While individual countries have made progressed in the fight for equal rights, there is still a long way to go before gender equality can be fully achieved on a global scale. Various factors go into measuring gender equality. Currently, the average global gender gap is 31.4%.

Political empowerment, education attainment, health and survival, and economic participation and opportunity are the four indexes that help to measure and determine global gender equality, according to the 2020 Global Gender Gap report.

The Global Gender Gap report is an annual analysis of how close or far the world is to achieving gender equality worldwide. Released by the World Economic Forum, the report uses the aforementioned factors as guidelines to measure overall equality or lack thereof on the basis of sex and gender.

While 108 participating countries have made significant strides toward achieving political empowerment for women and girls, it remains the category with the greatest gender disparity. The gap on this sub-index has only been closed by 25% so far, meaning there are still not enough women occupying seats in government on a global scale.

Equal representation in government is crucial to achieving gender equality. Governmental bodies should be representative of every constituent so that all individuals can be heard and have a say.

Women make up around 24% of legislative bodies around the world, according to the Pew Research Center. While this has increased significantly from the previous decade, women are still severely underrepresented in government.

In order to close the gender gap and achieve gender equality, countries across the globe must increase the number of women in government, ensure education is accessible to all women and girls, create free or affordable child care so that more women can participate in the labor market, and provide access to safe reproductive health care.

Read the full article about gender equality by Catherine Caruso at Global Citizen.