In the last 27 years, the world has seen a less than 2 percent improvement in the number of women entering the workforce, and a new report is calling for “a quantum leap of transformative policy choices” if we want to see more meaningful improvement.

The report, released on the eve of International Women’s Day on March 8, was commissioned by the International Labour Organization. It found that 1.3 billion women were at work in 2018, compared with 2 billion men — a less than 2 percent improvement in the last 27 years. 

The report found a number of factors blocking equality in employment. One of the largest, according to the report, is caregiving. Over the last 20 years, the amount of time women spent on unpaid care and domestic work barely fell, while men’s participation increased eight minutes per day.

At that rate, the report said it will take more than 200 years to achieve equality in time spent in unpaid care work.

The report also found concerns over the “lack of upward mobility” at work, as women are still underrepresented at the top. One-third of managers are women, and according to the ILO’s findings, women’s pay is 20 percent lower than men’s as a global average. The discrepancy is linked as a career-long “motherhood wage penalty.”

Solutions are available, but include creating or reviewing laws to establish equal rights for all sexes at work, as well as repealing bans on women entering certain professions or from working at night.