(Yicai Global) Dec. 17 -- The global gender gap is narrowing by the increase of women's political participation but gender parity is still 100 years away, according to the World Economic Forum.

The road to gender equality is anticipated to be shorter than last year's prediction of 108 years, the WEF said in its Global Gender Gap Report 2020. However, the economic gap got wider to 257 years from last year's 202 years, caused by women's weak representation in emerging technology jobs.

The overall progress is partly explained by the rise of women in parliaments and as ministers, which has been a virtuous cycle as political role models have prompted women to climb the corporate ladders in the top eight countries.

China fell three positions down to No. 106 in the index. It hovers around the 100 mark in the subindexes of educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, as well as political empowerment.

Iceland retained its No. 1 spot on the list, followed by Norway and Finland. Albania, Ethiopia, Mali, Mexico, and Spain improved the most over the year.

The slow economic balancing can partly be explained by the choice of work. Only 12 percent of the world's cloud computing professionals are women, and that goes for 15 percent of engineers, and 26 percent of those working in the field of artificial intelligence, according to data from the WEF and LinkedIn. These are the sectors that have boosted salaries the most since the 2008 financial crisis. 

Countries need to encourage leaders to provide women with more training to master disruptive technologies, improve hiring mechanisms, and create inclusive office cultures because the lack of representation by one-half of the population will stymie progress, according to the report.

Editor: Emmi Laine