Gender pay gap: Women won't see equal wages until 2133 at current rate of increase

The gender pay gap will take another 118 years to close, the World Economic Forum has said. If the current rate continues, women will not earn the as much as men for the same job until 2133. The World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report opened a can of worms on the current situation of gender equality around the world. It showed that women are finally earning the same amount that men made back in 2006 and it showed the gender gap was only closing by 3% each year.

Although some 250 million women have entered the global workforce, the report showed the painful truth of inequality. For example, the gender gap in terms of opportunity is only closing by 4% a year and women are still very much under-represented in parliaments worldwide.

Although the report said that around half of the world's countries have a female head of state, the average percentage of female parliamentarians is 19%, with 18% of ministers being female. Labour's shadow cabinet, formed by new leader Jeremy Corbyn, is one of the few across the world with a majority of female ministers.

The WEF also named and shamed the countries where gender pay equality is best and worst. Scandinavian countries and Iceland top the list, as might be expected, but even among the very best, women are still only making 88p for every £1 men earn.

The news comes after figures by the Office for National Statistics showed that in the UK, which ranked 18th in the list, behind Namibia and South Africa, little has changed in terms of closing the gender pay gap in the last four years. Although the difference between men and women's wages is at its lowest at 9.4%, the difference is still significant. People are more worried that the gender pay gap is not closing fast enough, however.

In the FTSE 100, more than 25% of board members are now female. The UK government has since increased the target to 33% and has said that it will focus on getting more women in executive positions.

These are the top 30 countries in terms of economic gender equality in the world, as listed by the WEF:

1 Iceland, 0.881

2 Norway , 0.850

3 Finland, 0.850

4 Sweden , 0.823

5 Ireland, 0.807

6 Rwanda, 0.794

7 Philippines, 0.790

8 Switzerland, 0.785

9 Slovenia, 0.784

10 New Zealand, 0.782

11 Germany, 0.779