What Women Do

"A recently published World Bank report finds that, although particular groups of ill-educated young men are doing badly, and although women's lives have improved a lot in the past 20 years, sexual inequality at work is remarkably stubborn. Globally, women earn 10 to 30 percent less than men. They are also concentrated in "women's" jobs.

Annoyingly, ehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifconomic growth does not seem to narrow the gap. This is surprising. You might expect that as countries get richer, women would become better educated and jobs requiring brute strength would become less important. Rich countries also have larger public sectors, where the wage gap is smaller.

Yet overall, the gap is no smaller in rich countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands than in poor ones such as the Philippines. The World Bank suggests three explanations for these findings: discrimination, unequal education, and constraints on women's time, which is disproportionately filled with housework and child care." Read the full Economist article.