When Will We Reach Gender Equality?

24 Sep 2019

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Ten years? Fifty? Business students take their best guesses, and Melinda Gates explains why the real number is centuries away. Across all aspects of American life, it is most often men who set policy, allocate resources, lead companies, shape markets, and determine whose stories get told. Meanwhile, what gains have been made typically haven’t extended to all women. That’s led to a major gap in gender equality in the United States. How long will it take to close that gap? According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. is still 208 years away from achieving gender equality at this rate of change. But technologist and philanthropist Melinda Gates believes we currently have a rare opportunity to accelerate this timeline. She has a strategy for accelerating the pace of progress and achieving measurable results by 2030. --------------------------------------------------------------------- At Harvard Business Review, we believe in management. If the world’s organizations and institutions were run more effectively, if our leaders made better decisions, if people worked more productively, we believe that all of us — employees, bosses, customers, our families, and the people our businesses affect — would be better off. So we try to arm our readers with ideas that help them become smarter, more creative, and more courageous in their work. We enlist the foremost experts in a wide range of topics, including career planning, strategy, leadership, work-life balance, negotiations, innovation, and managing teams. Harvard Business Review empowers professionals around the world to lead themselves and their organizations more effectively and to make a positive impact. Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters Follow us: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review

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