- Data by Statista shows in 2021, the male labor force participation rate in the country stood at 75.6% compared to the female at 71%.
- This meant that nearly 77 in every 100 men aged 15-64 years were economically active as compared to women.
Image: FILE
The country’s efforts to narrow gender gap recorded a marginal decline for the one year period to December 2022, according to World Economic Forum.
In its latest global gender gap index rankings released on Tuesday, the lobby organisation ranks Kenya position 77 with a score of 0.708 out of one.
Compared to the previous year, the country was ranked position 57 with a score of 0.729, representing about three per cent decline.
This is amid the prevailing concern on the state of gender parity for instance in the labour market which remains a major challenge.
"Not only has women’s participation in the labour market globally slipped in recent years, but other markers of economic opportunity have been showing substantive disparities between women and men," WEF says.
In Kenya, data by Statista shows in 2021, the male labor force participation rate stood at 75.6 per cent compared to the female at 71 per cent.
This meant that nearly 77 in every 100 men aged 15-64 years were economically active as compared to women.
The lobby therefore says that while women have re-entered the labour force at higher rates than men globally, leading to a small recovery in gender parity in the labour force participation rate, gaps remain wide overall.
The global gender gap index measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale, and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity, for instance the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed.
The latest index scores Sub-Saharan Africa the sixth-highest in parity score among the eight regions, at 68.2 per cent.
“It ranks above regions such as Southern Asia, the Middle East and North Africa,” the report reads in part.
“Progress in the region has been uneven. Namibia, Rwanda and South Africa, along with 13 other countries, have closed more than 70 per cent of the overall gender gap. The DRC, Mali and Chad are the lowest-performing countries, with scores below 62 per cent.”
Based on the constant sample, WEF says this marks a marginal improvement of 0.1 percentage points across the region.
“However, at the current rate of progress, it will take 102 years to close the gender gap in Sub-Saharan Africa,” WEF says.
Globally, the gender gap score for the 146 countries in the survey stands at 68.4 per cent, with the overall score changing from 68.1 per cent the previous year to 68.4 per cent in 2022, an improvement of 0.3 percentage points.