furthermore women remain severely underrepresented in key growthenhancing fields of education such as science technology engineering and mathematics stem there is a persistent imbalance in the household division of paid and unpaid work women are less likely to work for pay more likely to have lower hourly earnings and less likely to obtain decisionmaking positions in either public or private sectors and women are also a minority amongst entrepreneurs in general the gender gaps of disadvantage in the labour market are more pronounced in the asiapacific region than across the oecd and women in the asiapacific region are therefore more likely to experience poverty and deprivation the evidencebase may not be as comprehensive as the information sets generally available for oecd countries which contain a wider variety of indicators almost half of the children in the asiapacific region now participate in formal early childhood education and care ecec facilities and enrolment in primary education is almost universal