The world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030 and has been pushed further off track by the socioeconomic fallout of the pandemic. Women and girls remain disproportionately affected, struggling with lost jobs and livelihoods, derailed education, increased burdens of unpaid care work, and domestic violence. Over 100 million women aged 25-54 years with small children at home were out of the workforce globally in 2020, including the more than 2 million who left the labor force owing to the increased pressures of unpaid care work. Women's health services faced major disruptions and undermined women's sexual and reproductive health. Moreover, despite women's effective and inclusive leadership in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, they are excluded from decision-making positions. Furthermore, many countries do not have comprehensive systems for tracking budgets for gender equality, limiting the allocation of public resources for the implementation of laws and policies. Efforts must be strengthened to ensure that laws, policies, budgets, and institutions advance gender equality.

Discriminatory laws and legal gaps continue to prevent women from enjoying their human rights. Based on 2020 data from 95 countries and territories, more than half lacked quotas for women in the national parliament; while 83 percent included budgetary commitments to implement legislation addressing violence against women, 63 percent continued to lack laws defining rape based on the principle of consent. Although over 90 percent mandate non-discrimination based on gender in employment, almost half continued to restrict women from working in certain jobs or industries and almost one-quarter of countries did not grant women equal rights with men to enter marriage and initiate divorce.

Violence against women and girls is prevalent across countries and affects women of all ages. In 2018, globally, over 1 in 4 (26 percent) ever-partnered women aged 15 years or over, or a total of 641 million women, have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by a husband or intimate partner at least once in their lifetime. Data on violence experienced by older women, including on specific forms such as being restrained, being ostracized, or neglected, are urgently needed but remain largely unavailable. Only less than 10 percent of eligible data on intimate partner violence capture the prevalence of this form of violence against women aged 50 years or over.

One in five young women worldwide (19 percent) were married in childhood in 2021. Child marriage is most common in sub-Saharan Africa, a region where progress has been modest, followed by South Asia, which has achieved greater declines. Globally, the prevalence of child marriage has declined by about 10 percent in the past five years. However, the profound effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are threatening this progress, with up to 10 million additional girls at risk of child marriage in the next decade because of the pandemic.

The practice of female genital mutilation has proved remarkably tenacious, despite efforts spanning nearly a century to eliminate it. At least 200 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to female genital mutilation, based on the latest available data from 31 countries, where the practice is concentrated. Nevertheless, several countries have seen some declines in the practice compared with 30 years ago. 

On an average day, women spend about 2.5 times as many hours on unpaid domestic work and care work as men, according to the latest data from 90 countries and areas collected between 2001 and 2019. 

As of 1 January 2022, the global share of women in lower and single houses of national parliaments reached merely 26.2 percent, up from 25.6 percent in 2021. Women’s share is slightly over one-third in local governments (in 135 countries with data). Well-designed legislated gender quotas, zero tolerance for violence against women in politics, and gender-sensitive and safer political environments are key to fast-tracking and sustaining women’s equal representation in decision-making. 

Working women have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They accounted for 39.4 percent of total employment before the pandemic in 2019 but made up nearly 45 percent of global employment losses in 2020. The share of women in managerial positions worldwide has shown only a slight improvement over the last two decades, rising from 25.3 percent in 2000 to 28.3 percent in 2019, and remaining unchanged in 2020.

Based on data from 64 countries for 2007-2020, only 57 percent of married or in-union women aged 15-49 years make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights. While women seem to have the most autonomy in deciding whether to use contraception, with 92 percent empowered, only 3 in 4 women can decide on their own health care or say no to sex.

Among the 115 countries with data in 2022, countries have in place, on average, 76 percent of the laws and regulations needed to guarantee full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. The strongest enabling laws and regulations concern HIV and human papillomavirus (81 percent), followed by contraceptive services (76 percent), maternity care (74 percent), and sexuality education (65 percent).

Available data from 36 countries for 2009-2020 show that in 30 countries less than 50 percent of women have ownership and/or secure tenure rights over agricultural land. In 18 countries, the corresponding share of men was twice as high. In addition, the share of men among landowners reaches over 70 percent in nine countries, and only in eight countries do women have a higher share than men among landowners.

Data available from 52 countries for 2019-2021 reveal that about 46 percent of legal frameworks offer limited protection of women’s land rights, while nearly 25 percent offer medium levels of guarantees. Only 29 percent of reporting countries include enough provisions in their legal frameworks offering good protection of women’s rights to land. The most prominent areas in which positive results have been achieved are succession rights (64 percent of the countries) and protection of being disposed of in land transactions (56 percent requiring spousal consent). By contrast, joint land registration and protection of women’s land rights when customary law is legally recognized continue to be a concern in many countries.

Ownership of mobile phones has been shown to be an important tool for empowering women. In 30 of 70 countries with data for 2017-2021, gender parity in mobile phone ownership has been achieved and in 13 additional countries, the number of women who own a mobile phone is greater than the number of men.

Socio-economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic requires effective and gender-responsive public finance management systems. Based on data reported by 105 countries and areas for 2018-2021, 26 percent of countries globally have comprehensive systems in place for tracking and making public allocations for gender equality, 59 percent have some features of a system in place, and 15 percent do not have the minimum elements of such systems.