The data on women at work call us to action

At the current pace of change, it could take 350 years for women to participate in the labor market at the same rate as men. That is not a typo. It is what the data tell us when we trace the trajectory of women's labor force participation from 1990 to today across countries worldwide. This sobering finding lies at the heart of Shaping the Future of Women in the Workplace featured in the 2026 edition of the Atlas for Global Development. Longstanding gaps in women’s economic participation Drawing on the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal, the data story provides a comprehensive analysis of women’s jobs worldwide. Globally, only about half of women aged 15 to 64 are engaged in income-generating work, around 30 percentage points below men. That gap has barely changed since 1990. Global averages, however, tell only part of the story. In several low-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, women’s labor force participation approaches 90 percent. Yet much of this work is in subsistence agriculture or informal trade, often without contracts, social protection, or income security. High participation does not necessarily mean access to good jobs; it may instead reflect economic necessity. Contrast that with a country like Jordan, where female labor force participation is among the lowest in the world hovering around 15 percent. The barriers there are different in kind: deeply embedded social norms, mobility constraints, and a formal economy that has not been structured to absorb women. The measures needed in Jordan therefore look very different from those required in Tanzania or Rwanda. These differences are why timely, country-specific data matter. It is not enough to know that women are less likely than men to be in paid work. Policymakers need to understand where the gaps are, what drives them, the kinds of jobs women hold, and the conditions under which they work. From evidence to action Across the World Bank Group’s portfolio, gender data are helping countries move from diagnosis to action. The following examples span different regions and different types of barriers, but each illustrates the same core point: good data, applied deliberately, can move policy and support access to jobs for women: Jordan is a striking case. The World Bank Group’s Jordan Country Partnership Framework 2024–2029 (CPF), developed with deep analytical grounding in gender labor market data, set an explicit objective to address the root causes of low female participation — targeting an increase from roughly 14.8 percent to 28 percent by 2033. The CPF ties private-sector job creation to investments in safe childcare and public transport, because the data showed these were binding constraints for Jordanian women specifically. The Enhancing Women's Economic Opportunities in Jordan program, a US$221 million operation, is addressing these constraints. By end-2025, national bus stop design guidelines and a framework to enhance women's safety in public transit were completed and are moving toward endorsement and piloting. On childcare, regulations operationalizing the nurseries bylaw were implemented, close to 200 new nurseries were registered, close to 300 caregivers were certified, and over 1,600 working mothers received childcare subsidies for nursery enrollment of their children. Indonesia illustrates the power of data in building the policy case for investment in the care economy. In 2024, World Bank analytics mapped the care burden on Indonesian women and modeled the economic returns to childcare provision, including a potential $62 billion gain in annual GDP if female labor force participation reaches 58 percent. That evidence base fed directly into national policy dialogue. The World Bank has worked with the Government of Indonesia to develop a Care Economy Roadmap, influence national development planning, and support parental leave legislation driving a multi-sectoral engagement aimed at creating lasting improvements in women's workforce participation. Azerbaijan shows data being used to dismantle legal barriers. With support from the World Bank, Azerbaijan found that restricting women from certain jobs for safety reasons was not justified as they posted no specific health risks to women. It then opened 674 previously male-only occupations to women. The reform replaced blanket prohibitions with a health risk-based approach and improved the country's score on the Women, Business and the Law index. Türkiye offers perhaps the most instructive example of what sustained progress can look like over time. The Atlas highlights how a combination of structural shifts toward industry and services, a falling fertility rate, and rising education levels drove substantial gains in women's employment over two decades. World Bank-supported operations have built on this trajectory: working with Syrian refugee and Turkish women in sectors such as food, textiles, and cleaning services, and deliberately pairing cooperative structures with childcare and transport support to work around the social barriers. The project enabled over 500 women to access employment and seeded a Social Entrepreneurship Community of Practice that now connects 350 organizations and 900 individual members across government, academia, and the private sector. Gender data as a development investment A 350-year gap between women’s and men’s paid work is unthinkable in an age of unprecedented technology and information. That is not simply a measure of how far we have to go, it is a warning about how slowly we are acting. Yet, gender data on earnings, job characteristics, and working conditions in the informal economy — where the majority of the world's poor, and a disproportionate share of working women, are employed — remain deeply inadequate. Similarly, data on unpaid care work are collected inconsistently and infrequently. That needs to change. Investing in gender data has real returns: it helps governments identify barriers, target scarce resources, design better policies, and measure what works. It also makes invisible constraints—from unpaid care to unsafe working conditions—visible to the institutions that can address them. The 350-year estimate is a call to action. It is a reminder that gradual, fragmented action will not be enough. Faster progress requires clear country-level diagnoses, policies grounded in evidence, and sustained investment in the areas where data show the greatest potential for impact. Our WBG Gender Strategy and ambitious Gender Targets clearly emphasize that data can drive accountability and measurable results. The Shaping the Future of Women in the Workplace data story is an invitation to engage with that evidence. We call on policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and advocates to use it: not just to understand the problem, but to act on it.