The Gender Snapshot 2024

Progress has been made world-wide on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, the latest edition of Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024 states. The report was launched by UN Women and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in September 2024.

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 ten per cent following steep increases during the COVID-19 pandemic years. Up to 56 legal reforms have been enacted world-wide 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 one in four girls continue to be married as children. 

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 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.

(UN Women/ile)

Read more and download the report on the UN Women Website