Despite decades of promises, not a single country has achieved full legal equality for women, a new report has revealed to coincide with International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.
A new global report by Equality Now has delivered a sobering reality check. While some progress has been made in strengthening legal protections for women and girls, the fight for gender equality remains frustratingly slow, dangerously uneven, and under growing threat from a backlash against women’s rights.
Holding Governments Accountable in the Beijing+30 Review Process (6th Edition) report, released to mark International Women’s Day highlights a troubling trend. Far from advancing, women’s legal rights in some countries have regressed. Governments have weakened hard-won protections, enacted regressive policies, and weaponized cultural, religious and nationalist rhetoric to justify discrimination.
DISCRIMINATION HOLDING WOMEN BACK
Women and girls worldwide continue to face deeply ingrained legal discrimination that fuels economic and social inequality, in the following areas:
- Marriage & Divorce Inequality: In countries like Sudan and Yemen, men have near-total control over female relatives, while in Saudi Arabia, women must obey their husbands “reasonably” or risk losing financial support. In India and the Bahamas, marital rape is still legal. In Kuwait and Libya, rapists can avoid punishment by marrying their victims.
- Workplace Discrimination: Women in Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, and Russia are legally banned from working in certain jobs. Meanwhile, in Cameroon, a husband can control his wife’s personal property, including selling assets without her consent.
- Child Marriage: The World Bank reports that 139 countries still lack sufficient legal protections against child marriage. Shockingly, the U.S. has no federal ban—and 37 states still allow child marriage, with places like California permitting minors to marry with no minimum age.
- Abortion Rights Under Attack: While over 60 countries have liberalized abortion laws in the past 30 years, there is an alarming global pushback. Poland further restricted abortion in 2021, and in the U.S., abortion is now criminalized in 14 states, with efforts underway to block interstate travel for abortion care.
- LGBTQ+ Crackdowns: Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia have passed laws severely restricting LGBTQ+ rights, with Russia banning the “promotion” of a child-free lifestyle.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS BACKLASH
The backlash against women’s rights is evident across multiple regions:
- In Afghanistan, draconian restrictions have erased women from public life—banning them from education, work, and even leisure activities.
- In Iran, women protesting against sex-discriminatory laws face arrests, torture, and even death.
- Bolivia and Uruguay are considering laws that weaken protections for sexual violence survivors.
- The Gambia narrowly avoided repealing its female genital mutilation ban.
- Argentina has drastically cut funding for gender-based violence policies and abolished its Ministry of Women.
The rollback of rights isn’t just a moral failure – it’s a catastrophic economic and social mistake. Gender inequality hampers economic growth, fuels poverty, and destabilizes societies. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims for gender equality (Sustainable Development Goal 5), is now severely off track.
TIME FOR ACTION ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Equality Now’s Antonia Kirkland puts it bluntly: “Eliminating sex and gender-based discrimination in the law is a fundamental responsibility of governments. Every country must urgently review and amend its laws, prevent the erosion of legal protections, and enshrine gender equality in their constitutions.”
It’s time for world leaders to move beyond lip service and deliver real change. Women and girls deserve full legal protection, not just in theory, but in practice. The fight for equality is far from over, and the cost of inaction is too high to ignore.
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