In the days prior to the commemoration of Monday, September 22, UN women, the agency responsible for supervising gender equality and the empowerment of women, and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) sounded the alarm: none of the gender equality objectives is on its way.
His report, 2025 Snapshot gender, warns that 10 percent of women live in extreme poverty and that 351 million women and girls could still be trapped by 2030.
About 708 million women are excluded from the labor market for unpaid care work. Even those who work are pushed to lower paid jobs. Women are excluded from land ownership, financial services and decent works: they are denied the necessary tools to prosper.
And, according to the report, violence against women and girls persists: one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence during their lives. In addition, 676 million live 50 kilometers from a conflict zone, the highest figure since the 1990s.
In some countries, hard profits are being threatened by an unprecedented reaction against women’s rights and a reduced civic space.
However, it is important to remember that the fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, represented and why one of the most important inflection points is considered in the progress of gender equality.
The event led to the adoption of the Beijing statement and the platform for action, a plan with measures focused on key areas such as poverty, education, violence, women in armed conflicts and exercise power.
The governments of 189 countries unanimously declared that equality between women and men was a matter of human rights and a previous requirement to achieve social justice, as well as a necessary and fundamental prerequisite for development and peace.
Today, there are more legal protection for women and girls worldwide: 1,583 laws that address gender violence have been promulgated in 193 countries, compared to only 12 countries in 1995. And more than 100 countries have trained the police to support the survivors of violence.
In the workplace, laws that prohibit gender discrimination have proliferated, promoting the economic empowerment of women. New services have emerged to relieve the load of unpaid care work, and gender gaps have been closed at all educational levels.
In the consolidation of peace, there are now 112 national action plans on women, peace and security worldwide, compared to 19 in 2010.
Siepp, Cambodia, Cambodia, Cambodia’s high school students, students
The price of progress
In the high -level event on Monday, the representatives of the Member States, the civil society organizations, the academic institutions and the private sector will discuss how to accelerate the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and find resources for the necessary measures to put it into action.
For UN women, investing in women means investing in society as a whole: if governments act immediately, extreme poverty among women could be reduced from 9.2 percent to 2.7 percent by 2050, which would provide an impulse of $ 342 billion to the global economy for that year.
However, the call to assign more resources to achieve parity comes at a time when countries are reducing funds for both initiatives and data collection. Only half of the ministries of women and gender equality institutions have enough resources.
For Sarah Hendriks of UN women, this is a matter of political will, with systems that prioritize the war on rights and equality. “We now live in a world that spends $ 2.7 billion a year in arms and, nevertheless, falls short at the price of $ 320 billion to advance and achieve gender equality and women’s rights,” he emphasized.
Participants attend the commission on women’s status.
Another century of inequality?
The high -level meeting will be chaired by Annalena Baerbock, president of the UN General Assembly since the beginning of September and only the fifth woman to hold the position since the organization was founded 80 years ago.
At the end of the high -level week, Baerbock will also preside over the choice of the person who will occupy the general position of the United Nations from 2027: despite the persistent and growing pressure of many rooms, there has never been a woman on paper.
Worldwide, women remain excluded from power and decision making: they occupy only 27 percent of parliamentary seats and 30 percent of leadership positions. 113 countries have never had a head of state. If the progress rate does not change, gender equality in leadership would take a century to achieve.