The 2025 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) in July will conduct in-depth reviews of progress towards five SDGs. SDG 5 (gender equality) is one of these Goals. This brief reviews the status of SDG 5 and its interlinkages with other Goals.
Thirty years since the landmark Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and ten years since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 SDGs, gender equality remains elusive. With only five years remaining until the 2030 deadline, none of the targets of SDG 5 have been fully achieved.
Since 1995, progress towards gender equality has been slow, fragile, and uneven across regions, with marginalized communities facing the greatest obstacles. Persisting legal barriers restrict women’s employment opportunities and perpetuate child marriage and gender-based violence. Despite regional variation, women carry the unequal burden of unpaid domestic and care work, which continues to limit their opportunities. Women continue to face barriers in political representation, decision-making autonomy over sexual and reproductive health, and land ownership, among other areas.
The UN System-wide Gender Equality Acceleration Plan, launched by the Secretary-General in 2024, represents a push to course-correct on gender equality and ensure the rights of all women and girls. Marking the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, in March 2025, Member States adopted the Beijing+30 Political Declaration, renewing their commitment to “the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.”
So where do we stand on SDG 5 since its last HLPF review in 2022?
In 2024, in 61 of the 131 countries with available data, at least one restriction prevented women from doing the same jobs as men. Only 38 countries had made 18 the minimum age for marriage, and only 63 countries had laws on rape that were based on a lack of consent, revealing a shortage of legal frameworks that effectively promote, enforce and monitor equality and non‑discrimination (SDG target 5.1).
Efforts to eliminate child, early, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) (SDG target 5.3) have led to child marriage becoming less common worldwide – a trend driven largely by progress in Southern Asia. At 31%, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest level of child marriage. Globally, one in five young women between the ages of 20 and 24 years were first married or in a union before the age of 18. More than 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM.
By 2023, women and girls were spending 2.5 times more hours per day on average on unpaid domestic and care work (SDG target 5.4) than men.
While the share of parliamentary seats held by women has increased, in 2024 it was only 27%, up from 22% in 2015. The participation rate in local governments was 35.5%. Having grown only 2.4 percentage points since 2015, the representation of women in management reached 30% in 2023. At this rate of progress, it will take almost a century to reach gender parity (SDG target 5.5) in managerial roles.
According to the UN Secretary-General’s SDG progress report, just over half of all women between the ages of 15 and 49 who are married or in a union have full decision-making power over their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SDG target 5.6), based on data from 78 countries. At just under 37%, women in sub-Saharan Africa enjoy the lowest levels of autonomy, compared with over 87% in Europe.
In 80% of countries with available data, less than half of women exercise ownership of, or secure rights to, agricultural land (SDG target 5.a). In 50% of these countries, fewer than half of all men have such rights, but the rate of landownership among men in almost half of these countries is at least double the rate among women, revealing the inadequacy of family, inheritance and land laws and policies.
Access to enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology (ICT) (SDG target 5.b), also remains unequal, with 77% of women globally, compared to 82% of men, owning a mobile telephone in 2024.
A background note on SDG 5, prepared by the UN Secretariat ahead of HLPF 2025, outlines actions that could help accelerate the achievement of gender equality, including:
- Leveraging multiplier effects from expanding women’s participation in the technological future;
- Closing persistent financing gaps that hold women back;
- Dismantling discriminatory laws, stereotypes, and unequal norms;
- Promoting community-driven, inclusive solutions for environmental challenges, including in agrifood systems; and
- Breaking the intergenerational cycle of feminization of poverty through targeted interventions and gender-responsive social protection systems.
It is important to fill data gaps and ensure that data and analysis serve as tools to drive tangible improvements in people’s lives and achieve the SDGs. Developing initiatives and programming that engage men and boys in the promotion of gender equality is also key.
HLPF 2025 will convene in New York, US, from 14-23 July. In addition to SDG 5, it will review SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG 14 (life below water), and SDG 17 (partnerships for the Goals). The HLPF’s 2025 theme is ‘Advancing sustainable, inclusive, science- and evidence-based solutions for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals for leaving no one behind.’ [HLPF 2025][ECOSOC newsletter announcing the HLPF | subscribe to the ECOSOC newsletter]