Work equality between men and women would increase wealth in Spain by 8% by 2060

Equalizing the activity rate and working time of women with that of men would be possible in Spain increase per capita wealth by about 8% on the 2060 horizonaccording to the OECD, which believes that an integrated approach to gender equality must be adopted in all policies.

In a report on the issue published this Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) assesses the economic potential that equality at work policy offers for each of its member countries.

The potential for Spain is slightly below the OECD average, in which a an increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per inhabitant of 9.2% by 2060. but it is higher than that of France, the United States or most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

In Spain, a simultaneous reduction in the differences between men and women in activity rates and working hours could offer an increase in GDP per capita of 0.21 percentage points each year, compared to an average of 0.23.

This is much lower than Mexico’s 0.52 points, Costa Rica’s 0.48, Turkey’s 0.43, or Colombia’s 0.41, which are the members that show the most room for improvement as they are the most lagging behind today.

In contrast, in Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia, progress would be limited to 0.06-0.08 percentage points each year. In the case of Spain, women worked 5 hours less per week in paid work in 2021 than men in 2021, a difference that has narrowed compared to 6 hours in 2010.

This is a less pronounced divide than in the OECD as a whole, where women worked 5.3 hours less than men each week in 2021 and 6.5 hours in 2010.

The countries with the largest working time gap are Switzerland (9.8 hours in 2021), the Netherlands (9.1) and Costa Rica (8.5). Again, at the opposite extreme are the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary and Lithuania, each less than an hour away.

Regarding the activity rate, that is, the percentage of those who have a job among those of working age, Spain is in a worse situation than the OECD average. Its female activity rate was 59.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022 (69.2% for males) compared to an organization average of 66.7% (76.6% for males).

In other words, the room for progress there is much wider for Spain, in getting women who are now unemployed into work.