Gender gap
The gender gap encompasses the empirically observed disparities in average outcomes between biological males and females across key societal domains, including education, where females have achieved higher tertiary enrollment and completion rates than males in most OECD countries since the early 2000s; labor markets, marked by female underrepresentation in STEM fields and overrepresentation in lower-risk service occupations; and politics, characterized by consistent differences in voting preferences and leadership attainment.[1][2][3] These gaps have narrowed in areas like overall educational access and health outcomes, with women now earning the majority of bachelor's degrees in the United States (approximately 58% as of 2019) and similar trends in Europe, yet persist or have widened in field-specific choices and high-stakes professions.[4][1] In employment, occupational segregation—driven more by differences in interests and willingness to accept risk than by discrimination—explains much of the remaining earnings differential, as women tend to prioritize flexible, people-oriented roles over dangerous or mathematically intensive ones.[2][5] Politically, females in Western democracies exhibit a reliable leftward tilt in voting, supporting welfare expansion and social policies at higher rates than males, contributing to slower closure of representation gaps in conservative-leaning institutions.[6][7] Central controversies revolve around causation, with data indicating that biological factors, such as sex differences in spatial abilities, risk tolerance, and vocational interests, play a substantial role in perpetuating gaps, particularly as greater gender equality correlates with larger divergences in mate preferences and career selections rather than convergence.[5][8] Claims of pervasive discrimination often overlook evidence from controlled studies showing minimal unexplained residuals in pay after accounting for choices, hours worked, and experience, though institutional biases in academia and media—prone to overemphasizing socialization—have amplified narratives favoring environmental determinism.[9][10] This paradox of equality, where Nordic countries exhibit the widest occupational gender divides despite policy interventions, underscores the limits of top-down equalization efforts in overriding evolved predispositions.[8]Conceptual Foundations
Definition and Scope
The gender gap denotes the empirically observed disparities between males and females in measurable outcomes, preferences, and behaviors across societal domains, arising from a combination of biological predispositions, socialization, and structural factors. These differences manifest as statistical averages rather than universal traits, with variations by age, culture, and context; for instance, global data indicate persistent gaps in occupational choices, where men predominate in technical and hazardous fields while women cluster in caregiving and administrative roles.[2][3] In scope, the gender gap encompasses political attitudes, where women consistently exhibit greater support for welfare-oriented policies and left-leaning parties compared to men—evident in U.S. elections since 1980, with gaps widening among youth to 15-20 percentage points by 2024. Economically, it includes wage differentials, with women earning 85% of men's median pay in the U.S. in 2024, partly attributable to hours worked, career interruptions, and field selections rather than solely discrimination. Educationally, women surpass men in tertiary enrollment rates in most OECD countries but remain underrepresented in STEM disciplines by factors of 2-3 to 1. Health gaps feature women's longer life expectancy (global average 4-5 years) alongside higher morbidity from autoimmune and mental health conditions.[11][12][1][13] This framework excludes normative judgments on desirability, focusing instead on verifiable divergences; gaps are bidirectional, with women advantaged in longevity and graduation rates, while men face higher mortality from accidents and violence. Cross-national indices, such as those tracking 146 countries, quantify overall progress toward parity at 68.4% closed in 2023, yet underscore uneven closure rates—near parity in education (95%) but lags in political empowerment (22%). Such metrics, while useful, often derive from institutions with documented ideological tilts, necessitating scrutiny against raw data from diverse surveys.[14][15]Measurement and Metrics
The gender gap is commonly quantified through relative metrics such as the ratio of female to male outcomes in specific indicators, where a value of 1 denotes parity and deviations indicate disparities.[16] These ratios facilitate cross-country and temporal comparisons by normalizing for absolute levels of development, focusing instead on relative access and participation.[17] Absolute differences, such as raw variances in earnings or attainment years, are less frequently used for global benchmarking due to their sensitivity to overall societal wealth and education levels.[18] Composite indices aggregate domain-specific ratios to produce overarching scores. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI), first published in 2006 and updated annually, evaluates parity across four subindices: economic participation and opportunity (e.g., labor force participation rates, wage equality for similar work), educational attainment (e.g., literacy rates, enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary levels), health and survival (e.g., sex ratio at birth, healthy life expectancy), and political empowerment (e.g., seats in parliament, years with female/male heads of state).[17] Each subindex score is the geometric mean of its component ratios, weighted equally, with the overall GGGI as the unweighted average of the four; the 2025 edition covers 148 economies and reports a global average gap of 68.5% closed, implying 31.5% remaining.[19] Data are drawn from sources including the International Labour Organization, UNESCO, and WHO, with missing values imputed via regression or regional averages.[16] Alternative frameworks include the European Institute for Gender Equality's Gender Equality Index (GEI), which uses 31 indicators across work, money, knowledge, time, power, and health domains, scoring each on a 1-100 scale based on gender gaps and absolute levels, then averaging with domain weights reflecting policy priorities.[20] The United Nations Development Programme's Gender Inequality Index (GII) combines reproductive health (maternal mortality, adolescent birth rates), empowerment (parliamentary seats, secondary education attainment), and labor market participation into a geometric mean penalty from equality, though critiques highlight its aggregation flaws and proposals for replacements like the Global Gender Parity Index emphasize separate parity and empowerment metrics.[21] Domain-specific metrics provide granular insights. In economics, the unadjusted pay gap measures median full-time earnings differences (e.g., 16-20% globally in recent ILO data), while adjusted gaps control for observables like hours worked, occupation, and experience via regression, often reducing the disparity to 5-10% in developed economies.[22] Educational gaps track ratios in enrollment (e.g., female-to-male gross enrollment at tertiary levels exceeding 1.2 in many OECD countries by 2023), average years of schooling, and standardized test scores (e.g., PISA math gaps favoring males by 10-20 points on average).[18] [10] Political metrics include voter preference gaps (e.g., 10-15 percentage point differences in U.S. elections favoring Democrats among women since the 1980s) and representation ratios (e.g., women holding 26% of parliamentary seats globally in 2024).[11] These approaches prioritize empirical indicators over subjective surveys to minimize bias, though composite indices like the GGGI have been noted for underemphasizing hard-to-quantify factors such as unpaid care work or discrimination's causal role.[23]Historical Trends
Pre-20th Century Observations
In ancient civilizations such as those of Greece and Rome, women were systematically excluded from political participation and public decision-making, with legal and social norms confining their roles primarily to household management and reproduction, reflecting patriarchal structures that prioritized male authority.[24] Similar patterns persisted in medieval Europe, where rigid gender divisions assigned men to public spheres like governance and warfare, while women were largely restricted to private domestic duties, though some elite women exercised influence through family connections rather than formal rights.[25] By the early modern period and into the 18th century, women across most European and North American societies lacked voting rights, control over personal property, custody of children, or access to divorce, underscoring profound political and legal gender disparities that treated married women as extensions of their husbands' legal identities under coverture laws.[26] In the United States, for instance, while isolated cases of women voting occurred as early as 1756 in colonial Massachusetts, such instances were exceptional and revoked by the 19th century, with no federal enfranchisement until 1920 and property rights for married women only gradually enacted starting with New York's 1848 Married Women's Property Act, reaching all states by 1900.[27][28] Economically, female labor force participation remained low before 1900, with U.S. Census data indicating only 16 percent of adult free women engaged in paid work outside the home in 1860, rising modestly to around 20 percent for all women by the late 19th century, primarily unmarried women in domestic service or textiles, while married women's participation hovered near 5 percent due to norms emphasizing child-rearing and household production.[29][30] Pre-industrial agricultural practices, particularly plough-based farming dominant in Europe and Eurasia since antiquity, further entrenched gaps by favoring male physical strength for intensive soil preparation, reducing female involvement in market-oriented agriculture and correlating with lower overall female labor participation across ethnographic samples of over 1,200 societies.[31] Educational disparities were evident in literacy rates, with England in 1840 showing approximately two-thirds of men literate compared to half of women, a gap rooted in limited access to formal schooling for girls, though Protestant regions like Prussia saw modest increases in female enrollment by 1816 due to religious emphases on universal reading for scripture.[32][31] In continental Europe, women's literacy lagged behind men's into the late 19th century, catching up in northern countries like Scandinavia and Germany by 1850 but remaining substantially lower in southern Europe, such as Italy where female rates trailed male by wide margins in 1871 censuses, reflecting systemic barriers to girls' education beyond basic domestic skills.[33][34] These observations of persistent gaps in rights, labor, and education pre-1900 were documented in legal codes, censuses, and contemporary accounts, often rationalized by prevailing views of innate sex differences in strength, rationality, and social roles.[31]20th Century Developments
In the early 20th century, women's suffrage movements achieved milestones that began narrowing political gender gaps in participation, with the 19th Amendment granting U.S. women voting rights in 1920, followed by equal suffrage in 28 additional countries between 1914 and 1939.[35] However, initial turnout revealed persistent disparities; women's voting participation lagged men's by about 20 percentage points even by 1936, reflecting divisions on issues rather than a unified gender bloc as some suffragists anticipated.[36] Political gender gaps in party preference also emerged, with women historically more likely to support right-leaning parties due to factors like religiosity and limited workforce exposure.[37] Economically, female labor force participation rose substantially, tripling in many high-income countries over the century, driven by wartime needs and post-war shifts.[38] In the U.S., women's share of the civilian labor force increased from around 30% in 1950, with notable acceleration during World War II as women entered manufacturing roles previously male-dominated.[7] The gender wage gap narrowed progressively; by 1963, full-time working women earned 59 cents for every male dollar, improving to reflect greater experience and occupational shifts, though stagnation occurred in segments tied to discontinuous careers.[39][40] Educationally, access expanded amid cultural and legal reforms, particularly in Western Europe and the U.S., where coeducational institutions grew from 46% of four-year colleges enrolling women in 1880 to 64% by 1900.[41] College enrollment gaps reversed mid-century; in the U.S., males outnumbered female graduates 1.60 to 1 in 1960, but women's enrollment surged faster from the 1980s, closing and inverting the disparity by century's end.[42][43] In health outcomes, the female life expectancy advantage widened from 2 years in 1920 to over 7 years by the 1970s in the U.S., attributable to divergent mortality trends including men's higher rates of smoking-related diseases and occupational hazards.[44][45] Occupationally, gaps diminished across sectors, with women gaining entry into professional fields; the overall employment and occupational disparities narrowed most sharply in the 1980s, coinciding with educational gains and legal protections like the Equal Pay Act of 1963.[46][46]21st Century Shifts
In the realm of education, a significant reversal in the gender gap has occurred, with women surpassing men in college enrollment and completion rates. By 2021, the number of women enrolled in U.S. colleges exceeded men by approximately 3.1 million, a stark contrast to 1979 when the difference was only 200,000 in favor of women.[47] Among 25- to 34-year-olds, women became more likely than men to hold a bachelor's degree, a trend evident across racial and ethnic groups by 2024.[48] Globally, female tertiary enrollment has exceeded male enrollment for the past two decades, with the gap widening; in OECD countries, the advantage for women in higher education increased between 2000 and 2020, while early school leavers remain predominantly male.[49] [50] This shift reflects women's higher persistence through degree programs, as evidenced by 1.1 million women receiving bachelor's degrees in the U.S. in 2018-19 compared to 860,000 men.[51] Economically, the gender pay gap has narrowed modestly but unevenly. In the U.S., women earned 85% of men's median hourly wages by 2024, up slightly from around 80% two decades prior, with faster closure among less-educated women (from 62% in 1982 to 83% in 2022 for those without a high school diploma).[12] [52] Progress stalled post-2020, dipping to 83% in 2023 from a peak of 84% in 2022, amid factors like fertility declines aiding women's earnings (childless women reaching 76% of men's wages by 2018, up from 58% in 1980).[53] [54] Women's labor force participation rate stood at 57.3% in 2023, with prime-age women (25-54) exceeding pre-pandemic highs by 2023, though overall female rates remain below the 2000 peak of 60.3%.[55] [56] [57] Occupational and STEM fields show persistent segregation with limited convergence. Gender differences in vocational interests—men favoring "things-oriented" roles (e.g., engineering) and women "people-oriented" ones (e.g., social sciences)—remain stable and cross-culturally consistent into the 21st century, contributing to enduring gaps despite educational advances.[58] [59] In STEM, women comprised only 35% of graduates and 22% of the G20 workforce in 2023, with representation stagnant over the decade and uneven progress (e.g., narrowing persistence in some U.S. cohorts but widening unevenness across subfields).[60] [61] [62] Politically, a widening gender gap in voting preferences has emerged, particularly in the U.S., where women have increasingly leaned toward Democratic candidates since 2000, amplifying partisan divides alongside rising female education levels.[63] [64] This trend intersects with educational shifts, as college-educated voters (now majority female) favor Democrats more than non-graduates.[64] Overall, while some gaps (e.g., education, pay) have narrowed or reversed, others (e.g., STEM, interests) endure, highlighting uneven progress amid broader equality efforts.Manifestations in Key Domains
Political Gender Gaps
In the United States, a consistent political gender gap has emerged in presidential elections since 1980, with women favoring Democratic candidates over Republicans by margins typically ranging from 8 to 12 percentage points, while men show more balanced or Republican-leaning preferences.[65] This pattern persisted in the 2024 election, where exit polls indicated women supported Kamala Harris by a 9-point margin over Donald Trump, compared to men favoring Trump by 10 points, resulting in an overall gender gap of about 19 points.[66] Such disparities arise from differences in issue priorities, including women's greater emphasis on social welfare, healthcare, and education policies, contrasted with men's focus on economic growth and national security.[67] The gap has widened notably among younger voters, particularly those aged 18-29, where the divide doubled the national average in 2024, with young women identifying as strongly Democratic (around 60% leaning left) while young men shifted rightward, supporting Trump at rates approaching 50%.[68] Gallup data from 2024 attributes this trend to women increasingly self-identifying as liberal, rising from 25% in 1999 to 37% in 2023, while men's liberal identification remained stable at around 25%.[69] Pew Research confirms partisan alignment reinforces this, with men associating more with the Republican Party across demographics, including marital and parental status.[70] Ideologically, women exhibit greater support for progressive policies on gender roles, environmental regulation, and social equity, while men prioritize individualism, free markets, and traditional hierarchies, as evidenced by consistent polling divergences on topics like affirmative action and immigration.[71] These patterns hold after controlling for education and income, suggesting underlying attitudinal differences rather than solely socioeconomic factors.[72] Internationally, similar gaps appear in established democracies, with women in countries like the UK, Germany, and South Korea leaning left on ideology, particularly among youth, where seven nations show women as more progressive by 5-10 points on left-right scales since the 2010s.[73] In contrast, the gap is narrower or reversed in some non-Western contexts, such as parts of Latin America, where cultural factors mute ideological divides, though data remains limited by varying electoral systems and polling methodologies.[11] Overall, these disparities reflect convergent trends in urbanizing societies but vary by institutional context, with stronger welfare states amplifying women's leftward tilt.[11]Economic Gender Gaps
Economic gender gaps manifest primarily in labor force participation, earnings differentials, occupational choices, entrepreneurship rates, and wealth accumulation. Globally, women's labor force participation lags behind men's, with 2022 data indicating higher male employment driven largely by participation rate differences rather than employment-to-population ratios.[74] In the United States, women's participation rate stood at 56.9% in August 2025, compared to 62.3% for men, reflecting a narrowing but persistent divide influenced by factors including family responsibilities and work preferences.[75] These disparities contribute to broader economic outcomes, as lower participation limits women's lifetime earnings and savings potential. The gender pay gap, a central metric, is often measured as the raw (uncontrolled) difference in median earnings for full-time workers. In the US, women earned 83.6% of men's median weekly earnings in 2023, equating to $1,005 versus $1,202.[76] Across OECD countries, full-time working women earned 89% of men's median pay in 2023.[77] However, this uncontrolled gap shrinks considerably when adjusting for observable factors such as occupation, hours worked, education, experience, and field of study; for instance, US federal sector data show gaps as low as 3.3% for workers aged 25-34 after such controls.[78] Occupational segregation plays a key role, with women disproportionately in lower-paying fields like education and health care, often reflecting interest-based choices rather than barriers alone, as evidenced by analyses attributing portions of the gap to major/field selections.[79] Entrepreneurship exhibits similar imbalances, with women starting businesses at lower rates than men. Global data from 2021-2023 show women's early-stage entrepreneurial activity at 10.4%, up from prior decades but still trailing men's rates, limiting female-led economic contributions.[80] In OECD nations, aligning women's early-stage participation with men's could add 24.8 million female entrepreneurs.[81] Wealth gaps compound these issues, with US women's median wealth at approximately 60% of men's by the mid-2010s, widened by cumulative effects of earnings differences, career interruptions for childcare, and longevity outliving savings.[82] Closing participation and entrepreneurship gaps could boost global GDP by over 20%, per World Bank estimates, underscoring the economic scale of these disparities.[83]Educational Gender Gaps
In primary and secondary education, girls consistently outperform boys in reading and literacy skills across OECD countries, with 15-year-old girls scoring an average of 27 points higher than boys in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).[84] Boys, however, maintain a small advantage in mathematics, averaging 14 points higher globally in PISA 2022, though this gap has narrowed or reversed in some regions post-pandemic.[84] In science, differences are minimal, but boys show slightly higher performance in many assessments.[85] These patterns reflect broader trends where boys exhibit higher rates of underperformance, grade repetition—for instance, 145 boys repeat kindergarten for every 100 girls in the United States—and early school exit.[86] [3] At the tertiary level, the gender gap favors women markedly. Across OECD nations in 2023, 54% of young women held tertiary degrees compared to 41% of young men, a disparity that has widened by 1 percentage point since prior years.[87] In the European Union, women comprised 58% of tertiary graduates in 2023, with this majority holding in every member state.[88] Similarly, in the United States, women accounted for 57% of tertiary enrollments and 58% of bachelor's degrees awarded as of 2023-2024.[89] [90] Globally, female tertiary enrollment has exceeded male enrollment for two decades, with the gap continuing to expand per World Bank data through 2024.[49] Subject-specific gaps persist into higher education, with women overrepresented in humanities and social sciences but underrepresented in STEM fields, where male enrollment dominates despite overall female tertiary majorities.[85] Upper secondary attainment gaps have nearly closed, exceeding 80% for both genders on average, yet women's higher persistence leads to greater overall educational equity in favor of females.[85] These trends, documented in longitudinal OECD and national datasets, indicate a reversal from historical male advantages, driven by factors including behavioral differences and institutional emphases on verbal skills.[3] Empirical evidence from PISA and enrollment statistics underscores that while access parity nears, outcome disparities highlight boys' relative disadvantages in non-STEM domains.[91]Health and Longevity Gaps
Women exhibit higher life expectancy than men globally, with the United Nations estimating 76.0 years for females and 70.8 years for males as of 2023, resulting in a gap of approximately 5.2 years.[92] This disparity persists across nearly all countries, driven primarily by elevated male mortality rates from external causes and chronic diseases.[93] In the United States, the gap widened to 5.8 years by 2021—the largest since 1996—largely due to excess male deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and COVID-19, with age-adjusted death rates differing by 315 per 100,000 between sexes.[94] Mortality differences manifest distinctly by cause: men face threefold higher risks of death from injuries, including unintentional accidents, suicides, and homicides, accounting for much of the gap in younger age groups (15–40 years).[44] [95] Cardiovascular diseases also contribute disproportionately to male mortality, with men experiencing earlier onset and higher rates, while women predominate in inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.[96] A harmonized analysis of 12 population-based cohorts found men with a 60% higher overall mortality risk than women, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors.[97] Beyond longevity, health burdens reveal a paradox: males incur greater premature mortality and years of life lost, but females endure higher rates of disability-adjusted life years from certain chronic conditions, such as musculoskeletal disorders and mental health issues.[13] [98] Behavioral factors exacerbate male risks, including higher prevalence of smoking, excessive alcohol use, and occupational hazards, alongside biological vulnerabilities like the X chromosome's protective effects in females against certain genetic mutations.[99] [100] These patterns hold across high-income contexts, where modifiable risks amplify the gap despite advances in medical care.[101]Occupational and STEM Gaps
Occupational gender gaps manifest as pronounced segregation by sex across professions, with women comprising the majority in fields involving interpersonal care and social services, while men predominate in technical, mechanical, and physical labor roles. In the United States, as of 2023, women accounted for 89% of registered nurses, 81% of elementary and middle school teachers, and 74% of health care support workers, compared to just 11% of software developers, 12% of civil engineers, and 3% of construction laborers.[102] This pattern reflects a broader division where women are overrepresented in "people-oriented" occupations and underrepresented in "things-oriented" ones, a distinction supported by meta-analyses of vocational interests showing consistent sex differences: men exhibit stronger preferences for realistic and investigative activities (e.g., working with tools, machines, or data), while women favor social and artistic domains (e.g., helping, teaching).[103] These interest disparities, with effect sizes around d=0.84 for realistic interests and d=0.68 for social, predict occupational choices and contribute to segregation persisting across cultures and despite educational parity.[104] In STEM fields specifically, the underrepresentation of women is stark and multifaceted. According to National Science Foundation data for 2021, only 18% of employed women held STEM occupations, versus 30% of men, resulting in men outnumbering women 2.75 to 1 overall in these roles.[105] Subfield variation is extreme: women comprised 26% of computer and mathematical science workers, 16% of engineers, and 15% of physical scientists, but 50% of life and health scientists.[106] Globally, women formed 28.2% of the STEM workforce in 2024, compared to 47.3% in non-STEM sectors, with OECD countries showing women as roughly one-third of STEM graduates but far lower shares in engineering and computing (often below 20%).[107][108] Prenatal androgen exposure and evolved sex differences in spatial abilities and interests toward systems over people partially explain these patterns, as evidenced by longitudinal studies linking early preferences to later career trajectories.[109]| Occupation Category (US, 2023) | % Women | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Registered Nurses | 89% | BLS |
| Elementary/Middle School Teachers | 81% | BLS |
| Software Developers | 26% | BLS |
| Civil Engineers | 17% | BLS |
| Construction Laborers | 4% | BLS |