Gender equality in 2025: Gains, gaps, and the $342T choice
Source: UN Women
2025 is a crossroads. One road leads to deeper poverty, weaker economies, and human rights stripped away. The other, propels economies forward, building safer societies and fairer futures for everyone.
What makes this year pivotal is the timeline: Just five years remain before the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development deadline, which the world set to make equality a reality for all. The Gender Snapshot 2025, produced by UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, shows both the cost of failure and the gains within reach.
There are reasons to be hopeful. Girls are surpassing boys in school completion, women are gaining seats in parliament, and in just five years nearly 100 countries have scrapped discriminatory laws – from protecting girls from child marriage to establishing consent-based rape laws. But poverty, hunger, war, climate disasters, and backlash against feminism are eroding progress and could obliterate the gains made by a generation.
The data makes the choice we face clear: Equality could still be a reality for girls born today, but the world must invest now.
2025 is a crossroads. One road leads to deeper poverty, weaker economies, and human rights stripped away. The other, propels economies forward, building safer societies and fairer futures for everyone.
What makes this year pivotal is the timeline: Just five years remain before the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development deadline, which the world set to make equality a reality for all. The Gender Snapshot 2025, produced by UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, shows both the cost of failure and the gains within reach.
There are reasons to be hopeful. Girls are surpassing boys in school completion, women are gaining seats in parliament, and in just five years nearly 100 countries have scrapped discriminatory laws – from protecting girls from child marriage to establishing consent-based rape laws. But poverty, hunger, war, climate disasters, and backlash against feminism are eroding progress and could obliterate the gains made by a generation.
The data makes the choice we face clear: Equality could still be a reality for girls born today, but the world must invest now.