According to the latest global report from the United Nations, no country in the world has achieved full equality between women and men, and progress in this area in recent years has been meager. The publication "Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025" analyzes the gender gap situation for women in 193 UN member states across 17 areas, ranging from health, education, and labor market participation, through political representation, to gender-based violence. The study indicates that while over half of the surveyed countries have made progress in some areas, none of them grant women the same rights and opportunities as men. Many countries have not even crossed the 50% equality threshold, and Scandinavian countries, despite leading the rankings, still have not achieved full rights.
Lack of Full Equality
Despite progress in some areas, none of the 193 UN member states have ensured women full equality of rights and opportunities compared to men. For over half of the surveyed countries, the goal of gender equality remains distant, and many have not even achieved 50% progress.
Scandinavian Countries as Leaders
Countries such as Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have been at the top of all gender equality rankings for years. Nevertheless, even they have not crossed the magic 100% equality threshold, which underscores that challenges in this field concern every country, regardless of development level.
Divergent Areas of Progress
Progress in gender equality is very uneven. While the greatest convergence towards equality has been noted in the areas of health and education, the spheres of labor market participation, political representation, and combating violence against women still remain significantly delayed, hindering overall progress.
The latest United Nations report "Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025" delivers a clear and pessimistic message: after nearly a decade of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, no country in the world has managed to achieve full equality between women and men. The analysis, covering all 193 UN member states, examines the situation in 17 key areas of life, from health and education, through economy and politics, to safety and combating discrimination. The results indicate stagnation. Gender equality was the fifth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all UN member states in 2015. The aim was to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. Despite earlier declarations and international conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) from 1979, progress over the decades has been slow and uneven. The situation for women is best in Scandinavian countries – Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark – which consistently lead all equality rankings. However, even they have not crossed the projected 100% equality boundary, which experts interpret as proof of the existence of systemic barriers that are difficult to overcome. „„Achieving any of the Sustainable Development Goals without gender equality is impossible.”” — In practice, this means that delays in the area of women's rights impact the achievement of all other goals, from fighting poverty to climate protection. The report analyzes disparities in detail. In the sphere of health and education, the gender gap is the smallest, though it still exists, especially in regions affected by poverty or conflict. The real challenges begin in the labor market, where significant differences in wages, access to managerial positions, and the unequal division of unpaid care work persist. Another critical field is political representation. Despite an increase in the number of women in parliaments, parity is still far off, and in many countries, women's participation in the highest executive authorities remains marginal. A separate, burning issue is violence against women, which in every country takes different forms – from domestic violence to human trafficking – and constitutes one of the greatest global human rights violations. The report's authors call for urgent, coordinated actions at the legislative, economic, and cultural levels to accelerate the already delayed march towards equality.