Goal 5 of 17 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Gender equality is a fundamental human right and the foundation of peaceful, prosperous societies — but not one SDG 5 target is on track for 2030.
Poverty has a female face: in 2025 about 9.2 per cent of women and girls lived in extreme poverty, compared with 8.6 per cent of men and boys. If current trends continue, 351 million women and girls could still be living in extreme poverty in 2030. Women also do about 2.5 times as much unpaid domestic and care work as men, and 708 million women are outside the labour force because of care responsibilities.
Violence remains pervasive: about one in five women aged 15–49 has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the past year. Women are also under-represented where decisions are made — just over a quarter of parliamentary seats worldwide are held by women — and the digital divide persists, with 77 per cent of women owning a mobile phone in 2024 against 82 per cent of men.
Closing the gap takes laws and enforcement against discrimination and violence, equal pay and economic opportunity, universal access to sexual and reproductive health care, and deliberate investment in women's leadership.