This edition of the “UN Women impact stories” series focuses on women in leadership. Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, is crucial to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. These stories feature some of the women leaders who are paving the way.

Grounded in a series of case studies from research and programming experience, this report offers a comprehensive framework for understanding how gender, climate, and security are inextricably linked.

This paper examines how the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been integrated into the national debate on gender equality in Ecuador. It identifies which policies from the Agenda have been taken into account and which have been rejected. It also examines how the actors involved in clarifying the scope of these policies—women’s movements, sexual diversity organizations, public officials, and UN agencies—have coordinated their activities with the Agenda.

This publication illustrates in a practical way how participating cities of the Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Initiative are working to implement women’s safety approaches through the lens of intersectionality. These include a range of women-led solutions, from the creation of data, to integrated policies with meaningful participation of women’s rights organizations, to urban planning solutions that prioritize minoritized women, and prevention initiatives addressing discriminatory behaviours.

Issue 15 of TRANSFORM focuses on governance and national planning (GNP), an area of work that has contributed to UN Women’s identity and for which it is recognized and valued. The evaluation of UN Women’s GNP portfolio from 2011 to 2017 assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and extent to which human rights approach and gender equality principles were integrated adequately in UN Women’s approach to GNP.

Governance and national planning (GNP) is an area of work that has contributed to UN Women’s identity and for which it is recognized and valued. The evaluation of UN Women's GNP portfolio from 2011 to 2017 assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and extent to which human rights approach and gender equality principles were integrated adequately in UN Women’s approach to GNP.

This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to explicitly recognize that gender, poverty, and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. It was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women 2019”, and also released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series.

This report on UN Women’s Global Flagship Programme Initiative, Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces, shares achievements gleaned from various participating city programmes around the world. A series of stories illustrate what authorities, grass-roots women, women’s organizations and other community partners can do as part of a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in public spaces.

This paper looks to our understanding of the gendered implications of rural land dispossession through a comparative analysis of five cases that were driven by different economic purposes in diverse agrarian contexts. It identifies some of the common gendered effects of land dispossession, and demonstrates ways in which the gendered consequences of land dispossession vary qualitatively across cases. It was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2014: Gender and Sustainable Development. It is now also released as part of the UN Women discussion paper series.

This study examines the borrowing behaviour of women and men within households in Ecuador, Ghana and Karnataka, India, and investigates whether the correlates of having asset debt differ for women and men. It provides answers to interesting questions, such as where they borrow from (formal versus informal sources) and whether the person responsible for the loan is involved in the decision to take out the loan.

This study explores the shocks experienced by households and the coping strategies employed by them in Ecuador, Ghana and Karnataka, India. It emphasizes the role of assets, showing how these may be directly lost as a result of a shock or may be used as part of a coping strategy. It finds that women and men living in the same household may experiences shocks differently and use different coping strategies.

This study constitutes a pioneering effort to measure whether women accumulate physical and financial assets as either remittance managers or migrants themselves. Based on household asset surveys in Ecuador and Ghana, the authors find that women have fared as well as men in their ability to acquire assets through remittances or savings earned abroad, but overall, a relatively small share of migrant households are able to accumulate assets, a finding requiring the attention of policymakers.