Fifteen Years, Fifteen Facts: Challenges and solutions for gender equality

This historic and precarious moment threatens to reverse hard-won gains. The progress achieved cannot be taken for granted. This year, as we commemorate 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and 25 years since UN Security Council resolution 1325, is the time for bold leadership and unwavering commitment to deliver on the promises made in Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals; the Women, Peace and Security agenda; and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

UN Women marks its 15th anniversary with a renewed commitment to continue delivering for the 4 billion women and girls across the globe. To push forward on gender equality, UN Women is calling for 15 actions:

1. Address the Backlash against women’s rights:

• Fact: In 2024, nearly one in four countries reported a backlash against women's rights, marking a significant regression in gender equality efforts.
• Solution: Renewed political will is essential to safeguard hard-won gains for all women and girls as promised in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, including ensuring that legal, political, and financial systems actively advance—not hinder—gender equality.

2. End Conflict:

• Fact: In 2023, approximately 612 million women and girls lived within 50 kilometers of a conflict zone, more than 50 per cent higher than a decade ago.
• Solution: Increase investment in conflict prevention, mediation, and peacebuilding. 

3. Promote Women in Peacemaking:

• Fact: Peace lasts longer when women are at the table. But between 2020 and 2023, 8 in 10 peace talks and 7 in 10 mediation efforts had no women involved. Despite proven impact, women remain shut out of peace processes.
• Solution: Parties to conflict and negotiators and other actors must uphold global commitments to the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peace processes. 

4. Eradicate Poverty

• Fact:  One in ten women and girls live in extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 per person per day), and at today’s pace, ending it will take another 137 years.
• Solution: Governments must adopt robust social protection policies—such as cash assistance for low-income families, paid maternity leave, and secure pension systems. 

5. End Food Insecurity:

• Fact: Small-scale farmers, the majority of whom are women, produce 1/3 of the world’s food, yet 47.8 million more women than men face moderate or severe food insecurity
• Solution: Governments must enact laws and policies to close the gender gap in farm productivity and the gender wage gap in food systems, to reduce the number of food-insecure people by 45 million. 

6. End Violence Against Women:

• Fact: Globally, one woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes at the hands of a partner or a close relative. A total of 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2023.
• Solution: Governments and institutions must strengthen laws on violence against women, improve data collection, and promote a zero-tolerance approach. Partners must increase funding for women’s rights organizations and institutions that protect and support survivors and their families. 

7. Promote Women’s Access to the Economy: 

• Fact: Women perform 2.5 times more unpaid care work than men, including a grand total of  250 million hours a day spent collecting water - three times more than men and boys, restricting their access to the formal labour market.
• Solution: Investing in care systems and decent care jobs could create nearly 300 million jobs like childcare and caring for the elderly or sick by 2035, transforming both lives and economies. 

8. Eradicate the Gender Pay Gap

• Fact: Globally, women still earn 20 per cent less than men for work of equal value. The wage gap remains a reality for women, driven by structural inequalities such as job segregation, caregiving penalties, and ongoing discrimination.
• Solution: Governments and employers must advance equal pay for equal work, ensure pay transparency, expand women’s access to higher-paying roles, provide equitable parental leave, and strengthen laws against workplace discrimination.

9. Protect the Planet:

• Fact: Climate shocks could drive 158 million more women and girls into extreme poverty by 2050. Only 28 per cent of environment ministers are women—despite clear evidence that women’s leadership leads to more effective climate policies.
• Solution: Governments must ensure equal representation in climate leadership, increased investment in gender-responsive policies, and funding for women-led solutions to prevent climate shocks.

10. Increase women’s Leadership and Political Participation:

• Fact: Nearly 75 per cent of lawmakers today are men and 103 countries have never had a woman Head of State. At this pace of progress, equality in top leadership won’t be reached for 130 years.
• Solution: Quotas work—they open doors for women in politics. But real progress means going further: combating social norms and stigma that hold women back and stopping the violence that targets them when they step into power. 

11. Dismantle Discriminatory Legal Frameworks:

• Fact: Women still have only 64 percent of the legal rights men enjoy. For instance, in 51 per cent of countries, there is at least one restriction preventing women from doing the same jobs as men.
• Solution: Governments must eliminate legal discrimination and invest in laws that protect and advance women's rights.

12. Close the Gender Digital Gap:

• Fact: 277 million more men than women used the Internet in 2024. If the digital gender gap persists low and middle income countries stand to lose USD 500 billion in income over the next five years.
• Solution: Close the digital gender divide, and address digital abuse, trolling, stalking, and other forms of technology-facilitated violence against women. Barriers to the equal participation and leadership of women and girls in science, technology and innovation must be dismantled. 

13. Ensure Gender Parity in Education:

• Fact: Over 119 million girls are still out of school, and 39 per cent of young women don’t finish upper secondary education.
• Solution: Governments and communities must lower schooling costs, offer cash transfers, and ensure safe and inclusive educational environments. 

14. End Maternal Mortality:

• Fact: Nearly 800 women die daily from preventable pregnancy-related causes—61 per cent of these deaths occur in just 35 conflict-affected countries.
• Solution: Policymakers and stakeholders must address harmful gender norms, increase investment in safe, quality, and affordable sexual and reproductive health services, and strengthen fragile health systems.

15. Increase Gender Financing:

• Fact: Only 4 per cent of official development assistance went to programmes with gender equality as the principal objective in 2021-2022.
• Solution: All stakeholders, public and private, must significantly increase investments in gender equality as a cornerstone for advancing sustainable development and ensuring no one is left behind.