OBS Report: The invisible inequality
Invisible inequality is holding our society together
- 52% of young people aged 16 to 24 believe that feminism has gone too far and is now causing discrimination against men.
- Every day, women around the world spend more than 160 billion hours doing unpaid work.
- Women are underrepresented in clinical trials. In many therapeutic areas, less than 30% of participants are women.
- Less than 29% of tech jobs are held by women, with even lower proportions in management and technical leadership roles.
February 2026. OBS Business School, a member of the Planeta Formación y Universidades higher education network, publishes the report La desigualdad que no se ve (The Invisible Inequality), led by Professor Marta Grañó. The report identifies and analyses forms of inequality which are not always apparent, generally not measured and, as a result, seldom structurally incorporated into public and private decision-making.
52% of young people aged between 16 and 24 believe that feminism has gone too far and is now generating discrimination against men, a trend that is also evident across other Western countries. Strangely enough, objective indicators show that structural inequalities persist precisely because they are not visible.
The gender gap has narrowed from 68.4% to just 68.8% over the last year, representing slow progress. The gap is particularly persistent in the economic sphere and with regard to participation, as well as in areas such as care, health and the digital sphere.
Caregiving remains a female domain
Every day, worldwide, more than 16 billion hours are spent on unpaid tasks such as cooking, cleaning, caring for children, the elderly or dependents, and sustaining daily life. A substantial part of this workload is borne by women and girls. They devote 2.5 times more time than men to these tasks. The ILO estimates that 708 million women worldwide are outside the labour force due to unpaid care responsibilities. The United Nations warns that in some countries the value of this type of work could exceed 40% of GDP. This value, therefore, falls outside many public decision-making frameworks.
Focusing on paid work, a decisive part of social welfare and economic functioning rests on ‘essential’ occupations which, paradoxically, remain among the most undervalued. Women are the ones who most often take on these jobs, with very high percentages in education, health (especially basic healthcare), consumer services and the public sector, and very low percentages in sectors such as supply chains and infrastructure.
Health inequalities: androcentric medicine
Modern medicine has historically been built on an implicit assumption: the male body as a universal reference. This bias has permeated the design of clinical trials, the formulation of biomedical hypotheses, and the interpretation of results for decades. Studies published in Nature and The Lancet emphasise that the early phases of clinical trials (phases I and II), which are crucial for determining dosage, safety, and adverse effects, continue to recruit mostly men. In many therapeutic areas, less than 30% of participants are women, and although their proportion has increased in areas such as oncology and autoimmune diseases, significant deficits remain in cardiology, neurology, and clinical pharmacology. This lack of representation has tangible clinical consequences: delayed diagnoses, less effective treatments, and a greater burden of adverse effects. In recent years, a scientific consensus has emerged around the need to incorporate sex as a biological variable in all phases of biomedical research.
The Invisibility in Technology
Women are consistently underrepresented in this field, both in terms of access to and use of digital technologies and in terms of participation and leadership in technological development. Although 65.9% of women in Spain have at least basic digital skills—a figure that is even higher than the European average—female participation in advanced levels of technological specialisation is substantially lower than that of men. According to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, women represent only 28.7% of engineering degrees and 14.8% of computer science degrees. Less than 29% of technology jobs are held by women, with even lower proportions in management and technical leadership roles. This has tangible consequences: from virtual assistants that interpret the domestic role as feminine to algorithms that underrepresent women in job searches or professional product recommendations. International organisations such as UN Women and UNESCO believe it is necessary to incorporate algorithmic bias audits, transparency in recommendation criteria and diversity in the teams that design and train these systems.
Symbolic invisibility
However, women's invisibility does not only occur in the material sphere, but also on a symbolic level. Culture, media and language are key spaces for the construction of collective meaning: they determine which voices are heard, which stories are told and which people are recognised as role models.
Only around 24% of top editorial management positions in the media are held by women. This trend is also evident in the cultural and audiovisual sectors. The report After the Silence (2025), produced by the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media (CIMA), reveals that 60.3% of women in the sector have suffered sexual violence in professional environments, a figure that highlights how symbolic inequality is intertwined with power relations and silencing.
Furthermore, the language of power is heavily laden with metaphors and values historically associated with masculinity: firmness, toughness, rationality, strategic aggressiveness, and hierarchical leadership. Women in leadership positions are thus caught in a symbolic double bind: if they adopt these codes, they are perceived as ‘unfeminine’; if they do not, their authority is questioned.
The OBS report indicates that breaking through everyday invisibility requires action on two mutually reinforcing levels: on the one hand, daily practices (who cares, who supports, who “resolves” the invisible); on the other, structures (how health systems, technology and public policies are designed). Professor Marta Grañó believes:
“Invisible inequality is not a minor form of inequality; it is the foundation for many others.”
