[00:01] Speaker 1: All right, as promised, we're delighted to be joined by Sarah Hendricks, who, as you know, is the Director of Policy Program and Intergovernmental Division at UN Women, and also our dear friend Shantanu Mukherjee, the Acting Director of the Statistics Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. They're here to brief you on the launch of the Gender Snapshot Report 2026. So Sarah, please, you have the floor. Thank you.
[00:29] Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Stéphane. And indeed, I do want to start by acknowledging Stéphane's statement on the recent killings of women in South Africa and express alarm about that as well. UN Women, alongside the entire UN system, condemns all forms of violence against women and girls in all forms and indeed everywhere. Every woman and girl, including in South Africa, has a right to live free from violence, to live free from fear. Turning now to our report that we're launching today, I'm really pleased to be here alongside Mr. Mukherjee from DESA for the launch of the 2026 SDG Gender Snapshot Report. And this year's report, colleagues, is all about power. Who holds it? Who hoards it? And what happens when half of the world's population don't have access to it? And the findings tell us unequivocally that when women lead and when that power is shared, that important things happen. Children thrive, economies grow, peace lasts, and indeed justice endures. Countries, in fact, with more than 20% of women in parliamentary seats have shown that their immunization rates go up by about 12 percentage points. And in fact, this is alongside better child survival outcomes. When women lead, children can survive across contexts as diverse as Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, and Yemen, women have been central to successful and lasting peace agreements. And they negotiate access to essential services and they strengthen the implementation of those peace agreements so that when women lead, peace can indeed last. And finally, we also want to look at the United Nations itself, ourselves. At last year's UN General Assembly, just in 2025, during the general debate, there were 24 speakers of 192 that were women. But those women, those 24 women who stood up in the General Assembly, they spoke differentially about gender equality 3 times more than their male counterparts, and about international justice and accountability about twice as often as their male counterparts. As I said, when women lead, accountability and justice can indeed endure. And yet this report presents something critical. Political power today rests overwhelmingly— it also rests systematically concentrated in the hands of men. 6 in 7 countries right now today are led by men. Women hold about 22% of cabinet positions across the world. This is actually a data point that has seen a decrease just in the past 2 years where it was sitting over 23%. And when women do actually get in through that door, when they actually access those places of power, they are steered away from the very rooms where that real power exists, where economic and security power exists. In fact, right now, 9 out of every 10 defense minister positions are held by a man, and 8 out of every 10 finance ministers are indeed also men. And when we look here, the very halls of the United Nations have never seen a woman at the highest ranks of power in 80 years. And colleagues, it is not just that women are excluded from power. They're actually— what we see in the data is that they are paying a price for seeking that power. The cost of running for office, for example, can exceed 100 times the country's average per capita income. And for the women who run anyway, who get past that threshold, who get past that barrier, the cost actually climbs higher still. Our data shows that as many as 8 in 10 women who are candidates for Parliament around the world and 6 in 10 women who are candidates for local office have faced violence disproportionately during their electoral campaigns. Colleagues, every gain for women's rights, for women's power, has been hard-fought. It has been won through years, I would even say through decades upon decades, of sustained investment, of political will, of the relentless and brave work of women's rights organizations and movements that have organized, that have litigated, that have lifted up women in power, and that have really fundamentally demanded better. And it is no coincidence that we are seeing this stalling, this reversal of power, of women's leadership, at the very same time that we are seeing a political retreat on gender equality. The political retreat on gender equality. What we are seeing in that political retreat is that it's taking hold, dismantling the very institutions, the very financing the very movements that were actually built to advance women's rights. And the Gender Snapshot this year has some new data here. It finds that 1 in 3 national gender equality mechanisms— these are the institutions within countries, the very bodies that have been advanced to advance domestic violence legislation, to ensure that women have economic power, to protect and catalyze the realization of women's rights. One in 3 of these institutions or ministries have seen their institutional power eroded just in the past 2 years. This is what has stopped me in my tracks. What we see happening in national spaces is also being mirrored here at the UN itself. 42% of UN entities report that They have seen and witnessed weakening of their gender equality efforts amidst a significant crisis of funding cuts. And this has translated also to women's rights organizations, where 1 million women and girls have lost access to support as aid cuts have dismantled women's rights organizations working in the context of crises and conflict. I think, colleagues, the world has gotten a lot better at giving women seats, but continues to fail at ensuring women have power. When women and the institutions and the movements that they uphold and that uphold their rights are actually kept from power and potential, what we see is that everyone pays the price. And that data too is in this report. I'll share some of it now. Not one single SDG 5 indicator is on track for being realized. By 2030, around 1.1 billion women and girls will still be and will remain food insecure. 2.9 billion women and girls currently live in highly or very highly contexts that are exposed to climate and geophysical hazards. And 273 million adolescents and children and youth were out of school just over the past year, with rural girls and those from the poorest households actually at highest risk. These are not just data points. They are, in fact, predictable outcomes— outcomes really of a system that excludes half the world's population from the very decisions that shape their lives and then here dismantles the systems that are designed to correct that. This is, I think, not a crisis of data or just of representation. This is a crisis of governance. It cannot be addressed by representation alone. It requires fundamentally the redistribution of power. And so the findings of the Gender Snapshot, of course, come at a consequential moment here in the UN system, where the UN moves towards selecting its 10th-ever Secretary-General, a position, as I said, no woman has held in the last 80 years. As governments gather next week to discuss and to debate the future of multilateralism, this report and its main focus should shape that— that no vision for the future of the world is credible without women, without women and girls having an equal share of power in shaping that. Thank you so much.
[10:11] Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Sarah. Shantanu, please.
[10:16] Speaker 3: Thank you, Stéphane. Thank you, Sarah. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to join UN Women here for the launch of the Gender Snapshot 2026. This publication confirms a fundamental truth: gender equality is not just one issue among many others; it is woven and it underpins the entire sustainable development agenda. When women and girls have equal access to health, education, decent work, financial services, and technology, entire societies. Are better positioned to advance across the SDGs. When they are left behind, so is everyone else. Colleagues, we've seen important gains across many areas. Women's health outcomes have improved over the past 2 decades. Between 2019 and 2024, 99 legal reforms were adopted to remove discriminatory laws and strengthen gender equality frameworks, particularly in employment and economic rights. Women's financial account ownership in low- and middle-income countries increased from 50% in 2014 to 73% in 2024, and their labor force participation improved in 128 of 186 countries between 2015 and '26, and the corresponding gender gap narrowed in 135 countries. These data are telling us that change is possible, but overall, the picture is deeply sobering. As Sarah said, not a single SDG 5 target is currently on track to be met by 2030. Women remain more likely than men to live in extreme poverty, and experience higher levels of food insecurity. And although I spoke about the narrowing of the labor force participation rate in many countries globally, just 64% of women participated in the labor force compared with 92% for men. Women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of climate change and conflict. Conflict-related sexual violence doubled between '24 and '25. And with just 4 years to 2030, at current rates of progress, we remain 171 years from full gender parity. So the real question is, how can we accelerate progress towards parity to reach those who are still being left behind? Here, the report indicates a way forward. And I also want to point out that behind each of the compelling stories in this great report, is evidence, resting on a solid foundation of quality data and statistics. Behind every figure are statistical offices and data producers working to collect, check, compile, and interpret these numbers. These reliable numbers allow us to identify where inequalities are persistent, understand who exactly is being left behind, track whether policies are making a difference, and overall hold ourselves accountable. Simply put, we can't accelerate what we can't see. And so we need data that are timely, reliable, and sufficiently disaggregated. And we also need to look at the numbers not in isolation, but as part of a connected system. Lives are not lived in silos. and neither should our data. A woman's access to work, for example, may be shaped by unpaid care responsibilities, legal rights, financial services, digital connectivity, where she lives, or how far away the nearest water source is. Painting this complete narrative is part of what the UN System Data Commons, set to be unveiled by the Secretary-General later today, seeks to achieve. And I'm delighted, and it's no surprise, that UN Women is our partner in that initiative as well. Ladies and gentlemen, as we approach the final years of the 2030 Agenda, we need to protect the gains that have been made, ramp up efforts where progress has stalled or reversed. With that determination, this 171 years I cited earlier is not just a distant number, it's actually a measure of how rapidly we need to move. By investing in gender equality, strong institutions, representation and power to women in the right places, as well as the statistical systems that underpin accountability, we can turn all of the evidence we've seen here into action. Action into progress for women and girls ultimately means action for all of us. Thank you.
[15:27] Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Mukherjee. We'll take some questions. Yes, Eric, please, and then Namo.
[15:35] Speaker 4: Thank you. It's Eric Peters with Kyodo News Agency. So we are a Japanese news agency, so I'm curious if you could zoom in on Japan, how you assess the situation for the SDGs, women's equality and gender equality in Japan. Has there been progress? And then secondly, World Population Prospects report did not release a revision this year, 2026. And as you said, the UN is launching its new data platform today. So when do you think we'll be able to get the newest data on the world population? Thank you.
[16:14] Speaker 1: Please go ahead. Yeah.
[16:22] Speaker 5: Thank you.
[16:23] Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Eric for your question about Japan. And indeed, I do want to say that the purpose of this report is indeed to identify systemic global trends across country rather than to produce a ranking or to hone in on any specific country. I think here the report is focused on what the scale of the trends are, rather than acknowledging or identifying, I think, what specific experiences are within countries. I think the important finding is that 1 in 3 mechanisms across countries on average are finding that their institutions are being dismantled, that their very institutions set up to support gender equality are being eroded. And so we would encourage scrutiny at the national level of why is that? Is that indeed happening? How are these institutions funded? Where do they sit within government? Are they supported with strong political backing? And do they indeed have the mandate to advance women's leadership and women's power?
[17:33] Speaker 6: Thank you.
[17:34] Speaker 1: Mr. Anthony, did you want to add something?
[17:36] Speaker 3: Yes, I just wanted to talk about the World Population Prospects. is due to be released early next year.
[17:42] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[17:45] Speaker 6: Sinan?
[17:46] Speaker 1: No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[17:46] Speaker 7: No problem.
[17:47] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[17:49] Speaker 7: Thank you so much for this very important briefing. I have 2 questions. My first question is about Afghanistan. It's been more than 5 years and women and girls cannot study past 6th grade in Afghanistan. I just want to know if you believe that the world has failed Afghanistan. There's not— they should have done a lot more because of what's happening there. And my second question is about your report. You've drawn a strong link between women's political representation and child survival. You said when women lead, children can survive. I wonder how you explain cases that seem to break that pattern. For example, in Mozambique, women hold more than 40% of parliament seats and it has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. It's more than 60 per 1,000 live births. And Japan, of course, as my colleague talked about, has one of the lowest women representation and it's one of the lowest child mortality rate as well. Thank you.
[19:01] Speaker 1: Thank you, Nama. Sarah, and then—
[19:03] Speaker 4: Sure.
[19:05] Speaker 2: Thank you, um, so much for your question. And indeed, Afghanistan, I think, represents one of the most severe crises for women, particularly for girls, um, in the entire world. The systematic, and I would say systemic, include exclusion and erasure of women and girls from education, from employment, from public life, I think demonstrate exactly why this report is so critical— that representation in public life matters, that political power for women matters. And it can change and does change the trajectory of women and girls' lives. For UN Women, we continue to support Afghan women. To document their experiences, their grievous, egregious experiences of human rights violations, and insist that their rights and their participation cannot be erased. They cannot be negotiated away. I think the report also puts a spotlight on the imperative of voices to actually shape the responses of what's happening in countries, and that can and must be true for Afghan women and girls themselves. On your question around Mozambique, indeed, you've, I think, drawn a very clear linkage, sir, between the connection of political power and outcomes, overall development outcomes. And what we do see when we look at this on aggregate is that there is a correlative association between women's political power and the variables, the indicators right across the SDG agenda. Women's representation, for example, in Mozambique is critical. And the data that we have on average shows that when women are in at least 20% of parliamentary seats, that we do see those immunization rates climb and those child survival— those child mortality rates decline. We have seen, however, huge declines in ODA, and that too makes a difference. Where there is insufficient both external investment as well as domestic financing going to critical issues such as child survival, health, education, social protection, then we don't necessarily see the concomitant changes that we need. Nevertheless, we remain steadfast that women's power and representation matters, and it matters a lot. Thank you.
[21:43] Speaker 1: Thank you. Please, Shantanu.
[21:46] Speaker 3: I just want to follow up on what Sarah said, is that what our reports— what our report here is showing is that when women are in power in different institutions, the nature of the decisions that are made, the nature of the allocations that are made change. But it also depends on what you're starting with. So if you are working with countries or in countries where the overall size of the pie is very small, no matter how many women you put into power, that's all they're playing with. So there is a need to actually expand simultaneously with women in power the size of the pie, the size of the revenues that they have to actually direct to where the evidence shows they're most effective. Thank you. Thank you.
[22:32] Speaker 1: Nathan, then Pam.
[22:33] Speaker 8: Thank you so much. My name is Nathan and I'm a Dirk Hamerschmidt Fellow. So my question is on South Africa, yeah, because it's something of interest to me. So whilst 9 people have been killed so far, data says that hundreds of people have been killed Hundreds of women have been killed since January up to now. So my question now is, from your perception or from your point of view, where exactly does the problem lie? Is it in policy implementation or there is need for behavioral change in terms of, yeah, community or something like that? Because it's also spilling where I'm coming from. I'm from Zimbabwe and recently there have been issues of people being killed by ISIS over the past days. Yeah, I think 3 people or 4 people have been killed so far. So where exactly do you think their problem lies? Thank you so much.
[23:32] Speaker 1: Please go ahead, Sarah. Sorry.
[23:36] Speaker 2: Not at all. Thank you so much, Nathan, for your important question and indeed for your reflections. And Here, what you're pointing to in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, I think, reflects grievously the status of data and trends on the persistence of violence against women and the persistence of femicide across the world. In your country that you refer to, Zimbabwe, in South Africa, but also universally. We do show in this report that 1 in 3 women across the world will at some point state that she too has been a victim of violence, of intimate partner and/or sexual violence. Um, here we see that the drivers of the continuity of violence are multifaceted. And yet can be parsed out with some consistent basis. And you've pointed to them, to those yourself, Nathan. One is certainly the consistency of, of social norms and the normalization of violence against women and girls. The second is the increasing utilization of technology and digital violence that is being wielded as an online weapon against women and girls. And thirdly is the lack of political commitment and direct investment into violence prevention, not just into its response for survivors. What is happening in South Africa is extremely concerning, and we see a pattern everywhere where 1 in 10 Women and girls are killed every 10 minutes, and that should stop us all in our tracks and force us to change direction to end violence against women and girls once and for all.
[25:45] Speaker 6: Pam? Thank you, Stephanie. The UN Women a few days ago put out a comment about AI disproportionately targeting women and that the image-based abuse is increasing. I say 3 days because it may have been prior to your report, but can you tell us if there's more on this? And have you contacted anyone to meet during high-level week of— from the tech companies?
[26:20] Speaker 8: Thank you.
[26:21] Speaker 1: Please, Sarah.
[26:23] Speaker 6: Or at any other time. Yeah.
[26:26] Speaker 2: Um, thank you, Pam, for this, um, really astute question. And here, uh, indeed, I'm sorry to say that the gender inequalities that we see rampant across the world, and the evidence that's in this report, is rampant in the context of digital technology and particularly artificial intelligence. Our current evidence shows that AI mirrors the gender biases and the very inequalities that, um, are manifested the world over. And I'll frame a few data points just so that you have them, Pam. A study of 133 AI systems found that 44% of those demonstrated gender bias and 26% demonstrated both gender and racial bias. Almost 1 in 4, and this is data that UN Women launched a bit earlier this year, 1 in 4 surveyed women human rights defenders, activists, and journalists have experienced AI-assisted online violence. Important to note, including journalists. 12% having reported experiencing non-consensual sharing of personal images, including intimate or sexual content, and 6% saying they've been targeted directly through deepfakes.
[27:46] Speaker 6: Global, by the way.
[27:47] Speaker 2: Correct. Correct. That is global. I can get the exact number of countries in that study. I think here we also know that design matters and who designs AI matters. And so it brings us back to leadership and to power and to representation once again. And AI, when designed with safety and when used with intention, can actually help detect stereotypes. It can be a source of broadening representation, of actually increasing accessibility at scale. And so I think the choice here isn't necessarily to condemn AI or to stand on a binary position here, but it does lie with the people making decisions. And it does lie, as you said, Pam, with tech companies. So with governments, with companies, with experts researching and developing AI itself. Itself. And it depends on whether we incorporate the voices, the expertise, the intelligence, the ingenuity of women designers, of women tech leaders. Right now, for example, in the cybersecurity space, only 24% of the entire employment industry in cybersecurity is female. That too needs to change. And so once women from diverse contexts are there we hope that we will see a shift in the power and potential of AI for good.
[29:15] Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
[29:17] Speaker 3: Shantanu? Unfortunately, AI reflects what is prevalent in terms of knowledge and information, particularly on the internet, and that's what AI is trained on primarily. So part of this issue, the part of the problem, is to get AI to be trained on accurate And correct data, and this is something which the Statistics Division, working with UN Women and others, is trying hard to achieve. The UN Statistical Commission launched a special group to study how AI can be better informed by the correct data that's available. But these are initiatives that require people to come together and argue legislation guardrails, and you are doubtless aware of the Secretary General's. initiatives on AI governance as well. This is basically not just a whole-of-society effort, but a whole-of-global effort. And unless we do that, the inequalities that AI has taught itself on will be perpetuated further.
[30:18] Speaker 1: Yes, Sarah, please go ahead.
[30:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wanted to ensure, Pam, that I'm providing you not just with the cybersecurity data on women's leadership, but with the AI data specifically, because I think it's important. Globally, women account for only 22% of artificial intelligence professionals. They hold fewer than 14% of senior leadership positions in the artificial intelligence sector across the world.
[30:46] Speaker 1: Thank you. One last question. Go ahead.
[30:48] Speaker 9: Yeah, my name is Andrea. I work for an Italian-American outlet. And in Italy, we have Giorgia Meloni, which runs the longest-lasting government of our history. And during his government of 4 years, the femicide ratio has not— didn't have any kind of stop or didn't go lower than before. And there are even politicians from the far right that want to deny the crime of femicide. What do you think about that?
[31:30] Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your question and indeed for, I think, raising the grievous nature of femicide into today's conversation. As I mentioned, earlier that our statistics are quite egregious also here, that one woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes around the world, and it shows the magnitude of this crisis itself. Here, I think it is imperative that femicide is named, and we have seen in different countries when it is named and when there is data that is applied to count specifically the differentiated experience of women who are killed by an intimate partner or by someone in their family, that this gets differentiated from homicide. We now have a statistical methodology that UN Women has advanced with UN OCT in order to advance clear global data statistics on the preponderance of femicide across the world. Nearly 50,000 women and girls were killed by an intimate partner or another family member in 2024, equivalent to an average of 137 women and girls every day in the former statistic that I already raised. We do know that this extreme form of violence against women and girls, which affects every part of the world, every region of the world, every country of the world, that this needs to be addressed in stopped, and making women and girls visible through data is indeed a first step.
[33:13] Speaker 3: Thank you.
[33:14] Speaker 1: Shantanu?
[33:14] Speaker 3: Thank you. I just want to get back here to one of the main messages, which is about women's leadership and power across the board, because some of the evidence we have here is about local leadership by women. And we see, for example, that in the United States, if you elect a woman mayor, there's a 6% increased likelihood of police arresting perpetrators of violence against women and actually a 13 percentage point increase in crime reporting. So it is really important to make sure that leadership is present closest to the action as well as furthest away.
[33:53] Speaker 1: Great.
[33:55] Speaker 6: Sarah, can I get a question in here?
[33:57] Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah, Evelyn, a short question because we need to go. Go ahead.
[34:03] Speaker 6: Yeah, I just want to know the URL because I had to follow up on Nathan's excellent question. I too am very interested in South Africa, having been there many years ago many times. Where can I find your report? And thank you very much for your briefing.
[34:22] Speaker 1: It's on the UN Women webpage, on the front page of UN Women.
[34:33] Speaker 6: Www.unwomen.org.
[34:34] Speaker 1: Thank you on that critical piece of information. Chantilly, Sarah, thank you so much as well.
[34:42] Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
[34:50] Speaker 1: I'll be, I'll be in the photo.
[34:51] Speaker 10: Come on.
[34:52] Speaker 1: Well, I'm set to Gender balance, but I'll be the one on the left.
[34:58] Speaker 2: If someone can just drop.
[35:01] Speaker 3: Excellent.
[35:04] Speaker 7: Thank you.
[35:04] Speaker 6: There we go.
[35:05] Speaker 2: Okay.
[35:06] Speaker 3: There we go.
[35:16] Speaker 1: Oh, one more.
[35:18] Speaker 10: Excellent.
[35:21] Speaker 2: Thank you, good sir.
[35:21] Speaker 3: Nice to see you. Nice to see you.
[35:24] Speaker 5: Thank you.
[35:26] Speaker 6: Are the reports heart happier, Becky?
[35:31] Speaker 2: Yes.