Helplines

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2025 brought its share of loss. While there was some progress to celebrate (girls surpassing boys in school completion; women winning seats in parliaments; countries banning child marriage and adopting consent-based sexual assault laws), hard-won rights continue to be rolled back. Legislative shifts, disinformation, escalating gender apartheid, poverty, war, climate disasters, and rising backlash against feminism are eroding the gains of a generation. Even in countries once seen as leaders, women’s rights are being stripped away.

 

Setbacks in the U.S.

Since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson ruling overturned the constitutional right to abortion, at least 14 U.S. states have banned or severely restricted access to reproductive healthcare, placing millions of women and girls at risk. The restrictions are fueling a public health and human rights crisis, delaying lifesaving medical care, worsening pregnancy outcomes, and threatening women’s autonomy.

 

Global Economic and Health Inequality

Around the world, one in ten women still lives in extreme poverty — a figure unchanged since 2020. By 2030, if we do not turn the ship’s wheel, the numbers will rise to 351 million women and girls. In 2024, 26.1% of women faced food insecurity vs. 24.2% of men—that’s 64 million more women going hungry. Women also spend nearly three extra years of life in poor health. By 2030, 1 in 3 women of reproductive age could live with anemia, a condition that drains energy, productivity and health. When women don’t get enough food or healthcare, entire families and economies suffer. A society is only as strong as the health of its women. The problem impacts everyone, as does the solution. When countries invest in women, the returns are greater than the sum of their parts. Reducing women’s extreme poverty to 2.7% by 2050 could add $342 trillion to the global economy. Investing in women isn’t charity — it’s smart economics. Equality is not a cost—it is the profit the world forfeits every day it delays. And financial investment is not enough. Systems must be redesigned to eliminate exclusion; women and girls must no longer be pushed out of labor markets, denied healthcare, erased from budgets and silenced from decision-making. Systems don’t crash overnight... they are hollowed out piece by piece.

 

Barriers to Work and the Leadership Gap

An estimated 708 million women (45% of all working-age women worldwide) are kept from the labor force because of unpaid care responsibilities. Where it is permitted for them to receive an education and be paid for their labor, girls are finishing school at higher rates than boys, but once employed, leadership pipelines remain broken. Only 30.6% of working women attain leadership positions. Progress has slowed since 2022, and women are particularly underrepresented in executive and C-suite roles. The rise of AI threatens to widen the divide. Women make up only 29% of the tech workforce and 14% of tech leaders, while 28% of women’s jobs are at risk from automation. Closing the gender digital gap could lift 30 million women from poverty and drive $1.5 trillion in growth by 2030.

 

Climate and Conflict

In 2024, 676 million women and girls lived within 50 km of deadly conflict — the highest in decades. Climate change is accelerating crisis: floods, droughts and heatwaves are driving displacement and poverty. Without action, another 158 million women will fall into poverty by 2050.

 

No Data, No Progress

We can’t fix what you don’t measure. Yet governments are cutting funding for gender data — only 57% of the information needed to track progress is available. Without it, women’s needs disappear from budgets and policy. Protecting data means protecting women’s futures.

 

Five Years

There are only five years left before the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals deadline passes – the world’s shared promise to make equality a reality. The Gender Snapshot 2025 from UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows both what’s been gained and what’s at risk. The clock is ticking. Keeping women poor, unsafe, and sidelined is not just unjust — it’s economic sabotage. The path forward is clear.