WOMEN ARE MORE EDUCATED. MEN STILL OWN THE TOP.

There is something profoundly wrong with the way we normally discuss women in the labour market.

We talk about progress.

More women graduate from university.

More women work.

More women enter professions once almost entirely occupied by men.

More women sit on corporate boards.

More women become ministers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, scientists and executives.

All true.

And yet when we move away from participation and examine money, hours worked, career continuity and real power, the picture changes dramatically.

Across the European Union, young women are now considerably more educated than young men.

Among people aged 25–34 in 2024, 49.8% of women had completed tertiary education, compared with only 38.6% of men.

That is an extraordinary advantage of more than 11 percentage points. (European Commission⁠)

And yet in the same European labour market, the employment rate for women aged 20–64 was only 70.8%, compared with 80.8% for men.

Women were also much more likely to work part-time: 27.8% of employed women versus just 7.7% of men. They were more likely to be underemployed and somewhat more likely to hold temporary contracts. (European Commission⁠)

Then comes pay.

Women in the EU earned, on average, 11.1% less per hour than men in 2024, using Eurostat’s unadjusted gender pay-gap measure. (European Commission⁠)

Then comes corporate power.

Women now occupy roughly one third of board positions in the EU’s largest listed companies.

But move closer to actual executive control and their presence collapses.

Women account for less than one fifth of executive directors, only a little over 10% of board chairs, and less than 10% of CEOs of the EU’s largest listed companies. (European Institute for Gender Equality⁠)

This is the paradox.

Women increasingly dominate the classroom.

Men still disproportionately dominate the boardroom.

And the further we travel from education toward money and power, the female advantage disappears.

THE GREAT EUROPEAN CONTRADICTION

Consider what an efficient economy should theoretically do.

It should identify human capital.

Educate it.

Employ it.

Reward it.

Promote it.

Place the most capable people into the positions where their productivity creates the greatest economic value.

If half the population systematically accumulates more formal education than the other half, one would expect that advantage eventually to become visible throughout the employment hierarchy.

It does not.

That should concern us not merely as an equality issue.

It should concern us as an economic-efficiency issue.

Europe is investing enormous amounts of public and private resources educating women and then failing to extract the full economic return from that investment.

EDUCATION: WOMEN HAVE ALREADY WON

The numbers are almost impossible to reconcile with the hierarchy of corporate Europe.

In 2024, 2.6 million women graduated from tertiary education across the EU compared with 1.9 million men.

Women outnumbered male graduates across most fields of study.

Education was particularly female-dominated, with four times as many female as male graduates.

Health and welfare also remain strongly female.

The major exception is technology.

Among information and communication technology graduates, there were approximately 3.7 men for every woman. (European Commission⁠)

That matters.

The sectors producing some of the fastest salary growth and largest pools of new corporate wealth — technology, engineering and parts of finance — remain disproportionately male.

So the headline “women are more educated” requires an important qualification.

Women obtain more degrees.

Men remain disproportionately concentrated in some of the degrees commanding the highest market premiums.

Still, the overall education gap is extraordinary.

Among 25–34 year-olds:

Women: 49.8% tertiary educated

Men: 38.6%

And this is not driven by one or two countries.

Women outperform men in tertiary attainment throughout the EU.

Among people aged 30–34, the female advantage was approximately:

26.6 percentage points in Slovenia

24.5 points in Latvia

22.3 points in Croatia

22.2 points in Estonia

Even Germany, where the gender difference is much smaller, still shows higher female attainment. (European Commission⁠)

Europe has produced an entire generation in which women are, statistically, the more formally educated sex.

What happened to the economic return?

EMPLOYMENT: THE ADVANTAGE DISAPPEARS

The EU employment rate reached a record 75.8% in 2024.

But that average disguises a striking gender divide. (European Commission⁠)

For men aged 20–64:

80.8% were employed.

For women:

70.8%.

A ten-percentage-point difference. (European Commission⁠)

And Europe itself contains radically different worlds.

The largest employment gaps in 2024 were:

Italy: 19.4 percentage points

Greece: 18.8 points

Romania: 18.1 points

At the other end:

Finland: 0.7 points

Lithuania: 1.4

Estonia: 1.7. (European Commission⁠)

This is one reason it is misleading to speak about “Europe” as though it were a single labour market.

A woman born in Helsinki and a woman born in southern Italy may formally live under the same European legal architecture.

Their labour-market realities can be radically different.

In 2024 there were EU regions — concentrated particularly in Italy, Greece and Romania — where the employment gender gap exceeded 20 percentage points.

In Sterea Elláda in Greece, male employment reached 84.7% while female employment was only 53.5%.

A gap of 31.2 percentage points. (European Commission⁠)

That is not a minor inequality.

It is enormous unused labour capacity.

ITALY: THE EUROPEAN WARNING

Italy deserves particular attention.

Its overall employment rate for people aged 20–64 was only 67.1% in 2024, the lowest in the EU.

The Netherlands reached 83.5%.

Malta 83.0%.

Czechia 82.3%. (European Commission⁠)

But Italy’s gender employment gap is even more revealing:

19.4 percentage points — the largest in the EU. (European Commission⁠)

This creates an economic contradiction.

Italy is ageing extraordinarily rapidly.

Its fertility rate is extremely low.

Its working-age population is under demographic pressure.

It needs workers.

Yet it still has one of Europe’s largest pools of underutilised female labour.

That is not merely a women’s issue.

It is a productivity issue.

A pension-system issue.

A tax-base issue.

A GDP issue.

A public-debt issue.

Every educated woman who would like to participate more fully in the labour market but cannot is also a piece of economic capacity that the country paid to develop and then failed to use.

BUT BE CAREFUL WITH ITALY’S LOW PAY GAP

Italy provides an excellent example of why statistics must be interpreted rather than simply repeated.

Its 2024 unadjusted hourly gender pay gap was only about 5.3%, considerably below the EU average.

At first sight, that looks excellent.

Germany’s gap was 15.6%.

Austria’s 17.6%.

Estonia’s 18.8%.

Yet Italy simultaneously has Europe’s largest employment gap. (EIGE Database⁠)

How can that be?

Because the gender pay gap measures the women who are employed.

It does not count women excluded from employment.

If disproportionately fewer low-paid women participate in the formal labour market, the average wage of employed women can look comparatively strong.

A low wage gap can therefore coexist with a terrible employment gap.

This is why shouting one statistic without context produces bad economics.

THE EUROPEAN PAY MAP

Eurostat’s 2024 unadjusted hourly pay-gap measure shows enormous differences.

At the highest end:

Estonia — 18.8%

Czechia — 18.5%

Austria — 17.6%

Hungary — 16.9%

Finland — 16.3%

Slovakia — 15.7%

Germany — 15.6%

Denmark — 14.0%

Latvia — 13.9%

Greece — 13.4%

Then:

France — 11.8%

Netherlands — 11.2%

Sweden — 11.2%

Below the EU average:

Ireland — 8.3%

Spain — 7.3%

Portugal — 7.0%

Croatia — 6.6%

Italy — 5.3%

Malta — 4.9%

Poland — 4.0%

Romania — 3.7%

Belgium — 0.7%

And Luxembourg was slightly negative at -0.8%. (European Commission⁠)

But again:

Low pay gap does not automatically mean gender equality.

Sector composition matters.

Working hours matter.

Occupations matter.

Seniority matters.

Public versus private employment matters.

Employment selection matters.

And motherhood matters enormously.

THE NETHERLANDS: EMPLOYED, BUT OFTEN PART-TIME

The Netherlands illustrates another model.

It has one of Europe’s highest overall employment rates.

But Dutch women are exceptionally likely to work part-time.

Statistics Netherlands reported that in 2024 only 23% of employed women worked full-time, compared with 63% of men.

The average hourly wage gap was 10.5%.

But average annual wages for women were approximately 32% lower, largely because women worked fewer hours. (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek⁠)

This is crucial.

Hourly wage equality does not guarantee annual income equality.

Annual income determines:

savings,

pension contributions,

mortgage capacity,

investment,

financial independence,

and ultimately wealth.

The economically relevant gender gap is therefore considerably broader than the hourly-pay statistic.

A WOMAN CAN EARN THE SAME PER HOUR AND STILL RETIRE MUCH POORER

Suppose a man and woman earn exactly €30 per hour.

There is no hourly gender pay gap.

But the man works full-time for 40 years.

The woman works reduced hours for ten years following childbirth, takes career breaks and subsequently receives fewer promotions.

By retirement, their lifetime earnings may be dramatically different.

So will:

pension contributions,

investment accumulation,

compound returns,

and possibly property ownership.

This is how an apparently small annual difference becomes a huge lifetime wealth difference.

The labour-market gender gap compounds.

THE MOTHERHOOD PENALTY

This is where the economics becomes uncomfortable.

Before children, employment trajectories for men and women can be relatively similar.

After children, they frequently diverge.

Women reduce working hours more often.

Women take longer career breaks.

Women undertake more unpaid care work.

Women lose cumulative experience.

Women miss promotions.

Women become more likely to choose jobs offering flexibility rather than maximum compensation.

Men generally experience a much smaller career interruption.

The child is the same.

The labour-market consequences are not.

The IDB summarises a substantial body of research showing persistent motherhood penalties across countries including Austria, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, the UK and United States.

In Latin America the problem can be still more damaging because some mothers do not merely reduce formal employment — they move into informal employment to obtain flexibility. (IADB Publications⁠)

MATERNITY PROTECTION: EUROPE BUILT A FLOOR

European law establishes an important minimum.

EU legislation guarantees at least:

14 weeks maternity leave

and

2 weeks paternity leave.

Individual countries go considerably further. (European Parliament⁠)

Spain has moved particularly aggressively.

Following its 2025 reform, each parent can receive 19 weeks of childbirth and childcare leave, with longer entitlement for single-parent families. (European Parliament⁠)

Sweden’s model goes much further through parental rather than narrowly maternal leave.

Each parent is eligible for up to 240 days of paid parental leave, subject to rules regarding transfers between parents, plus additional unpaid entitlement. (European Parliament⁠)

Finland similarly redesigned its system around approximately equal parental quotas.

Portugal uses a parental-leave model that can provide 120 days at 100% or 150 days at 80%, with incentives for parents to share leave. (European Parliament⁠)

Italy provides statutory maternity protection and two weeks of paternity leave paid at 100% under the harmonised European Parliament comparison. (European Parliament⁠)

The important policy lesson is not simply that maternity leave should be generous.

It is that care leave must increasingly involve fathers.

Why?

Because if employers expect only women to disappear from work after childbirth, the economic risk of parenthood remains disproportionately attached to female employees.

Shared parental leave begins to distribute that risk.

EUROPE HAS MADE PROGRESS — BUT CARE IS STILL FEMALE

The World Bank estimates that women globally perform about 2.4 additional hours of unpaid care work every day compared with men. (World Bank⁠)

This is economically enormous.

Two additional unpaid hours per day is approximately:

14 hours a week.

More than 700 hours a year.

Thousands of hours across a working life.

The economic problem is not simply that unpaid work is unpaid.

It is that time has an opportunity cost.

Time caring for children or elderly relatives is time not available for:

paid work,

training,

networking,

overtime,

business development,

entrepreneurship,

or promotion.

The career ladder does not stop moving while somebody is providing care.

THE BOARDROOM: EUROPE’S PROGRESS STOPS AT THE DOOR TO THE CEO’S OFFICE

Europe has achieved visible progress on boards.

Women now hold around one third of seats in the largest listed companies, and nearly 40% of non-executive director positions.

That is substantial progress.

But look one level deeper.

Women hold less than 20% of executive director positions.

Only a little over 10% of board chairs.

And fewer than 10% of CEO positions. (European Institute for Gender Equality⁠)

The distinction is critical.

A board seat is influence.

A CEO position is executive power.

Europe has become much better at putting women around the table than putting women at the head of it.

THE UNITED STATES: A DIFFERENT SYSTEM, A SIMILAR OUTCOME

Now cross the Atlantic.

The United States has a labour market structurally different from Europe’s.

More flexible employment.

Higher wage dispersion.

Weaker universal social protection.

Less statutory parental protection.

Higher potential financial returns to elite professional careers.

Women have made enormous gains.

In 2025, women represented 47.1% of total U.S. employment.

They held 52.2% of management, professional and related occupations.

But only:

41.8% of management occupations

and

33.0% of chief executive occupations. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

Again the pyramid narrows toward the top.

And at the most elite corporate level it narrows further.

In 2026, a record 55 women led Fortune 500 corporations.

That sounds impressive until converted into a percentage.

11%.

A record.

And still only one CEO in nine. (Fortune⁠)

Across the Fortune Global 500, the figure is even lower:

34 female CEOs out of 500 companies — 6.8%. (Fortune⁠)

AMERICA’S PAY GAP IS LARGER THAN EUROPE’S EU-WIDE HOURLY GAP

For U.S. full-time wage and salary workers in 2025:

men’s median weekly earnings were:

$1,326

women’s:

$1,089.

Women therefore earned approximately:

82.1 cents for every dollar earned by men

on this particular full-time weekly-earnings measure. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

That is a gap of roughly 17.9%.

It should not be directly equated with Eurostat’s 11.1% EU figure because the methodologies differ — one uses median weekly earnings of U.S. full-time workers, the other average gross hourly earnings.

But the comparison still illustrates something important.

The United States has produced spectacular female professional achievement without eliminating large earnings differences.

THEN COMES AMERICA’S BIGGEST POLICY ANOMALY: HAVING A BABY

Europeans often underestimate how extraordinary the American system is.

The United States does not provide the kind of nationwide statutory paid maternity-leave entitlement found across the EU.

Access depends heavily on employer benefits, state programmes and worker eligibility.

Recent BLS data show that in 2024–25 only 69.3% of women had access to some form of paid leave at their job, compared with 72.6% of men. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

And “paid leave” is a broader category — it is not synonymous with universal paid maternity leave.

The distribution is highly unequal.

Workers in management, business and financial occupations had paid-leave access approaching 90%.

For service occupations:

only about 45%. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

So the American professional woman employed by a major technology company may receive an excellent maternity package.

A low-income woman working in services may face a radically different reality.

This is not universal social protection.

It is occupational segmentation.

THE IRONY OF AMERICA

The United States spends extraordinary resources educating women.

Its universities produce enormous numbers of highly qualified female graduates.

And the financial return to education is substantial.

OECD calculations estimate the lifetime net financial benefit of tertiary education in the United States at approximately:

$726,100 for men

versus

$511,400 for women.

Both are extremely high by OECD standards.

But the estimated return for women is still more than $200,000 below that of men. (OECD⁠)

Education works.

But it does not work equally.

EUROPE VERSUS THE UNITED STATES

The comparison therefore becomes fascinating.

EUROPE

Stronger maternity protection.

More statutory parental leave.

More public childcare in many countries.

Smaller hourly pay gap on the EU aggregate measure.

Substantial board-level progress.

But large differences between north and south.

High female part-time employment in some countries.

Women still dramatically underrepresented among CEOs.

UNITED STATES

More flexible and higher-paying top labour market.

Potentially enormous returns to elite careers.

Many women in professional occupations.

But weaker universal family protection.

A substantial earnings gap.

Extremely unequal access to employer benefits.

Only 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

The systems are different.

The final concentration of corporate power remains remarkably male in both.

AND THEN THERE IS LATIN AMERICA

The comparison becomes much more severe when we move south.

It would be wrong to describe every Latin American country identically.

Uruguay is not Guatemala.

Chile is not Honduras.

Costa Rica is not Bolivia.

Education systems, labour-market institutions, social insurance and female participation vary enormously.

But regionally, the structural gaps remain much wider.

In 2024, the female labour-force participation rate in Latin America and the Caribbean was only:

52.1%

For men:

74.3%

A gender participation gap of:

22.2 percentage points.

(

CEPAL Repository⁠

)

Compare that with the EU’s 10-point employment gap.

These are different indicators and therefore should not be mechanically equated.

But the scale of female economic under-participation in Latin America remains unmistakable.

AND WOMEN WHO DO WORK EARN LESS

The International Labour Organization estimates that women in Latin America and the Caribbean earn, on average, approximately:

20% less than men.

They also experience higher unemployment and greater concentration in lower-quality employment. (International Labour Organization⁠)

Then comes the region’s defining labour-market problem:

INFORMALITY.

Approximately 47.6% of employment in Latin America and the Caribbean remained informal in 2024. (International Labour Organization⁠)

That changes everything.

An employment contract does more than provide a salary.

Formal employment can provide:

social security,

maternity protection,

pension contributions,

health coverage,

employment protection,

paid leave,

unemployment protection,

and legal enforceability.

A statutory maternity right means considerably less to someone whose employment effectively exists outside the formal system.

This is why Latin America’s problem cannot be solved simply by passing better laws.

Coverage matters more than legislation on paper.

THE MATERNITY TRAP IN LATIN AMERICA

This is where the situation becomes particularly serious.

Many Latin American countries formally provide paid maternity leave.

Legal frameworks can look respectable.

But if a large proportion of female workers are informal, those rights do not necessarily translate into effective protection.

The result can be a vicious circle:

woman has child →

formal employment becomes difficult to reconcile with care →

childcare is unavailable or expensive →

woman leaves formal employment →

woman enters informal or flexible work →

income becomes less stable →

social-security contributions decline →

promotion opportunities disappear →

future pension falls.

This is not simply a maternity penalty.

It can become a lifetime-formality penalty.

The IDB specifically notes evidence that mothers in the region may shift into informal employment because it offers the flexibility necessary to reconcile work and family responsibilities. (IADB Publications⁠)

THE CHILDCARE PROBLEM IS ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE

Economists routinely accept that roads increase labour mobility.

Broadband increases productivity.

Electricity supports business.

Childcare should be understood in exactly the same way.

The World Bank finds that expanding childcare support tends to increase female labour-force participation by approximately one percentage point initially, with the effect more than doubling over five years.

Yet globally fewer than half of economies provide meaningful financial or tax support for parents of young children, and only 62 economies in the World Bank study had adequate quality standards governing childcare services. (World Bank⁠)

Childcare is not merely family policy.

It is labour-market infrastructure.

LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT UNDERQUALIFIED

This is another myth the data destroy.

Educational achievement among women across Latin America has improved enormously.

In many countries girls outperform boys in secondary-school completion.

The World Bank notes a “reverse gender gap” in lower-secondary education in 22 countries in the region, where boys are less likely than girls to complete schooling. (World Bank⁠)

Yet the region still has serious STEM segregation.

Women with tertiary STEM degrees are generally two to three times less common than men in many Latin American economies. (World Bank⁠)

Again the same pattern appears:

women advance strongly in education,

but the sectors connected to the largest future productivity and salary premiums remain disproportionately male.

AND THEN THE CORPORATE LADDER ALMOST DISAPPEARS

Latin America’s corporate leadership figures are particularly striking.

Recent IDB material reports women occupying approximately:

15% of board seats

and only:

11% of senior management positions

in companies across Latin America and the Caribbean. (Inter-American Development Bank⁠)

Earlier detailed IDB work on listed companies found women representing only about:

10.6% of board membership

and

5.6% of CEOs,

with representation even lower in parts of the Southern Cone. (IADB Publications⁠)

Another IDB analysis using LinkedIn data found an extraordinary pipeline problem:

women held more than 45% of entry-level jobs,

but only just over 20% of senior management positions. (IADB Publications⁠)

This is the corporate funnel in its purest form.

Women enter.

Women work.

Women gain experience.

Then, somewhere between the first desk and the executive floor, enormous numbers disappear.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IS NOT MUCH BETTER

The region’s public sector demonstrates the same hierarchy.

Women represent approximately 52% of the government workforce in the countries examined by the IDB.

Yet they hold only around 23.6% of the highest positions equivalent to ministerial level.

At director-equivalent level they account for approximately 44.2%.

Once again:

the higher the position,

the fewer the women. (Inter-American Development Bank⁠)

This is not an education problem.

It is not a participation problem.

It is a progression problem.

LATIN AMERICA’S PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS COMBINATION

The regional problem therefore consists of several layers operating simultaneously:

lower female labour-force participation

• ●

approximately 20% average earnings disadvantage

• ●

very high labour informality

• ●

disproportionate unpaid care

• ●

insufficient childcare

• ●

persistent motherhood penalties

• ●

low presence in STEM

• ●

extreme underrepresentation at the top.

Each problem reinforces the others.

That is why the region cannot close its gender gap through corporate diversity programmes alone.

The problem begins long before the boardroom.

THERE IS ALSO A PREGNANCY CRISIS THAT EUROPE DOES NOT FACE AT THE SAME SCALE

Latin America and the Caribbean still have the second-highest adolescent pregnancy rate in the world, according to the World Bank.

The regional rate is approximately:

51.7 births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19

second only to Sub-Saharan Africa. (World Bank⁠)

Think about what that means economically.

Pregnancy at 16 or 17 can interrupt:

secondary education,

university,

professional training,

first employment,

formal-sector entry.

The economic effect can then persist for decades.

Lower education.

Lower formal employment.

Lower income.

Lower pension.

Greater dependence.

Intergenerational poverty.

So maternity policy in Latin America begins not merely with maternity leave.

It begins with reproductive health, education and preventing unwanted adolescent pregnancies.

THE MOST IMPORTANT NUMBER MAY NOT BE THE PAY GAP

We spend enormous energy discussing whether women earn 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% less than men.

Important.

But perhaps the larger question is:

HOW MUCH FEMALE PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY IS NEVER MONETISED AT ALL?

A woman outside the labour force generates no wage gap because there is no wage to compare.

A woman in informal employment may disappear from much of the high-quality salary data.

A woman who abandons a promotion because childcare is impossible appears merely as someone who remained at her current level.

A woman who works part-time for fifteen years may have a relatively modest hourly gap but an enormous lifetime-income gap.

The most economically important inequality is often the one conventional statistics do not capture well.

THE REAL GAP IS A LIFETIME GAP

We should therefore stop thinking about the gender gap as one number.

There are at least seven.

THE EDUCATION GAP

In Europe, now strongly in women’s favour.

THE PARTICIPATION GAP

Still strongly against women.

THE HOURS GAP

Women work part-time much more frequently.

THE HOURLY PAY GAP

Persistent almost everywhere.

THE PROMOTION GAP

Women progressively disappear up the hierarchy.

THE MOTHERHOOD GAP

Career trajectories diverge sharply around childbirth.

THE WEALTH AND PENSION GAP

The accumulated result of everything that happened before.

This final gap is perhaps the most important.

Because retirement does not care whether lower lifetime income came from hourly discrimination, part-time work, childcare, missed promotions or career interruptions.

The pension account simply records less money.

WHY THIS IS NOT A ZERO-SUM WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

The most intellectually lazy way to discuss these figures is to turn them into a battle between sexes.

That misses the economic point.

If women work more productively, household income rises.

Tax revenues rise.

Pension contributions rise.

Consumption rises.

Poverty falls.

Human capital is used more efficiently.

Companies have a larger talent pool.

Countries facing demographic decline obtain additional labour supply.

Men can also benefit from better parental leave because care is no longer automatically assigned to women.

Children benefit when families have greater economic security.

The economic objective is not to transfer prosperity from men to women.

It is to stop wasting human capital.

THE BIGGEST LOST ASSET ON MANY NATIONAL BALANCE SHEETS

Europe worries constantly about competitiveness.

The United States worries about productivity.

Latin America worries about low growth.

All three regions search for:

AI,

investment,

infrastructure,

new industries,

foreign capital,

tax reform,

deregulation.

Yet enormous amounts of highly educated female productive capacity already exist.

In Europe, women have passed men academically.

In America, women fill professional occupations and universities.

In Latin America, women’s education has advanced far faster than their economic power.

Perhaps one of the cheapest growth strategies available is not discovering a new natural resource.

It is using the human capital already sitting in front of us.

EUROPE’S LESSON

Europe shows that legislation matters.

Maternity leave matters.

Paternity leave matters.

Affordable childcare matters.

Social insurance matters.

And board-level intervention can accelerate representation.

But Europe also demonstrates that formal equality does not automatically produce economic equality.

Women can have:

equal legal rights,

more university degrees,

extensive maternity protection,

and still rarely become CEOs.

The final barriers are increasingly located inside careers themselves.

AMERICA’S LESSON

America shows what happens when opportunity is enormous but social protection is fragmented.

Highly educated women can become:

chief executives,

surgeons,

lawyers,

bankers,

entrepreneurs,

engineers,

fund managers.

The upside is extraordinary.

But the system is far less forgiving to the woman without a prestigious employer, high salary or state-level family protection.

American motherhood can therefore have very different economic consequences depending on where someone sits in the income distribution.

That is not simply inequality between men and women.

It is inequality between women.

LATIN AMERICA’S WARNING

Latin America’s problem is deeper because the region still has to solve several stages simultaneously.

Get more women into formal employment.

Reduce informality.

Expand childcare.

Protect maternity effectively rather than merely legally.

Keep girls in education.

Reduce adolescent pregnancy.

Increase female STEM participation.

Create pathways into management.

And eventually change who controls businesses.

Until then, millions of women may technically have equal rights while economically living in a different labour market.

That is the difference between legal equality and economic equality.

CONCLUSION: THE DEGREE IS ON THE WALL. THE POWER IS STILL SOMEWHERE ELSE.

A young woman enters university.

She studies.

She graduates.

Statistically, in Europe, she is now more likely to graduate than the young man sitting beside her.

She enters the labour market.

Then the numbers begin changing.

She becomes more likely to work part-time.

If she has children, she is more likely to interrupt her career.

She accumulates fewer hours.

Perhaps fewer promotions.

Possibly lower lifetime earnings.

She may reach management.

But the closer she comes to the CEO’s office, the fewer women remain beside her.

By retirement, all those apparently small differences have become capital.

Or the absence of it.

Salary.

Savings.

Pension.

Investments.

Property.

Wealth.

Economic independence.

This is why the debate cannot end with equal pay for equal work.

That is the minimum.

The real economic question is much larger:

Why does the economy invest more and more in educating women, then systematically extract less economic value from that education than it should?

Europe has nearly solved the education gap.

It has not solved the employment gap.

It has not solved the hours gap.

It has not solved the motherhood penalty.

And it certainly has not solved the power gap.

The United States offers greater professional upside but weaker universal protection and still produces a substantial earnings and leadership divide.

Latin America faces the most structurally difficult combination: lower participation, high informality, a roughly 20% regional earnings gap, insufficient care infrastructure and very weak representation at the top.

There has been progress.

Enormous progress.

Pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

But there is another statistic worth remembering.

Across the world’s companies, only around 6% of CEOs are women, according to the ILO. (International Labour Organization⁠)

Women are no longer asking permission to enter universities.

They have entered.

They graduated.

They became professionals.

They became managers.

The unresolved economic question of the twenty-first century is what happens between graduation day and the top floor.

Because after decades of talking about the glass ceiling, perhaps the most disturbing fact is this:

the women beneath it are now often more educated than the men above it.

SOURCES & DATA REFERENCES

Eurostat — Gender Employment Gap, 2024/2026 release
Female employment 70.8%, male employment 80.8%; Italy, Greece and Romania record the largest national employment gaps. (European Commission⁠)

Eurostat — Employment Statistics 2024
EU employment rate and country comparisons including the Netherlands, Malta, Czechia, Italy, Greece and Romania. (European Commission⁠)

Eurostat — Gender Pay Gap Statistics, 2024
EU average unadjusted hourly gender pay gap of 11.1%; country range from Estonia at 18.8% to Luxembourg at -0.8%. (European Commission⁠)

Eurostat — Tertiary Education by Sex
49.8% of women aged 25–34 with tertiary education versus 38.6% of men. (European Commission⁠)

Eurostat — University Graduates 2024
2.6 million female graduates compared with 1.9 million male graduates; major gender differences by field of study. (European Commission⁠)

European Institute for Gender Equality — Gender Balance in Business and Finance 2025/2026
Female representation on boards, executive committees, chair positions and among CEOs. (European Institute for Gender Equality⁠)

European Parliament — Maternity and Paternity Leave in the EU, April 2026
Current 27-country maternity and paternity provisions; EU minimums and national systems including Spain, Sweden, Finland, Portugal and Italy. (European Parliament⁠)

Statistics Netherlands — Gender Pay Gap 2024
Hourly and annual earnings differences and the exceptional prevalence of female part-time employment. (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek⁠)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Earnings 2025
Median weekly earnings of $1,089 for women and $1,326 for men among full-time wage and salary workers. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Employment by Occupation 2025
Women as 47.1% of employment, 41.8% of management occupations and 33% of chief executives. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Access to Leave 2024–25
Paid-leave access by gender, occupation and sector. (Bureau of Labor Statistics⁠)

OECD — Education at a Glance 2025: United States
Estimated lifetime net financial returns to tertiary education by sex. (OECD⁠)

International Labour Organization — Labour Overview of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024
Female participation 52.1% versus 74.3% for men; roughly 20% earnings gap; regional informality around 47.6%. (International Labour Organization⁠)

Inter-American Development Bank — Women and Leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean
Female representation on corporate boards, senior management and CEO positions; motherhood and informality effects. (Inter-American Development Bank⁠)

Inter-American Development Bank — Public-Sector Leadership
Women represent roughly 52% of public employees examined but only 23.6% of the highest leadership positions. (Inter-American Development Bank⁠)

World Bank — Women, Business and the Law
Childcare, unpaid care and gaps between legal rights and effective implementation. (World Bank⁠)

World Bank — Latin America and Caribbean Gender Profiles
Female education, STEM gaps, NEET disparities and adolescent fertility. (World Bank⁠)

International Labour Organization — Women in Leadership
Women hold approximately 30% of management positions, 27% of board seats and only about 6% of CEO positions globally. (International Labour Organization⁠)

Roberto Balbino — CEO, Fintech SCB
Independent analyst of finance, economics, geopolitics and global markets.