Equality Now - Words And Deeds: Sex Discrimination In Economic Status Laws – 2024 Update

The 4th UN Conference on Women in 1995 gave birth to The Beijing Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. Governments worldwide pledged to change or remove their existing discriminatory laws and make legal equality a reality. Nearly 30 years later, that goal is far from being realized.

None of the 190 economies surveyed by the World Bank in 2024 had achieved legal equality, and a typical economy only grants women 64% of the same rights as men. At the current pace of reform, the UN estimates that the world will not enjoy the benefits of legal equality before 2310. The right to equality in the law, however, has been recognized not only as a human right under international law but also as critical to achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), to leave no one behind by 2030. We must accelerate progress and prevent further backsliding, including by ensuring “legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex.” (SDG indicator 5.1.1).

Economic inequality and gender inequalities are intimately linked, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that inequality kills. The relationship between gender inequality in the law and, in practice, world peace and global economics has been well documented over many decades by former members of parliament, well-regarded academics, and civil society.

The impact of environmental destruction, loss of life due to war, and the current global economic model, which focuses on extraction, exploitation, consumerism, and limitless market growth, with the profits accruing to the top 1% of the world’s population, at the expense of the wellbeing of all people and the sustainability of our planet, is failing us all, especially women. The fight for control over resources (land, sea, water, oil, minerals, and now data) has resulted in toxic militaristic capitalism, huge investments in the arms industry at the expense of other public spending, the rise of authoritarianism, and a lack of corporate accountability. The result of this for women and girls is increasing gender-based and sexual violence, loss of life, less access to health, education, and other services, the undervaluing of their role in the care economy, inequality in employment, and increasing vulnerability due to all of these exacerbated by the destruction of the environment. The list is endless and represents a stream of human rights violations.

To highlight these issues and in anticipation of the upcoming UN Summit of the Future and the Commission on the Status of Women session on addressing poverty with a call to UN member states to strengthen legal frameworks for gender equality as well as the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, this is an updated Words & Deeds brief, exploring the impact of sex discrimination in laws related to economic status and what still needs to urgently change.

Learn more here.