Gender Equality at the Summit:

By Ginette Azcona and Antra Bhatt

The Summit of the Future, set for September 2024, is being touted as a crucial opportunity to reinforce support for the SDGs and shape the global agenda beyond 2030. At its core is the Pact for the Future, a comprehensive plan that will delineate some 60 priority actions to tackle emerging challenges, from climate change to the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence.

While negotiations on the Pact continue, they include promising commitments on gender inequality, reforms to the international financial system, and a new start to the system of multilateralism. But will these ambitious discussions lead to real change? Much will depend on whether bold actions match the bold ideas—key among them being the commitment to achieve gender equality.

Having worked closely on monitoring the SDGs since their inception, we have witnessed the dichotomy of their transformative potential alongside stalled progress. If we are serious about achieving gender equality, the upcoming summit must move beyond rhetoric and deliver concrete commitments in four critical areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

1. Elevating Women's Power and Influence

The latest draft of the Pact calls for removing barriers to women’s rights and ensuring their full participation in leadership. However, representation alone is not enough. Women's power in decision-making spaces must reflect their presence.

While more women are now on corporate boards in higher numbers—often due to quotas—their influence frequently falls short. In fact, a study found that in 71% of publicly traded companies, women have less power than their representation suggests. The same dynamic exists in politics, where just 27 countries are led by women, and less than a quarter of government ministries are headed by women. They are also underrepresented as speakers at the Summit. True equality, thus, requires more than simply counting women at the table; it involves addressing deep-rooted power imbalances across societies, and within workplaces and at home.

At the summit, world leaders should reiterate their commitment to gender equality, significantly increase their investments in women and girls, and agree to set up processes that support this objective long after their terms in office are over. It also wouldn’t hurt to give women more air time at the Summit.

2. Reaching Those Left Behind—especially Women and Girls

Too often, those most marginalized—children, caregivers (primarily women), rural populations, and ethnic minorities—are left behind, hidden behind national averages. Despite global promises to reach the "furthest behind," many continue to suffer from simultaneous deprivations, including lack of education, clean water, and economic opportunities.

Consider Colombia: fewer than 5% of women from wealthy urban households are education-poor (defined as six or fewer years of schooling), while for Indigenous women from the poorest rural households, that figure exceeds 60%. These stark inequalities demand targeted efforts, particularly for women and girls from marginalized groups.

The discussions at the Summit must go beyond abstract notions of the undefined ‘left behind’ and focus on a concrete framework for identifying who concretely is being left behind, in what ways are they disadvantaged and why. Our research shows that gender and identity-based discrimination combine to create deep pockets of deprivation across a range of outcomes—from access to education and health to clean water and decent work. These are not random occurrences but result from a long history of marginalization and exclusion.

At the summit, leaders should commit to expanding funding for gender and other intersectional data, essential for identifying who is being left behind. Groups traditionally facing exclusion must be prioritized, including migrant women, Indigenous women, women and girls with disabilities, older women, LGBTQI+, and so on.

3. Sustained Funding for Gender Equality

We know what’s needed to achieve gender equality, but sustained and dedicated funding is missing. The SDG financing gap is vast—$420 billion annually in developing countries alone—and yet, concrete commitments to address this underfunding are largely absent from the summit discussions.

At the current pace, gender equality is 300 years away. Short-term, unpredictable funding is a key obstacle. Governments must prioritize and mobilize predictable, long-term funding for gender equality initiatives. National budgets and global development packages must explicitly allocate resources toward projects with gender equality as a principal objective. Nothing short of this will do.

4. Accountability: Follow the Money, Measure the Impact

The SDG indicator framework includes over 200 indicators, yet a lack of focus on gender equality in these indicators and gender data gaps create blind spots. Less than half of the data needed to track SDG 5 (Gender Equality) is available, compared to nearly two-thirds for SDG 8 (Decent Work). For marginalized women, such as migrant women or women with disabilities, the data gaps are even more severe. This lack of information hampers our ability to monitor progress in critical areas of gender equality.

It’s encouraging that the draft summit outcome document calls for new measures beyond GDP to measure progress, but we also need better tracking of funding and policy impacts, particularly for the most vulnerable groups. For example, under SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), a growing number of countries are codifying the rights of nature, reflecting Indigenous beliefs and concrete actions to protect the environment. Tracking such initiatives should be part of a robust accountability framework.

Additionally, some indicators are not fit for purpose. The current measure of technology used to promote women’s empowerment—5.b.1 (proportion of individuals who own a mobile phone by sex)—is one such example that needs an overhaul. There are many others.

Conclusion: Time for Action, Not Just Promises

The Summit of the Future offers a critical opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to the SDGs and address the needs of the world’s most vulnerable. But ambition must be met with action. To truly deliver transformative change, particularly in gender equality, sustained financing, and accountability, world leaders must rise to the challenge. The stakes are too high to let this opportunity pass.

About the authors:

Ginette Azcona is a Senior Research and Data Specialist at UN Women and lead author of Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot. Currently on sabbatical, she is a Policy Practitioner Fellow at the University of British Columbia, focusing on gender equality and sustainable development.

Antra Bhatt is a Statistics Specialist at UN Women working on gender and the SDGs. Before joining UN Women, she was an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, and a researcher at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy.