Let’s start with the obvious: wage disparity between the sexes represents economic discrimination that must be disbanded by 2030. Although feminine participation in the world of work has increased over the past 50 years, a lot still needs to be done.

The term ‘feminization of labor’ refers to women’s increased participation in paid work as well as to the deterioration of working conditions in previously male jobs (Anker, 1998; Standing, 1999).

For decades, Saudi Arabia had one of the lowest rates of female participation in the labor force in the world. According to the Brookings Institution in its 2021 report titled ‘the spectacular surge of the Saudi female labor force’, the size of female Saudi citizens who had a job or were actively looking for one in 2018 was 19.7% of the adult female population.

“In a relatively short time span of just two years, the labor force participation rate of Saudi women increased from 20 percent in late 2018 to 33 percent by the end of 2020—that is to say that the share of Saudi women in the labor market expanded by an incredible 64 percent in just two years!”

In spite of this increasing participation of Saudi women in the labor force, wage disparity is still heavily skewed against women in the kingdom. A report by Lauren Clingan in collaboration with Alnahda Center for Research paints a not so interesting picture: “Among Saudi citizens, the unadjusted gender wage gap is 49%, meaning that on average, for every 100 riyals men earn, women earn 51 riyals.”

What we see is that from the most developed to the least developed countries on earth, a dark cloud of wage discrimination against women largely persists. Among developed countries for instance, while South Korea has the highest wage gap of 36.6%, New Zealand has the narrowest wage gap of 5.6%.

In northern Nigeria, where stereotypes reinforce systemic discrimination against women, the ‘feminization of poverty’ sees an increasing number of women in extreme poverty without any hope of redemption from a largely male chauvinistic society.

Business leaders and policy makers have a moral burden to narrow the wage gaps in the decade leading up to 2030. The social and economic benefits for narrowing the wage gap between the sexes have been established by numerous studies.

According to The Journal of Development Studies, volume 57, 2021- issue 2: “The 2016 Africa Human Development Report estimates that gender inequality costs sub-Saharan Africa approximately 95 USD billion per year, and a 2015 McKinsey Global Institute study suggests that 12–28 USD trillion could be added to the global economy if women achieved parity with men in economic outcomes.”

The SDGs for 2030 will not be realized if pay parity between men and women is not front and center in the economic policy discourse of leaders around the world.