Employment
"Looking at it globally, we are very far from equal rights for men and women."
Gro Harlem Brundtland
Across the world, women's work is under-valued and under-paid - if paid at all. The overwhelming majority of work outside the formal paid economy, from childcare to farming, falls on women.
Women also face barriers to earning a living outside the home and winning respect for what they do which simply don't exist for men.
This widespread prejudice not only hurts women but damages our economies, reducing productivity, economic development and wealth creation.
In recent decades there has been remarkable progress. Women have gained jobs and earned salaries that their grandmothers could never have imagined.
However they are still not treated equally at work or at home - and it is only when women's contributions are properly recognised that societies can fully prosper and grow.
Women perform two-thirds of all labour and produce more than half the world's food. Despite this, they are paid less than men or not at all - and make up 70 percent of those living in absolute poverty.
The work that women do underpins communities and economies. Yet in both developing and developed countries women's unpaid work is rarely recognised or counted in a country's gross national product. Prejudice and traditions which undervalue the contributions of women to society are at the root of this discrimination.
The poverty and lack of opportunity they help cause also force women to leave home. A growing trend shows that the majority of workers migrating from the South to the North, especially from Asia and Latin America, are women.
Their new life all too frequently leaves them open to exploitation, abuse and discrimination. Female migrants may be forced into work as domestic servants or in dangerous factories in jobs with few legal protections and poor pay and conditions.
The unfair treatment of women at work is found right across the board. Women in developed economies face barriers to promotion with few female faces in the top jobs. Despite long-standing legislation in developed countries outlawing unequal treatment, women are still paid less than men.
In the United States, for instance, just one year after graduation, women earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall further behind, earning only 69 percent of what men earn. Even taking parenthood and working hours into account, one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained.
While the gender gap between full time pay rates is large, it is even bigger for part-time employees - putting women, who make up most part-timers at an even bigger disadvantage.
We are seeing efforts to tackle this bias. There are new laws, such as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which aims to fight pay discrimination in the United States. A new emphasis on work-life balance in many countries which will help benefit women employees. And there are also steps being taken to help smash the glass ceiling which prevents women getting to the top.
But as well as more legislation, we also need a shift in traditional attitudes towards women around the world if real change is to take root - and our societies are to prosper.