History has repeatedly demonstrated that a nation’s stability, progress, and development are driven by gains in the status and rights of its women. Where women thrive, countries prosper.
During this Women’s History Month, this mission is more important than ever – not because of what has been achieved, but because of how far the global community still has to go. This unfinished work requires urgent action, particularly as once-celebrated progress has either stalled or regressed across every region of the world.
The concerning realities speak for themselves.
Though women constitute half of the world’s population, political representation of women at the highest levels of elected office remains rare. Across legislative bodies, women still account for just over a quarter of parliamentary seats. And just 13 of the 193 U.N. member countries currently have a female head of state or government.
Women are also less likely to participate in the labor market largely due to inequality and discrimination. Worldwide, about 80% of men work, compared with about half of women. In many communities around the world, women who work are relegated to roles within informal economies – employment in unregulated or unofficial capacities – further perpetuating poverty and subjugation. The wage gap is also endemic: Even in the United States, women earn 85% of men’s average median hourly wages, according to a 2024 Pew Research study.
While education equality has shifted considerably in recent decades, especially at primary levels, hard work remains in secondary and higher education access. At the same time, the world must confront national policies and antiquated gender norms that deny adolescent girls and young women their right to attend school. This includes national policies and social expectations that deny pregnant and teenage moms access to school, promote early and forced marriage, or outright ban girls from education (like in the Taliban’s version of Afghanistan).
Confronting these norms also requires innovation and partnerships to overcome broader barriers – like cost and safety challenges – that disrupt in-person access to school for female students.
Horrifyingly, while a third of the world’s women and girls have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, prevention and survivor support programs are grappling with significant cuts to funding. This includes a 90% reduction in “essential services.” One in three organizations has had to shutter programs addressing violence against women and girls, according to an October 2025 survey of over 400 civil society organizations by UN Women.
As conflict and democratic backsliding continue to accelerate, the “justice gap” for women is also growing. Globally, women enjoy only two thirds of the legal rights of their male counterparts, according to a 2026 report from U.N. Women.
While many countries have expanded women’s legal rights, many others still restrict or fail to protect them in areas including violence against women and girls, discrimination, banking, and inheritance. For example, more than a third of U.N. members – 69 countries – have laws setting limits on women’s decision to work. That’s around 2.7 billion women who are legally restricted from having the same employment opportunities as men.
These systemic issues are a problem for societies as a whole, not just women’s well-being. When women are ignored, excluded, and even erased from participating in public life, countries lose out on half of their human and intellectual capital. This directly inhibits innovation, good governance, and economic growth that impacts everyone. Progress requires structural advances and sustained support. It won’t happen automatically. At CSW and beyond, world leaders must get serious about where we go from here.
This includes reexamining funding shortfalls in foreign aid budgets, which are disrupting even the most basic levels of support for women and girls – things like food security and maternal and infant health.
National governments and international organizations should increase pressure and expand penalties on regimes and other malign actors that systematical oppress and abuse female citizens.
Female leaders and civil society advocates must be prioritized by national governments and international organizations as meaningful participants in decision-making forums and within peace and reconciliation efforts.
Most importantly, world leaders should prioritize the advancement of women.
Seven decades after the U.N. first created a platform dedicated to gender equality, the Commission on the Status of Women, it feels both bewildering and exhausting to still be discussing such an unequal status of women in the world in 2026. While women have assumed global leadership positions in business, politics, academia and diplomacy, the trajectory of that progress remains fragile and uneven.
The question facing the international community today isn’t whether women will continue to shape the future; they already do. The question is how to reinforce, expedite and safeguard that progress.
