pipeline diversity.
Sources: ILO — Achieving Gender Equality Would Take Almost Two Centuries (2025) | Harvard Business Review — The Gender Wage Gap Tipping Point (July 2025) | Grant Thornton — Women in Business Global 2024
9. Accelerating Progress Through Professional Development
Closing the gender employment gap is not only a matter of social policy — it is a workforce competitiveness imperative. The OECD estimates that fully closing gender labour force participation gaps would add trillions in output to the global economy by 2060. For organisations, the research is equally clear: companies with more women in senior management are more likely to outperform financially, attract diverse talent, and make better decisions.
For professionals working in industries where women remain underrepresented — including energy, engineering, construction, and logistics — upskilling is one of the most powerful levers available to both individual career advancement and organisational gender balance. Relevant training includes:
- Project management certification — one of the most effective cross-sector qualifications for women seeking to move from technical to leadership roles. Our Project Management Course for Beginners provides a structured pathway for professionals at any level.
- Executive and personal assistant roles — a significant professional category globally that skews female and offers career progression through formal certification. Our Executive Assistant and Personal Assistant (PA) Training and Certification is designed for professionals seeking formal recognition of their skills.
- HR analytics — as gender pay equity reporting becomes mandatory across more jurisdictions (the EU Pay Transparency Directive, for example, takes full effect by 2026), HR professionals need the tools to analyse and report workforce gender data accurately.
10. Conclusion
The global picture of male vs female employment in 2025 and 2026 is one of genuine progress shadowed by genuine persistence. More women are employed than at any point in human history. The gender pay gap is narrowing — slowly. Women are entering leadership in greater numbers. Yet on almost every measure — participation rates, pay, leadership representation, pension income, informal work exposure — women remain structurally disadvantaged in the world of work.
The data points that should give us most pause are the timelines: two centuries for employment equality; 134 years to close the overall gender gap; parity in senior management not until 2053. These are not abstract numbers — they represent the career lifetimes of women currently in education, currently starting jobs, currently being passed over for promotions.
Closing these gaps requires simultaneous action at three levels: policy (childcare investment, pay transparency legislation, family leave reform), organisational practice (structured pipeline development, pay equity audits, inclusive promotion criteria), and individual professional development. All three matter. And the evidence — from ILO to McKinsey to the OECD — increasingly agrees that the cost of inaction is not only ethical but economic.
Frequently Asked Questions: Male vs Female Employment Statistics
What is the current global gender gap in employment rates?
As of 2024, 46.4% of working-age women were employed globally, compared to 69.5% of men — a gap of 23.1 percentage points (ILO, March 2025). At the current pace of progress, achieving equality in employment rates would take almost two centuries.
How much less do women earn than men globally in 2025?
There are three different ways to measure this. In total labour income (including non-employment), women collectively earn 52 cents for every dollar earned by men (ILO, November 2025). Among employed workers, women earn 78 cents per dollar annually. For full-time workers at the median, the OECD figure is 89 cents — an 11% gap (OECD, September 2025).
What percentage of leadership positions are held by women in 2025?
Women hold 30.6% of leadership positions globally, despite representing 43.4% of the total workforce (WEF / McKinsey, 2025). In Fortune 500 companies, approximately 11% of CEOs are women. In C-suite roles across corporate America, women hold 29% of positions — unchanged from 2024.
Which country has the smallest gender pay gap?
Among OECD countries, Belgium has the smallest full-time gender pay gap at 1.2%, and Luxembourg records a negative gap of -0.7% (women earning marginally more than men in full-time roles). Nordic countries including Iceland, Sweden, and Norway consistently rank among the narrowest gender pay gap countries globally.
Which region has the largest gender employment gap?
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has the most extreme gender employment disparities. In countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Sudan, men participate in the workforce at nearly four times the rate of women (WEF 2025). Women in the Arab States earn just 14 cents for every dollar earned by men in total labour income — the lowest ratio worldwide (ILO 2025).
How has the gender pay gap changed since 1995?
Among OECD countries, the full-time gender pay gap has improved from 19% in 1995 to 11% in 2023 — an 8-percentage-point improvement over 28 years, or roughly 0.3 percentage points per year. While the direction is positive, the pace is slow.
Primary Sources and Data References
- ILO ILOSTAT — What Labour Income Reveals About Gender Inequalities at Work (November 2025)
- ILO — Achieving Gender Equality in Employment Rates Would Take Almost Two Centuries (March 2025)
- OECD — Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work Persist (September 2025)
- OECD Dashboard on Gender Gaps (September 2025)
- OECD Labour Market Situation — October 2025
- World Economic Forum — Global Gender Gap Report 2025
- WEF — Labour Markets, Political Leadership and Supporting Frameworks (2025)
- McKinsey — Women in the Workplace 2025 (December 2025)
- UK House of Commons Library — The Gender Pay Gap (December 2025)
- Grant Thornton — Women in Business 2024
- UN Global Compact — Closing the Gap at the Top (2025)
- Harvard Business Review — The Gender Wage Gap Tipping Point (July 2025)
- IZA World of Labour — Female Labour Force Participation and Development (updated 2025)
- Equal Pay Today — Gender Pay Gap Statistics 2026
- Our World in Data — Women’s Employment (updated February 2026)
This article is intended for informational purposes. All statistics are sourced from and attributed to their primary data publishers. Figures should be independently verified before use in research, policy, or legal contexts. Data reflects information available as of March 2026.
Joshna Dsouza is a Training Operations Specialist with 12+ years of experience in course development and content quality management at Zoe Talent Solutions. She specializes in creating accessible, practical content on HR, office administration, CRM, and workplace soft skills. Known for her meticulous attention to detail and operational expertise, she bridges real-world training needs with clear, learner-focused resources.
