New York, 6 March 2025, At the Press Conference by Sarah Hendriks, UN Women Director of Policy, Program and Intergovernmental Division; and Papa Seck, the UN Women Chief of Research and Data section, on the launch of the latest report Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing; which was published ahead of the UN 50th International Women’s Day on 8 March.
The report shows: In 2024 nearly a quarter of governments worldwide reported a backlash on women’s rights. Luckily, according to data derived in the latest report, it turns as good news that the world today is more equal for women and girls than ever before. This is to confirm the progress is factually possible; though, progress has been too slow, too fragile, too uneven, and most importantly: it is not guaranteed.
Ms. Hendriks made it clear that:
- The world is experiencing a growing backlash against gender equality and women’s rights. Anti-rights actors who are increasingly well-funded and coordinated are actively undermining long standing consensus on key women’s rights issues and where they cannot roll back legal or policy gains altogether; they seek to either block or slow down their implementation.
- Recent situation says: a girl who is born today will wait until she is nearly 40 years old until she sees equality in parliaments everywhere. She will be 68 years old until a child’s early enforced marriage is ended around the world, and she will not even live to see the day by which extreme poverty, which has a female face, is eradicated from this earth. She’ll be 137 years old by the time the feminization of poverty ends.
Papa Seck, Chief of UN Women’s Research and Data section; adding the clarification on the report:
- Over the past 30 years, important steps have been taken to achieve the vision of the Beijing platform for action. The proportion of women in Parliament has doubled, maternal mortality has declined by one-third. Girls have achieved parity with boys in upper secondary school, which is crucial for them to drive. There have been over 1500 legal reforms in 189 countries to level the playing fields for women and girls.
- It is true that more women in Parliament than ever before, but still three quarters of parliamentarians are men. This means that laws and policies still don’t reflect women’s lives. Moreover, those women who do put themselves forward for political office often face unprecedented levels of violence and harassment turbo-charged by the misuse of digital technology.
- Maternal mortality is down, but still millions of women die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth. The truth says the progress on this most preventable of problems has largely stalled since 2015. Though, the world has reached a parity in education; the fact shows 60 million girls, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, are still not getting the opportunity to finish school. The other fact says one-fifth of girls globally are still married as children.
- Legal reforms have been critical. The fact is, though in the areas where countries have been the most active, laws still need to be implemented.
- The gender gap in labor force participation is at around 30 percentage points. It is barely moved in two decades, and Covid 19 lead to even worse.
- In 2022, cases of conflict related sexual violence increased by 50 percent. The fact says almost all victims of these horrific crimes are women and girls.
Related links
International Women’s Day 2025 – UN Chief’s message | United Nations
Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing – Press Conference | United Nations
On This Day: Secretary Clinton’s 1995 United Nations Speech – “Women’s rights are human rights”
