Where do women stand internationally in 2024? The just-released third edition of the Gender Equality and Governance Index (GEGI) attempts to answer that question by looking at some 60 variables to provide a broad-based understanding of gender discrimination in 158 countries. The data compares countries internationally at this moment in time, but also shows how individual countries are evolving, or regressing, over longer periods. Are women, for example, being increasingly welcomed into the halls of power or are they facing further barriers to their voices being heard where it matters most?

As with previous editions, the latest GEGI report examines women’s roles in five pillars of public life. These include Governance and Equality (with data related to climate governance and engagement included for the first time); Entrepreneurship and Doing Business; Education for Equality; Women and Work; and Violence Against Women. Each of these pillars explores different dimensions of gender inequality and the list below will give the reader a sense of the extent to which the index captures important dimensions of the realities confronting women across the world. 

Some examples follow: 

• Governance and Equality: Has CEDAW been ratified without reservations?  What is the share of seats held by women representatives in parliament? What is the number of years that the country has had a woman head of state and/or prime minister? 

• Entrepreneurship and Doing Business: Can a woman open a bank account in the same way as a man? Can she travel outside the home in the same way as a man? Do men and married women have equal ownership rights to property?

• Education for Equality:  What are the mean years of schooling for women? Is there a difference between the coverage of primary, secondary and tertiary education between women and men? Do women have access to modern contraceptive methods?

• Women and Work: Is there paid leave available to women of at least 14 weeks? Does the law establish any form of support for families for childcare services? Is there equal pay between women and men for work of equal value?

• Violence Against Women: Does the given country have domestic violence legislation? What is the percentage of women experiencing sexual violence? Do the country’s laws address child marriage?

Throughout the GEGI case studies and expert insights are integrated to make the data more relatable. For instance, in the Entrepreneurship and Doing Business pillar, real world examples from the We Empower UN SDG Challenge showcase women entrepreneurs from Egypt, Iceland, and Brazil, illustrating their innovative approaches and the practical challenges they navigate. 

Main highlights of the 2024/25 report

The Table below shows the countries with the 10 highest scores. European countries under a democratic form of governance have gone farther in providing women opportunities and eliminating many of the forms of discrimination which have at times turned women into second-class citizens, with Canada being the only non-European country to make the top 10 ranking. 14 of the 20 highest ranked countries in the GEGI are members of the European Union.

 Top Ten Countries Scores and Ranks

The two countries with the lowest scores in the GEGI 2024 are, not surprisingly, Afghanistan and Iran, nations whose abhorrent treatment of women has made recurrent global headlines in recent years. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime regained power in 2022 and enshrined a new slate of rules that restrict every aspect of a woman’s life, including even the sound of women’s voices in public spaces. In Iran, the death of activist Mahsa Amini in 2022 catalyzed mass protests for women’s rights that were met with strong government repression. In the 2024/25 GEGI, the data shows the extent to which women in Afghanistan and Iran face a large number of various forms of discrimination. 

The Middle East and North African (MENA) region has the worst overall average rank at 124. Moreover, only in two of the region’s 20 countries do women have the same inheritance rights as men and in half women are legally required to obey their husbands. Furthermore, women in the MENA region lack support against violence, with only three of the 20 countries in the region having laws addressing femicide and child marriage, and over half failing to adopt any legislation to address domestic violence. 

In attempting to understand the MENA region’s struggle towards improving and achieving gender equality, it is noteworthy that the region shows some of the highest levels of authoritarian forms of governance with 80% of countries classified as authoritarian and not one full democracy in the region. 

However, there is considerable diversity across the region; some countries seem to have been more successful than others in adapting cultural features to modernity and better treatment of women (e.g., Morocco, Turkey, UAE, several of the Central Asian republics). 

Some nation’s rankings in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) seem almost counterintuitive. For example, the best-performing country in LAC is Peru, with an overall rank of 23, but some of the nations that underperform in comparison are surprising. For example, Chile, a member of the OECD, has a rank of 66, and Argentina, which has long been an innovator in the realm of gender equality, falls with a rank of 73. Argentina is a good example of a feature of cross-country comparative rankings; absence of progress in various areas in one country while other countries attempt to dismantle discriminatory practices against women means that the country standing still falls behind.

One of the main innovations to the 2024 edition of the GEGI is the inclusion of data relating to the environment through the incorporation of the ‘Women and Environment’ section to the pillar on Governance and Equality. The highest-ranking countries are Estonia, Moldova and Panama, reflecting high levels of participation by women in their country delegations to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Annual Conference of the Parties (COPs) and the presence of gender concepts in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). 

By 2024, 57% of countries in the GEGI had some form of domestic violence legislation, and 53% had legislation that addressed sexual harassment. Like many other categories, there are, however, notable disparities masked by these general statistics. In recent years, every full democracy, and around 90% of flawed democracies, had legislation protecting women from domestic violence and sexual harassment. Meanwhile, only 54% of authoritarian regimes had any domestic violence legislation. 

The introduction to this year’s GEGI report takes a closer look at women’s roles in a world at war. Significant sexual violence is occurring in conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Gaza/Israel, Sudan, Ukraine, and more, with little accountability for these crimes. Nonetheless, women are also actively promoting peace and security, including helping to address the root causes of conflict, leveraging inter-community connections to gain trust, bringing skill sets that improve planning, and ensuring that more voices – their own included – are heard in decision-making processes and international fora. Women now hold almost one-third of senior roles in 54 different multilateral institutions. They make up about 27 percent of parliamentarians globally, although progress in this domain remains slow.  

Conclusion

The economic and political empowerment of women may well be one of the most powerful tools in the 21st century to lay a firmer foundation for both peace and sustainable development. This is not an idle aspiration. The body of empirical work and research done over the past several decades provides overwhelming evidence in support of this proposition. This matters enormously because we now confront a whole range of global catastrophic risks threatening our future, from accelerating climate change to persistent poverty and inequality to rising geopolitical and military tensions. As we navigate the challenges of confronting these global problems in the period ahead, giving women greater voice and a seat at the table will be a vital part of the solution. There is no time to waste; humankind’s future depends on it.