In recent decades, the world has seen considerable advancements in the status of women and girls, with the international community adopting landmark women’s rights treaties and resolutions and with countries expanding women's rights protections in their legal frameworks. However, for many of the world's women and girls substantive gender equality continues to be aspirational. Significant barriers exist and are reinforced across multiple levels of analysis, including individual, community, socio-cultural, and institutional, and women continue to be underrepresented in political, economic, and social life.
As citizens and elected officials, women are often hampered in their ability to effectively influence legislative and policymaking processes at all levels of government. This can be attributed to a range of barriers including a lack of skills and access to political spaces and institutional preferences for patriarchy and male perspectives. Women’s inclusion in peacemaking processes continues to lag despite evidence that supports their inclusion increases the probability of securing lasting agreements. “Between 1992 and 2019, women represented 13 percent of negotiators, 6 percent of mediators and 6 percent of signatories in major peace processes around the world.”Growing evidence suggests that when peacebuilding approaches are inclusive, they tend to last longer. Contrary to traditional male approaches to peacebuilding, women’s approaches tend to broaden peacebuilding agendas and have been inclusive of communities.
Income disparity between men and women across the globe continues to widen. Women also account for the majority of laborers in the informal economy. In many parts of the world, women face notable challenges starting, expanding, and sustaining their businesses. Some of these barriers include lack of access to credit, ownership of physical assets, equipment, or other productive resources. Many women are unable to open bank accounts and transact business without approval from their spouses or male relatives. Due to a lack of educational opportunities and/or job segregation, women lack adequate skills to establish and grow businesses in non-gendered sectors. Further, many women entrepreneurs face gender-based violence (GBV) as an unintended consequence of their economic activity. In the most extreme cases, this may lead to increased levels of intimate partner violence (IPV). Additionally, due to prevailing, harmful, and entrenched socio-cultural norms, women often lack independence in decision-making around their business operations including the use of income.