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Empowering Women 2020

Snapshot on gender equality

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There have been important gains since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action.


Laws:

Over the past decade, 131 countries enacted 274 legal and regulatory reforms in support of gender equality

Education:

More girls are in school than ever before. Parity in education has been achieved on average, at the global level, yet large gaps remain across and within countries.

Maternal mortality:

The global maternal mortality rate is still too high (211 deaths per 100,000 live births) but has fallen by 38% between 2000 and 2017.

But there is still work to be done:

Politics:

1 in 4 seats are held by women in national parliments

Poverty

Globally, women aged 25 to 34 are 25 more likely than men to live in extreme poverty (living on less than US$1.90 a day)

Unpaid care and domestic work:

Women on average do three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men, with long-term consequence for their economic security.

Labour force participation:

The gender gap in labour force participation among adults aged 25 to 54 has stagnated over the past 20 years, standing at 31 percentage points.

Gender parity in the workplace:

Women are paid 16% less than men and only 1 in 4 managers are women.

Youth:

31% of young women aged 15 to 24 are not in education, employment or training in 2020, more than double the rate for young men (14%)

Violence against women:

18% of ever-partnered women aged 15 to 49 experienced sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months.

Health:

190 million women of reproductive age (15 to 49) worldwide who wanted to avoid pregnancy did not use any contraceptive method in 2019.

Source: UN Women – https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/03/womens-rights-in-review

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