Protect Women’s Rights, Especially in a Time of Equality Backlash, Say Activists

Discriminatory laws and the absence of legal protections impact more than 2.5 billion women and girls worldwide in various ways. Legal reform is paramount to securing gender equality, and the world cannot afford to roll back on decades of progress in women’s rights.

Women and War: Victims of Violence and Voices of Peace

In 2023, approximately 612 million women and girls lived within 50 kilometers of a conflict zone, more than 50 percent higher than a decade ago. During war, they disproportionately suffer from gender-based and sexual violence.

International Women’s Day, 2025
UN: Women’s Rights Face ‘Unprecedented’ Pushbacks

Girls and women worldwide are facing growing threats to their security and rights, from threats to their education access to severe poverty and multiple forms of violence. In 2024, nearly one in four governments worldwide reported a backlash to women’s rights, as a new report from UN Women reveals.

Afghan Girls Share Their Despair and Visions for the Future Under Taliban Rule

In line with the 2024 International Day of the Girl theme, ‘Girls’ vision for the future’, a dozen Afghan girls speak up to express their hardships and resilience. They also share their visions for the future.

Stepping Up Investment in Latin American Women is Imperative

Time is running out to achieve gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030. The autonomy of women and girls in the region is threatened by hunger, poverty and violence, and countries must urgently step on the gas.

New Attempts to Reduce Gender Inequality in Brazil

Brazil is beginning to test the effectiveness of a gender pay equality law passed in July 2023, a new attempt to reduce inequality for women in the world of work.

Achieving Gender Equality for Women’s Re-entry to the Labour Force Post COVID-19

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, while many sought safety being at home, women in the healthcare, child care, aged care, teaching and services fields — who hold the majority of jobs in those occupations — went to work everyday. 

Empower Ocean Women

Our oceans play a major role in everyday life, but they are in grave danger. To protect the ocean, we must look to a crucial, largely overlooked component: gender.

Latin American Women Programme Their World against the Digital Divide

Designed mostly by men, many digital applications are not suitable for women, but some initiatives are beginning to include them as programmers and beneficiaries in Latin America, where the gender gap is also technological.

Legal Weapons Have Failed to Curb Femicides in Latin America

Left blind by a beating from her ex-husband, Susana Gómez barely managed to avoid joining the list of nearly 2,800 femicides committed annually in Latin America, but her case shows why public policies and laws are far from curtailing gender-based violence in the region.

Experts Call For Global Momentum on Gender Parity

The world’s most important meeting is underway in New York, providing yet another opportunity for world leaders to discuss a wide array of issues such as peace, security and sustainable development. And experts stress that the role women have to play in addressing these issues cannot be over-emphasised.

Women Activists are Targets of Gender-Biased Violence

Veiled and direct threats, defamation, criminalisation of activism, attacks on their private lives, destruction of property and assets needed to support their families, and even murder are some forms of gender violence that extend throughout Latin America against women defenders of rights.

Education, Not Condemnation, Say Women Leaders Who Survived Violence

Sally Mboumien remembers the day she pressed a steaming hot stone against her chest. In Bawock, the rural community of western Cameroon where she grew up, young girls often had their young, sprouting breasts flattened with a hot iron or a hammer or spatulas that had been heated over burning coals.

Conservative Onslaught Undermines Gender Advances in Latin America

A "conservative and fundamentalist onslaught" in Latin America against a supposed "gender ideology" is jeopardising advances in the fight against violence towards women, feminist activists complain.

Gender Equality Can Save Women’s Lives in Disasters – We must not miss the opportunity to set this right

Later this month, the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) will take place in Mexico. This meeting provides an important opportunity to reboot global progress on embedding gender equality in disaster risk management and redress deadly exclusion.

Tomatoes, Limes and Sex-Selective Abortions

When Bimla Chandrasekharan saw that women who gave birth to baby girls were being sent out of the house by their angry husbands and mothers-in-law she realised a basic biology lesson was needed.

Women’s Pay Gap “Biggest Robbery in History”: UN Women

A new UN initiative launched on Monday night calls the women's pay gap, which sees women paid 23 percent less than men globally: "the biggest robbery in history."

No Climate Justice without Gender Justice – the Marrakech Pact

The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change last year is a breakthrough commitment to respect, promote and consider gender equality and women's empowerment obligations while taking climate change action. It also committed to gender-responsive adaptation and capacity building. A year later, with the Agreement entered into force on 4 November, vigorous efforts are being made at COP 22 in Marrakech to make sure that gender equality is systematically integrated into all aspects of the implementation of the Agreement.

How Latin American Women Fought for Women’s Rights in the UN Charter

It was little-known Brazilian delegate Bertha Lutz who led a band of female delegates responsible for inscribing the equal rights of women and men in the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference on International Organisation in 1945.

Women Empowerment Holds the Key for Global Development

Latin America's inclusion of women in its development model, with greater participation within the work force and improved wage conditions, was a decisive factor in the region's successful diminishment of extreme poverty.