Introductory Chapter: Where the World Stands in Gender Equality?

1. Introduction

The last two decades marked with substantial improvements in gender equality across the world. There have been important advances in closing gender gaps, particularly in education and health, yet the progress in closing gender gaps in economic and political participation has been very slow. Based on the progress between 2006 and 2023, it is estimated that the gender parity in political participation and economic participation will be reached after 162 and 169 years, respectively [1].

There is no country in the world that has achieved gender equality. Gender inequalities persist in all countries and regions of the world, but the nature and level of inequalities vary. The gender differences in economic and political participation, access to opportunities and decision-making power and social norms and expectations with regard to the gender roles continue to make the world unequal for genders.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise the need to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ by 2030. SDG5 calls for elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against women, ensuring equal opportunities in leadership and full and effective participation of women and pledges for the recognition of unpaid care work.

Halfway to the SDGs 2030 agenda, this introductory chapter aims at providing a snapshot of the progress in gender equality by the regions of the world.

2. Gender inequalities in education: access to opportunities

The last decade has delivered considerable improvements in education. Since 2010, the gaps in adult literacy rates closed by two percentage points. The women’s literacy rate increased from 80% in 2010 to 83.8% in 2022, and for men, adult literacy rate increased from 88.4% to 90.3% (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Adult literacy rate by sex, 2010–2022. Source: World Bank [2] Gender statistics.

While the gaps in literacy are almost closed in Europe and Central Asia, North America and Latin America and Caribbean, they persist in Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Adult literacy rate by sex and region, 2022. Source: World Bank [2] Gender statistics.

The gender gaps in access to education have been closed. Girls once have access to schooling have higher rates of completion at primary, lower secondary and upper secondary levels globally (Table 1). Yet in sub-Saharan Africa, only one in every four girls can complete upper secondary schooling and half of the girls in Central and Southern Asia cannot complete secondary school. These two regions are also the ones where girls are less likely to complete upper secondary school as compared to boys.

	Primary Completion Rate		Lower Secondary Completion Rate		Upper Secondary Completion Rate
	Girls	Boys	Girls	Boys	Girls	Boys
World	88	86	78	76	60	57
Sub-Saharan Africa	67	61	45	46	26	29
Northern Africa and Western Asia	89	90	74	71	60	56
Central and Southern Asia	89	88	81	80	52	55
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia	98	96	92	85	79	65
Latin America and the Caribbean	95	91	86	80	67	60
Europe and Northern America	100	100	98	98	91	87

Table 1.

Completion rate by sex and education level, 2022 (%).

Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics [3].

Despite closing gender gaps in formal education, in 2019, there were 257 million boys who were out of school. In addition, in 2022, the proportion of young women (aged 15–24) who were not in school, employment or training was 31.2% as compared to 15.4% among young men, reflecting the uneven chances of young women and men in building their skills. These gaps were highest in Central and Southern Asia (W48.7%, M15.4%), followed by Northern Africa and Western Asia (W40.2%, M17.9%) [4].

3. Women’s health

Maternal mortality ratio has declined steadily for two decades from 339 to 223 deaths per 100,000 births between 2000 and 2020. Inadequate health systems, socio-economic inequalities and obstructive gender norms continue to halt the progress in maternal mortality, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where nine out of ten maternal deaths occur. Women in sub-Saharan Africa area 130 more likely to die from complications during pregnancy and childbirth as compared to women in North America or Europe (Figure 3) [5].

Figure 3.

Maternal mortality ratio (modelled estimate, per 100,000 live births). Source: World Bank [2] Gender statistics.

The births attended by skilled health personnel indicate the capacity of healthcare systems in providing sufficient care during birth. Globally, almost nine in every ten births (86.2%) were attended by a health personnel in 2022. While most of the regions of the world have reached almost universal skilled care at birth, sub-Saharan Africa, the region with highest maternal mortality ratios, three out of ten women do not have access to skilled personnel during childbirth (Figure 4). Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia also have the highest rate of pregnant women (aged 15–39) with anaemia by 46.2%.

Figure 4.

Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel %. Source: UNICEF and WHO [6] Joint global database on skilled attendance at birth.

In 2023, 648.2 million girls were married before the age of 18 globally; 18.7% of the women aged 20–24 years were married before the age of 18, and 4.2% married before the age of 15. The child marriages were most common in sub-Saharan Africa (32.4%), followed by Central and Southern Asia (24.9%) (Figure 5). With the current trends, the world is 300 years away from ending child marriages [5].

Figure 5.

Proportion of women aged 20–24 years who were married or in a union before age 18 and 15 (%). Source: UNICEF [7] The child marriage data portal.

As compared to 2010, more women and girls have access to sexual and reproductive services. Globally, there has been two percentage increase in the proportion of women of reproductive age who have their family planning satisfied with modern methods (Figure 6). Despite a significant leap forward from 45.9% in 2010 to 57.4% in 2023, sub-Saharan Africa remains behind all the other regions of the world, followed by North Africa and West Asia (64%) and Central and South Asia (75%).

Figure 6.

Proportion of women of reproductive age who have their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods (% of women aged 15–49 years). Source: United Nations Population Division [8] Estimates and projections of family planning indicators 2022.

4. Women’s position in the labour market: chronic inequalities and little progress

Attaining gender equality in the labour market remains as the main challenge among all. While women’s position in the labour market varies greatly across the countries and the regions of the world, women continue to remain underrepresented in the labour market in all countries and regions. Compared to men, women are less likely to participate in the labour market, work full-time, more likely to be employed in the informal and lower-paid jobs and less likely to be represented at the higher-level positions, which results in gender pay gaps and higher risks of women to live in poverty. Tackling the inequalities in the labour market, thus is particularly important to improve women’s lives.

Women’s economic participation, which can be observed through labour force participation rates (LFPR), have been varying between 47 and 49% over the last decade. In 2022, globally the LFPR of women was 47.3% as compared to men 72.5%; there were 65 women participating in the labour market per 100 (Figure 7).

Figure 7.

Trends in LFPR by sex in the world, 2010–2022. Source: World Bank [2] Gender statistics.

While gender parity was not attained in any of regions of the world, the gender gaps in LFPR were highest in Middle East and North Africa (W18.8%, M70.9%) and South Asia (W25.6%, M74.7%) (Figure 8).

Figure 8.

LFPR by sex and region, 2022. Source: World Bank [2] Gender statistics.

While the variations across regions echo differences in levels of economic and human development, social norms, education levels, fertility rates and access to care and other supportive services, the detrimental role of gender differences in unpaid care work and gender role norms cannot be denied.

Gender inequality in unpaid care work, which is also entrenched in the traditional gender norms and stereotypes, has been seen as the missing link for analysing the gender gaps in labour outcomes [9]. Women continue to bear the unequal burden of unpaid care work irrespective of the level of development of their countries. Unequal burden of unpaid care work is one of the manifestations of gender inequalities as well as the causes that perpetuate gender inequalities that result from discriminatory social institutions and gender roles. Globally women spend 2.8 hours more than men on unpaid care and domestic work [5]. In all countries for which the data is available, the unequal burden of unpaid care work is quite noticeable (Figure 9).

Figure 9.

Time spend on unpaid care work by sex, minutes per day, latest available year. Source: OECD [10] Data explorer.

5. Women in decision-making

Women’s presence in decision-making positions is a central requirement for achieving gender equality. Women’s participation in political decision-making is a means of ensuring better accountability to women that can lead to better gender-responsive reforms and policies. Despite improvements during the last decade, women are still underrepresented in political and economic decision-making positions. On the average women account, only 27% of the national parliaments, and 35% of deliberative bodies of local governments. Similarly, the proportion of women in managerial positions was only 28% in 2021, with almost no improvement for the last decade. The representation of women in political and economic decision-making positions varied significantly across the regions of the world, with moderate improvements (Table 2).

	Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (% of total number of seats)		Proportion of elected seats held by women in deliberative bodies of local government (%)	Proportion of women in managerial positions
	2010	2023	2023	2010	2021
World	19	27	35	27	28
Sub-Saharan Africa	18	26	25	32	38
Northern Africa and Western Asia	11	18	20	13	15
Central and Southern Asia	19	19	41	13	16
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia	19	22	31	28	30
Latin America and the Caribbean	23	36	27	34	37
Europe and Northern America	23	32	37	37	39

Table 2.

Women at decision-making positions by regions.

Source: UN WOMEN [11].

6. Availability of legal frameworks for gender equality

In order to reach the gender equality, legal frameworks that are in place to enforce gender equality in all countries are vital. Table 3 shows the extent to which countries have legislative frameworks in place for gender equality in four areas. With some variations across regions, globally the legislation that is in place for gender equality varies between 70.2% in Area 1 to 80% in Area 4. It is estimated that it will take another 286 years to close gaps in legal protection and remove existing discriminatory laws [5].

	Area 1: overarching legal frameworks and public life	Area 2: violence against women	Area 3: employment and economic benefits	Area 4: marriage and family
World	70.2	78.8	76.2	80.0
Sub-Saharan Africa	64.5	71.1	70.5	74.1
Northern Africa and Western Asia	59.1	70.6	61.4	65.4
Central and Southern Asia	68.7	73.6	50.0	77.3
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia	64.8	72.8	71.1	81.8
Latin America and the Caribbean	68.4	79.6	75.2	86.2
Europe and Northern America	80.0	86.0	92.8	84.2

Table 3.

Legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality (percentage of achievement, 0 – 100), 2022.

Source: UN WOMEN [11].

7. Conclusions

This introductory chapter provides a snapshot of gender (in)equalities at global and regional levels and highlights that gender equality remains as an unfinished business across the world. The slow and incremental progress that has been made over the last decade indicates that change is possible. This change would require various but interdependent strategies, including strengthening legal reforms, transformations of traditional gender roles, scaling up gender-responsive public service delivery, quotas for women in representation and other global, national or local level strategies that have the potential to transform the lives of women for the better.