WEF: Global Gender Gap Report 2026
Twenty years after the World Economic Forum first started measuring gender parity, its latest Global Gender Gap Report 2026 shows progress. Across 145 economies, 69.2% of the global gender gap has been closed.
At the pace of progress recorded over the past two decades, full global gender parity is still estimated to be 120 years away, benchmarking progress across four areas:
Educational Attainment: 96.9%
Health and Survival: 96.2%
Economic Participation and Opportunity: 61.7%
Political Empowerment: 22.1%
Key findings from this year's report:
Almost all of the 97 countries tracked continuously since 2006 have improved their overall gender parity score.
All of the top 10 countries in the index have closed the gap by more than 81%.
Political Empowerment has shown the most improvement across all 20 editions, but it still has the biggest gap yet to close and has been reversing.
And Africa? There is progress worth paying attention to.
Sub-Saharan Africa has closed 68.8% of its overall gender gap, and more significantly for the workplace, the region has closed 70.6% of its Economic Participation and Opportunity gap, compared with 61.7% globally.
Namibia now ranks 4th in the world, with 84.5% of its overall gender gap closed.
South Africa has previously ranked among the world's top 10 for gender parity, achieving a Top 10 position once during the index's 20-year history.
So what does this mean for South African businesses?
Perhaps one of the most useful takeaways from the report is the gap between access to education and access to economic opportunity.
Globally, Educational Attainment stands at 96.2% parity. Economic Participation and Opportunity stands at 61.7%.
That raises practical questions for employers.
Are people gaining the skills employers need?
Are they getting meaningful workplace experience?
Are they progressing into skilled and technical roles?
And are those opportunities eventually translating into leadership and greater economic participation?
For South African businesses, these questions connect directly with how Signa approach meaningful and sustainable economic opportunity - skills development, workplace experience, bursaries, youth employment and transformation.
The numbers show progress. They also show where more work is needed.
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