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.
Yet it will still take a staggering 137 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty.
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% 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.
And about one in four girls continue to be married as children.
As world leaders prepare for the Summit of the Future on 22-23 September, they are being 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. We need to keep pushing forward for gender equality to fulfil 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.’
SIMA BAHOUS
UN Women Executive Director
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 $10 trillion.
Low- and middle-income countries can lose another $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.’
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% compared with 16.1% 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 fulfil the promise of the 2030 Agenda.
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