Progress is being made worldwide on gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment, a new United Nations report shows, but true parity remains a ‘distant dream’ as none of the international organizations’ gender-equality goals are being met.

The good news:

• The latest edition of Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024, out this week from the UN Women and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, found women hold one in every four parliamentary seats, a significant rise from a decade ago.
• The share of women and girls living in extreme poverty has dipped below 10 per cent following steep increases during the COVID-19 pandemic years.
• Up to 56 legal reforms have been enacted worldwide that seek to close the gender gap since the first Gender Snapshot in 2015.

The bad news:

• None of the indicators and sub-indicators of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 — the goal for gender equality — are being met.
• At current rates, gender parity in parliaments remains a distant dream, potentially not achievable until 2063.
• It will still take a staggering 137 years to lift all women and girls out of poverty.
• And about 1 in 4 girls continue to be married as children.

“(The) report reveals the undeniable truth: progress is achievable, but is not fast enough,” said Sima Bahous, UN Women executive director, in a post on the organization’s web site announcing the release of the report.

“We need to keep pushing forward for gender equality to fulfill the commitment made by world leaders in the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing almost 30 years ago and the 2030 Agenda. Let us unite to continue dismantling the barriers women and girls face and forge a future where gender equality is not just an aspiration but a reality,” she said.

The report stresses the economic cost of gender inequality. For example, the annual global cost of countries failing to adequately educate their young populations is over $10 trillion. Low- and middle-income countries can lose another $500 billion in the next five years by not closing the digital gender gap.

“The costs of inaction on gender equality are immense, and the rewards of achieving it are far too great to ignore. We can only achieve the 2030 Agenda with the full and equal participation of women and girls in every part of society,” said Li Junhua, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

The report includes a set of recommendations to eliminate gender inequality across all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals such as legal reform, highlighting that countries with domestic violence legislation have lower rates of intimate partner violence – 9.5 percent compared to 16.1 percent for those without.

The report also calls for decisive action at the Summit of the Future taking place Sept. 22 and 23, and the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2025; to increase investments and end discrimination against women and girls; and to fulfill the promise of the 2030 Agenda.

Read more: The income gender gap just got worse for women for the first time in 20 years