For many years, the gender gap has been discussed primarily through the language of equality, representation and fairness. While these remain essential values, they no longer capture the full scale of what is at stake.

The gender gap is increasingly becoming a workforce challenge: it affects labour supply, productivity, skills pipelines, leadership capacity, pay equity, AI adoption and long-term economic resilience. As employers are grappling with demographic pressure, rapid technological change, skills shortages and increasingly complex regulation, the ability to recruit, retain and progress women is becoming a central test of workforce strategy.

Empowering women in the world of work means shifting the conversation from representation alone to participation, progression and sustainability. As a result, the question for employers is not simply whether women are present in the workforce, but whether work is designed in a way that enables them to remain, develop, lead and benefit from an unprecedented degree of transformation.

From equality to economics: the business case for gender equality

The economic case is difficult to ignore. Research by Ius Laboris has estimated that closing gender employment gaps could boost global long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20%. In the EU, achieving gender equality could increase GDP per capita by between 6.1% and 9.6% by 2050, adding between €1.95 trillion and €3.15 trillion to the economy. The OECD has similarly found that closing the gender employment gap could increase annual GDP per capita growth by 0.2 percentage points across OECD countries, offsetting around half of the decline projected from demographic ageing.

These figures position gender equality firmly within the wider future-of-work agenda: labour markets are tightening, populations are ageing, and organisations are seeking new sources of productivity and growth. Against that backdrop, the underuse, underdevelopment or premature loss of women’s skills is a structural challenge to workforce resilience.

How far have we really come?

Progress, however, remains uneven. The World Economic Forum warns that, at the current pace, it could take another 134 years to achieve global gender parity. PwC’s Women in Work Index 2026 also suggests that improvements in women’s labour market prospects have stalled to their slowest pace since the pandemic, with the average OECD country increasing its index score by only 0.6 points, around half the historical average.

The UK picture is particularly concerning. According to PwC, the UK now ranks 17th out of 33 OECD countries, having fallen from 10th place since 2020. It also ranks 32nd out of 33 for improvement since the pandemic. The UK gender pay gap stands at 13.1%, above the OECD average of 12.4%, and has risen from 12.0% since the pandemic.

This predicament is especially challenging for younger workers. PwC found that the rise in female unemployment has been concentrated among young women, with increases more than three times greater in this group. Reducing young female NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) rates to 2021 levels would represent a £3 billion opportunity for the UK economy, while reducing them to the Netherlands’ levels (the lowest in Europe) could add up to £11 billion.

This should prompt employers to look more carefully at the points where women are being lost from the workforce or prevented from building momentum within it. Early career access, entry-level progression, training, flexible work, childcare, sponsorship and return-to-work pathways are part of the same strategic question: how do we prevent gender gaps from hardening at the very moment when future skills pipelines are being formed?

AI and the new gender divide

Widespread AI adoption makes this challenge even more urgent, as the future of work will be shaped by the adoption of generative AI, automation and new forms of human-machine collaboration. These technologies could create new opportunities for women, but only if access, training and progression are (re)designed accordingly.

The World Economic Forum’s Gender Parity in the Intelligent Age report shows that women are more likely to hold roles disrupted by GenAI, at 57% compared with 43% for men, and less likely to experience augmentation, at 46% compared with 54% for men. Women remain less than one-third of the STEM workforce, at 28.2% in 2024, and are still underrepresented at the top: they hold only 24.4% of STEM managerial positions and just 12.2% of STEM C-suite roles.

However, there are some encouraging signs, too. The gender gap in AI talent has narrowed in 74 of 75 economies, with women representing 29.4% of AI engineering skill-listers in 2025, up from 23.5% in 2018. At the same time, there is also evidence of a new usage gap. PwC’s Workforce Radar shows that only 32% of women reported using GenAI at work, compared with 57% of men. McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2025 report similarly found that only 21% of entry-level women are encouraged by their manager to use AI, compared with 33% of men.

This is a particularly important data point for employers, as AI capability is quickly becoming a marker of labour market advantage. Yet, if women are less likely to be encouraged, trained or positioned to use AI, existing gender gaps could be amplified by the new technological tools. This risks yielding a future workforce in which they are more exposed to disruption, less able to access augmentation and underrepresented in the roles shaping AI deployment.

Empowering women in work therefore requires more than hiring targets or headline commitments, and calls for employers to examine how opportunity is distributed inside the organisation: who gets access to AI tools? Who is trained first? Who is encouraged to experiment? Who is sponsored into growth roles? Who is assumed to be adaptable, technical or leadership-ready?

The ambition myth

The evidence suggests that these challenges are still ongoing. McKinsey report that only half of companies are now prioritising women’s career advancement, as part of a several-year decline in commitment to gender diversity. Their research also identifies a notable ambition gap, with women less interested in being promoted than men, at 80% compared with 86%. Crucially, that gap disappears whenever women receive the same career support as men.

This insight is key to challenging a familiar narrative: lower promotion appetite should not be read simply as lower ambition. Instead, it might reflect uneven access to the conditions that make ambition feel realistic, such as sponsorship, manager encouragement, flexible work, visible progression pathways and confidence that these will be compatible with life outside work.

Sponsorship, according to McKinsey, is a powerful example. Employees with sponsors are promoted at nearly twice the rate of those without, at 65% compared with 35%, yet entry-level women are least likely to have a sponsor. At the same time, some companies are scaling back programmes that have disproportionately supported women, including remote work, formal sponsorship and targeted career development.

Care, flexibility and workforce infrastructure

Care responsibilities remain another central barrier. On average, women in OECD countries spend around four hours per day in unpaid care and domestic work, compared with around two hours for men. This has direct labour market consequences: where care demands rise, women are more likely to reduce hours, step back from progression or leave the workforce altogether. For employers, this means flexibility, job design, parental leave, manager capability and returner support should be treated as workforce infrastructure rather than discretionary benefits.

Regulation and Pay Transparency: beyond compliance

Finally, the regulatory context is also changing. The EU Pay Transparency Directive requires Member States to transpose its requirements by 7 June 2026, and introduces a range of mechanisms intended to strengthen equal pay, including greater pre-employment pay transparency, new employee rights to understand how their pay compares to others doing the same or similar work, proscribing pay secrecy clauses in employment contracts, gender pay gap reporting obligations, and action where unjustified gaps exceed relevant thresholds. Although implementation across the EU is expected to be uneven, with a number of Member States likely to miss the transposition deadline, the Directive is already reshaping expectations around pay transparency, pay governance and equal pay compliance.

This is a crucial development even for employers outside the EU, as pay transparency is becoming a broader market expectation, particularly for multinational employers operating across jurisdictions, as 21 out of 38 OECD countries now have some form of gender pay gap reporting regime. The OECD’s April 2026 stocktaking report notes that this is expected to rise to 31 out of 38 by the end of 2026, as a result of the Directive’s implementation. For multinational employers, this creates a practical as well as a legal question: it may make little sense to adopt a narrow compliance-only approach in jurisdictions where the rules are less demanding, while operating to a higher standard elsewhere. In some cases, a globally aligned pay transparency strategy may be simpler, more consistent and more credible, even if it means meeting a higher standard than is strictly required in some markets. The WEF’s Future of Jobs Report also found that 39% of companies plan to adopt pay equity reviews and salary audits by 2030.

However, reporting alone will not close the gap. Research using UK data from the London School of Economics found that gender pay gap reporting led to a 1.6% reduction in pay gaps, but that reductions came from lower male pay rather than increased pay for women. Transparency can therefore expose disparities and create accountability, but it does not automatically fix progression, occupational segregation, leadership pipelines, care penalties or biased reward structures.

For employers who want to realise the full benefits of greater pay transparency and equity, the opportunity is now to move from reactive compliance to strategic pay and workforce governance. This means using pay data to diagnose where gaps emerge, linking findings to recruitment, promotion and retention patterns, testing whether job architecture is genuinely gender-neutral, and ensuring that managers understand how pay decisions are made and justified.

Building a gender-inclusive workforce

The gender gap is a systems issue that sits at the intersection of pay, progression, technology, care, culture and regulation. It is shaped by who enters the workforce, who stays, who progresses, who is sponsored, who is trained, who is heard and who is trusted with the future-facing work that organisations increasingly value.

The employers that make progress will be those that treat gender equality as part of workforce design, looking beyond annual reporting cycles and asking deeper questions about whether women can build sustainable careers in their organisation. They will ensure that AI adoption does not widen existing inequalities, maintain career support and sponsorship even when external pressure on diversity initiatives fluctuates. They will understand that flexibility and care-aware work design are central to retention, and use pay transparency as a catalyst for meaningful organisational change.

In a labour market increasingly defined by uncertainty, the ability to keep and empower women in work is one of the clearest tests of whether employers are building a workforce that is resilient, inclusive and ready for the future.

In an era marked by rapid technological advancements, economic uncertainties and evolving workforce expectations, businesses are navigating a complex landscape that demands strategic foresight and adaptability. Download the report.