UN report urges immediate global action to close critical gender gaps

The latest edition of Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024, launched today by UN Women and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, reveals that progress has been made worldwide on gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment. Women hold one in every four parliamentary seats, a significant rise from a decade ago. The share of women and girls living in extreme poverty has finally dipped below 10 per cent following steep increases during the COVID-19 pandemic years. Up to 56 legal reforms have been enacted worldwide that seek to close the gender gap since the first Gender Snapshot. 

However, the data presented in the report shows that none of the indicators and sub-indicators of Sustainable Development Goal 5—the goal for gender equality—are being met. At current rates, gender parity in parliaments remains a distant dream, potentially not achievable until 2063. It will still take a staggering 137 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty. And about 1 in 4 girls continue to be married as children. 

As world leaders prepare for the Summit of the Future on September 22-23, they are urged to forge new international consensus to close the gender gap, achieve gender equality, and advance the empowerment and rights of all women and girls – a distant but achievable goal. 

"Today’s report reveals the undeniable truth: progress is achievable, but is not fast enough,” said Sima Bahous, UN Women Executive Director. “We need to keep pushing forward for gender equality to fulfill the commitment made by world leaders in the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing almost 30 years ago and the 2030 Agenda. Let us unite to continue dismantling the barriers women and girls face and forge a future where gender equality is not just an aspiration but a reality.” 

The report stresses the astonishing cost of gender inequality. For example, the annual global cost of countries failing to adequately educate their young populations is over USD 10 trillion. Low- and middle-income countries can lose another USD 500 billion in the next five years by not closing the digital gender gap.

"The costs of inaction on gender equality are immense, and the rewards of achieving it are far too great to ignore. We can only achieve the 2030 Agenda with the full and equal participation of women and girls in every part of society,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

The report includes a set of recommendations to eliminate gender inequality across all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals such as legal reform, highlighting that countries with domestic violence legislation have lower rates of intimate partner violence – 9.5 per cent compared to 16.1 per cent for those without.

The report calls for decisive action at the Summit of the Future taking place 22-23 September, and the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2025; to increase investments and end discrimination against women and girls; and to fulfill the promise of the 2030 Agenda.