20 facts from the OECD Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI)

It’s 2024, but discrimination continues to hold back women and girls, and societies as a whole. Below are 20 powerful facts that everybody needs to know this International Women’s Day.

They come from the OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), which compares levels of discrimination in 179 countries. Now in its 5^th edition, the SIGI focuses on social institutions –the laws, biases, norms and practices lying at the heart of gender inequality. It is an official source of data for SDG 5.

Social institutions determine what women and men can and can’t do. They limit women’s access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. They perpetuate gaps in education and employment.

Please help us share these facts in your campaigns for International Women’s Day. You can:

• Share them on your social channels using #SIGI #IWD2024
• Publish them on your website (Please be sure to credit the OECD SIGI 2023 Global Report: Gender Equality in Times of Crisis, and link to the report: SIGI 2023 Global Report : Gender Equality in Times of Crisis | OECD iLibrary (oecd-ilibrary.org))
• Use them in speeches and statements

If you do use any of these facts in your campaigns, please be sure to let us know so that we can share and amplify!

Work and education 

1. Worldwide, 45% of the population thinks that when jobs are scarce, men have more right to a job.  

2. Globally, 52% of the population thinks that when women work, the children suffer. 

3. Worldwide, 35% of the population believes that when a woman outearns her husband, it causes problems.  

4. Only 15% of firms worldwide are headed by a woman, and women account for only 25% of managers. 

5. 45% of the global population thinks men make better business executives than women. 

6. 52 countries do not mandate equal pay for work of equal value. 

7. 13 countries do not legally prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. (Belize, Brunei Darussalam, Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Iran, Jordan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and Sudan.) 

8. 42% of countries (74 out of 178) legally prohibit women from entering certain professions. This affects 67% of women worldwide. 

Household 

9. At the global level, women spend 2.6 times more hours on unpaid care and domestic work than men. 

Representation 

10. At the current pace, it is projected to take 40 years to achieve parity in parliaments 

Violence against women 

11. 1 in 3 women aged 15-49 have experienced physical and/or sexual violence perpetrated by their husband or partner at least once.   

12. More than 600 million women and girls live in a country where domestic violence is not a crime. 

13. Only 121 countries include economic violence – limiting a partner’s or spouse’s access to economic resources or preventing him or her from getting a job – in their definitions of domestic violence. 

14. 48 countries, accounting for 33% of women around the world, do not criminalise sexual harassment. 

Sexual and reproductive health 

15. Around 140 million women worldwide cannot access abortion under any circumstances, even when their lives are in danger. 

16. More than 60% of women worldwide (about 1.1 billion women) cannot have a legal abortion in the case of rape, statutory rape and/or incest.  

Progress  

17. The global rate of girl child marriage decreased from 22% in 2009 to 13% in 2023.    

18. The share of women in national parliaments increased from 24% in 2019 to nearly 27% in 2023.  

19. More than 40% of countries worldwide (74 out of 178) have a national strategy to subsidise or provide free contraception. 

20. More than half of countries worldwide (93 out of 178) have gender quotas at the national level.