The “Women in politics: 2023” map, created by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, presents new data for women in executive positions and national parliaments as of 1 January 2023. Data show that women are underrepresented at all levels of decision-making worldwide and that achieving gender parity in political life is far off.

Pursuant to General Assembly resolution 74/235 on women in development, in the present report, the Secretary-General considers global evidence and trends and reviews and assesses measures taken at the national level, since 2019, regarding gender-responsive poverty eradication, social protection, and labour market policies; women’s labour and human rights and ending gender-based discrimination; women’s entrepreneurship; women’s and girls’ unpaid care and domestic work and women’s paid care work; gender-based violence and sexual harassment; universal access to healthcare services, including sexual and reproductive health; and the right to education throughout the life cycle, taking into account the impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in these areas.

Drawing on a unique global dataset of nearly 5,000 measures adopted by 226 countries and territories in response to COVID-19, this UN Women and UNDP report finds that government responses paid insufficient attention to gender dynamics, though instances of innovation hold important lessons for gender-responsive policymaking during crises. The report analyses the factors that led to a strong gender response, generating key lessons for resilience and preparedness for future shocks.

This working paper features data and analyses of women’s representation in 133 countries and areas. The paper considers the impacts of legislated quotas and electoral systems in local elections on women’s political participation and identifies remaining data gaps on women’s political participation in local government, including data disaggregation, underused electoral data, and the need for new data collection tools.

This policy paper explores the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination faced by racially marginalized women, rooted in systemic racism, sexism, and other systems of inequality. It offers recommendations to States, international actors, and civil society organizations on ways to implement urgent reforms to improve access to services and human rights protections for women who are marginalized based upon their race, gender, and migration status.

This policy brief provides a critical assessment of the “men for gender equality” field, and proposes new directions for programming and policy on men and boys. This includes moving away from a focus on individual men’s identities, attitudes and behaviours, and towards a greater focus on the structures and systems that sustain gender inequalities.

This working paper analyses how women leaders at the national and subnational levels of government managed COVID-19 response and recovery from January 2020 through March 2021. The paper finds that women decision-makers demonstrated effective leadership, rapid response, and implemented socially inclusive policies and provides recommendations on how to ensure women’s participation and contribution to the pandemic response and recovery.

The guidance note discusses key concepts and norms about violence against women in politics, including definitions and normative frameworks, and provides practical guidance for addressing violence against women in politics at country level through different interventions.

The IPU–UN Women “Women in politics: 2021” map presents global rankings for women in executive, government, and parliamentary positions as of 1 January 2021. The data shows all-time highs for the number of countries with women Heads of State or Heads of Government, as well as for the global share of women ministers.

UN Women organized an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on “Data and violence against women in politics” (VAWP) on 4–5 December 2019, in New York, as a part of its ongoing efforts to tackle this issue. This report provides an overview of the expert discussions and the key takeaways identified during the meeting. It also highlights key discussion points to inform future efforts to collect data on VAWP.

This implementation package is a suite of practical resources and tools to support the implementation of the RESPECT Women: Preventing Violence against Women Framework. The package is built upon the global evidence base, expert recommendations and practitioner consensus to support policy makers and practitioners in developing ethical and effective VAW prevention programming.

This brief shines a light on the critical role of women’s leadership in responding to COVID-19 and preparing for a more equitable recovery. In addition to considering the pandemic’s immediate impacts on women’s political participation, the brief demonstrates the opportunity to “build back better” by including and supporting women, and the organizations and networks that represent them, in the decision-making processes that will ultimately shape the post-pandemic future.

This primer highlights practical ways Members of Parliament (MPs) and parliamentary staff can take action to ensure COVID-19 response and recovery decision-making addresses women’s needs.

This study serves as an evidence-based instrument that demonstrates how leveraging attitudinal change can be used as a critical tactic towards advancing gender equality. The findings have the potential to inform policymakers, advertisers, private sector leaders, civil society, and decision-makers on challenging discriminatory attitudes and gender roles that perpetuate gender inequality and women’s subordinate status in society.

In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to discuss two interrelated realms: backsliding on gender equality policies and the emerging political space for feminist responses to this backsliding. We illustrate our framework with empirical observations from three Central and Eastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, and Poland. We aim to contribute to an understanding of the gendered aspects of de-democratization and the functioning of illiberal democracies.

This brief provides background information on the root causes and risk factors that explain why violence against women occurs in the first place. It highlights how the context of COVID-19 is exacerbating those factors and the impact it is having on rates of violence against women and the ability to undertake evidence-based prevention work in the current context. It provides indicative interventions that can be undertaken during social distancing.

This publication focuses on training as preventive intervention. It discusses current thinking on what makes training effective and presents a new framework for standards. Transformative work involves building a values-based approach to sexual harassment and an audit/culture check to establish the shape of harassment therein, with training that links these two. Training must fit the specific context, be conducted by experts in gender inequality, and be conducted face to face.

The “Women in politics: 2020” map, created by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, presents global rankings for women in executive, government, and parliamentary positions as of 1 January 2020. It shows all-time highs for the number of countries with women Heads of State and/or Heads of Government, and for the global share of women ministers, parliamentary speakers, and parliamentarians.

This discussion paper on cultural change needed to end sexual harassment offers inputs on training, victim-focused work, rational reporting and collective ownership. It recognizes the work of the global women’s movements that put the issue in the spotlight, the women who led the international clamour for recognition of their voices and accountability for all perpetrators.

In this report, the Secretary-General underscores measures taken at the national level to incorporate a gender perspective into national sustainable development policies and strategies; promote sustainable, inclusive and equitable economic growth strategies that benefit women and active labour market policies on full and productive employment and decent work for women; eliminate gender-based occupational segregation and gender wage gaps; accelerate the transition of women from informal to formal employment; prevent and eliminate all forms of violence, discrimination and sexual harassment against women at work; and promote the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities.