Gender gap persists globally, with slow progress in US and East Asia.

The US has fallen behind in closing the gender gap, ranking 43rd out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum's annual Global Gender Gap report. The country experienced a 2.1-percentage-point decline in its gender parity score, with the largest drop in political empowerment. Overall, it will take 131 years to close the gender pay gap across the world economy, a marginal improvement from the previous estimate of 132 years. The WEF warned that progress on political empowerment was stagnating and economic participation among women has worsened, while AI could exacerbate the progress being lost in economic participation among women.