Geneva — A decade of slow progress towards better parity between the sexes has screeched to a halt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said on Thursday, warning the global gender gap is now widening. In recent years, women have made significant progress towards equality in a number of areas such as education and health, with the Nordic countries leading the fray. But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialise until 2234, the WEF said in a report. "A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the World Economic Forum’s global gender gap report was first published in 2006," it said. The Geneva-based organisation’s annual report tracks the disparities between the sexes in four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment. A year ago WEF estimated that it would...
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