PILLAR I
Governance and Equality
- The legislatures of Iran, Nigeria, Qatar, and Tonga feature a share of women as low as 6 percent, and seven countries have no women in ministerial positions.
- Gender quotas are being used in some form in national legislatures of nearly half of the countries in the world. They have boosted women's political participation to 61 percent of legislative seats in Rwanda, 50 percent in New Zealand, 45 percent in Argentina, 37 percent in Portugal, and 30 percent in Vietnam.
- Women’s participation in party delegations at COP28 was only 34 percent, unchanged from 10 years ago. One hundred delegations were largely dominated by men, with countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Tajikistan featuring 10 percent or fewer women in their delegations.
- Women led sixteen percent of environment-related ministries worldwide in 2024, a slow increase from 12.4 percent in 2015.
Women’s suffrage has come relatively recently: the average time since women were granted the right to vote is a mere 70 years. Even where women have legally been granted the right to vote, they have encountered religious and cultural obstacles that discourage their participation in governance. As a result, women are still grossly underrepresented in political decision-making.
Gender equality will not be achieved by simply removing barriers to opportunity. We must evolve from an emphasis on equality of opportunity toward ensuring equality of outcome since economic growth and social progress depend on the active engagement and influence of women in governance.
First, the GEGI analyzes the extent to which a country’s legal framework supports gender equality. For instance, a legal indicator of a country’s commitment to gender equality is its adherence to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Although 188 UN member states have ratified CEDAW worldwide, over 30 percent retain reservations that block full implementation of its statuses.
Furthermore, the GEGI examines the proportion of women in key positions in each country. Women make up only 26.9 percent of members of parliaments. This number has more than doubled over the last 30 years but remains small, with less than a 5 percent increase in the last decade. At present, female heads of state or government preside in only 26 countries in the world.
We must evolve from an emphasis on equality of opportunity toward ensuring equality of outcome since economic growth and social progress depend on the active engagement and influence of women in governance.
Additionally, this year’s GEGI report explores what percentage of women are helping to formulate environmental policies for their governments. It looks at mentions of women in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions, participation in COP delegations, and leadership of environment-related ministries. Eighty percent of those displaced by climate change are women. Accordingly, women’s voices are more critical than ever to steward the planet through compounding environmental crises.
PILLAR II
Education for Equality
- The world has improved considerably in increasing the enrollment of both girls and boys in primary school, and the percentage of women in tertiary education has actually surpassed that of men.
- An overwhelming number of countries set the minimum legal age for marriage at 18. However, Iran sets it at 15 for boys and 13 for girls, and Iraq is considering a bill to lower it from 18 to 9.
- The majority of women live in countries that grant them the right to choose their method of contraception, but this fact masks access challenges.
Efforts to address gender inequality through legislation, leadership, and political reform are insufficient. When women and girls are denied access to education, patriarchy prevails, and human capital is wasted. Inequalities in education artificially reduce the pool of talent from which companies and governments can draw. Thus, a direct way to boost economic growth is to expand educational opportunities for girls. With the right tools at their disposal, women and girls have proven themselves to be the source of innovative solutions to pressing global challenges.
The world’s most competitive countries and economies are marked by the highest opportunities for women’s equality in the classroom.
The world has made significant strides in female education in the past decades. Notably, the world has improved considerably in increasing the enrollment of both girls and boys in primary school, and the percentage of women in tertiary education has actually surpassed that of men.
While these strides are laudable, such figures mask dire situations in individual countries. The World Bank reports that in many countries, including Angola, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali, and Nepal, more than half of all women have not completed even a primary level of education. Five hundred million women in 2016 were illiterate – more than 60 percent of the total illiterate population.
Many academic studies have shown that large gender gaps in education, particularly in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, significantly reduce annual economic growth rates. Devoting more resources to equal education can empower women both in the domestic sphere and in the workforce. Each additional year of education for girls is reflected in delays in the age of marriage and first pregnancies, reduction in sexually transmitted diseases, increased lifetime income, and improved health care within families. It is, therefore, no surprise that the world’s most competitive countries and economies, including those that produce and embrace new technologies, are marked by the highest opportunities for women’s equality in the classroom.
PILLAR III
Women and Work
- Of the 50 or so countries that do not provide paid leave for women, all are either authoritarian or less than full democracies.
- In nearly 100 countries, the law restricts or prohibits the kinds of jobs women can hold.
- In South Asia, only one of the eight countries in the region prohibits discrimination by creditors based on gender, and less than half allow women to work in all the same industries as men.
As in education, inequalities in employment are toxic to economic growth because they constrain the labor market, making it difficult for firms and businesses to scale up efficiently. Countries that have integrated women into the workforce more rapidly have improved their international competitiveness.
When women are empowered in the workplace and in the home, the economy accrues benefits including higher savings, more productive investments, and better use and repayment of credit, all of which contribute to economic growth.
The GEGI tracks several variables that influence a woman’s choice to engage in salaried employment. Although female-friendly workplace practices are on the rise, women in most countries must choose between raising children and working for pay. In the absence of paid parental leave, tax-deductible childcare services, and guaranteed non-discrimination during the child-rearing years, these two choices become mutually exclusive. In 50 countries, paid leave of at least 14 weeks is not available to women. Only 43 countries provide for paid parental leave.
Beyond incentives, there are many countries where legal barriers and social norms explicitly restrict women’s participation in the workforce. Nearly 100 countries impose restrictions or prohibitions on the kinds of jobs women can hold. The sectors where women make up the vast majority of the workforce, such as care work and the service sector, tend to be lower-paying and with less opportunities for advancement. Even in these women-dominated sectors, men hold the majority of managerial and supervisory roles. Finally, in about half of countries covered in the GEGI, the law does not mandate equal remuneration. As a result, women earn less than men for comparable work, a form of discrimination that greatly contributes to the feminization of poverty.
PILLAR IV
Entrepreneurship and Doing Business
- Women own just one-third of all small, medium, and large businesses worldwide.
- Only 44 percent of countries worldwide have laws against gender discrimination by creditors.
- Women globally possess only 88 percent of the mobility capabilities that men do, a statistic most stark in the MENA region, where the number is reduced to 56 percent.
Women’s lack of access to financial accounts and services is most acute in low income countries, where only 32 percent of women, on average, have a financial account.
PILLAR V
Violence Against Women
- Globally, 1 in 12 women will be stalked in their lifetime, and 87 percent of stalkers are male.
- By 2024, 57 percent of countries in the GEGI had some form of domestic violence legislation, and 53 percent had legislation that addressed sexual harassment.
- There is a noticeable disparity between authoritarian and democratic regimes, with every democracy and 90% of flawed democracies having legislation protecting women from domestic violence and sexual harassment but only 54 percent of authoritarian regimes.
- Only three of the twenty countries in the Middle East and North Africa region have laws addressing femicide and child marriage, and less than half have legislation addressing domestic violence.
Women are most vulnerable to violence in cultures where long-held customs and fundamental prejudices place the blame for violence on the women themselves. The WHO reports that one-third of all women will experience violence at some point. Fifty-five percent of all women killed intentionally in 2022 were murdered by intimate partners or family members. Women and girls make up 72 percent of all sex trafficking victims.
Violence against women is becoming increasingly common as backlash places where women are finally making long-delayed advances in politics, education, and entrepreneurship.
For centuries, guilt and shame have been tools to convince women that they are complicit in the crimes committed against them. As a result, most violence against women goes unacknowledged, unreported, and unaddressed. It is estimated that only one-fourth of physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of the stalkings that take place in the United States are reported to the police. Fewer than one-third of women experiencing domestic violence globally will ever say anything about it publicly. This makes it particularly difficult to measure with any accuracy or to devise effective solutions.
The GEGI assesses a number of factors in an attempt to capture the full picture of violence against women, both de jure and de facto. These include the lifetime risk of maternal death, women’s self-assessments of safety, and legislation on domestic violence, sexual harassment, femicide, and child marriage.
Conclusion
The Gender Equality and Governance Index provides a data-driven, objective look at the state of gender equality in the world, bringing together over 50 indicators to assess the progress made by countries in narrowing gender disparities. As this exercise is repeated biennially, it will also provide a vertical perspective on the progress countries are making with respect to their own past since, in the end, it is not so much the ability to assess the performance made by other countries that provides the real value of indices, but rather the ability to track progress at home, where public and other policies can be formulated in a way that reduces gender inequalities.
The calamities brought about by increasing global insecurity and conflict has highlighted women's many vulnerabilities as a result of long-standing discriminations around the world. Over the past three years, women have borne witness to attempts against women and girls’ fundamental rights, such as those that have taken place in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime, where Afghan women and girls have been subjected to more than 70 edicts, directives, and decrees against their freedom and human rights. In such a critical moment, women play a vital role in ensuring a sustainable and effective path toward peace.
These conflicts are complicated by the whole series of unresolved global problems which we confront, from climate change and threats to international institutions to economic inequality and the lingering effects of the COVID pandemic. On every front, women and girls are especially vulnerable and run the risk of bearing a disproportionately large burden of whatever ill-advised decisions may be made on many of these fronts by our still very male-dominated political culture.
More than ever before, the world needs the empowerment of women, politically, economically and across every sphere of human endeavor. The costs of her absence from the corridors of power over the past century have been too high and, with the developments of new technologies and their possible misuse, persistent nationalisms which stand increasingly at odds with emerging notions of global citizenship, particularly among the young, and deep-seated inertia and lack of imagination among those currently managing our global commons, we are approaching a time when the integration of women into high-level decision making will not longer be just an issue of fairness and human rights, but an indispensable condition for survival. The stakes are too high and we can no longer wait.