Publication

Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot 2025

19 September 2025

The “Gender snapshot 2025” sounds the alarm: if current trends continue, the world will reach 2030 with 351 million women and girls still living in extreme poverty, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 5—to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls—missed. This is not inevitable: it would be a political outcome, shaped by systemic neglect, stalled investments, and a retreat from equality.

But the data also make clear that a different path is still possible. If we chose to invest even in just one concrete action on closing the gender digital divide, 343.5 million women and girls globally could benefit, lifting 30 million women and girls out of poverty and generating a USD 1.5 trillion windfall in global GDP by 2030.

Produced by UN Women and UN DESA, the “Gender snapshot” is the world’s leading source of data on gender equality and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Drawing from more than 100 data sources, it tracks progress on gender equality across all 17 SDGs. With five years to go, and thirty since the Beijing Platform for Action, the report offers both a warning and a way forward. It also anchors the Beijing+30 Action Agenda, identifying six priority areas for accelerated delivery, including two with costed investment pathways on digital inclusion and freedom from poverty.

In a moment shaped by both resistance and resolve, this edition affirms a simple truth: gender equality is not an ideology; it is foundational to peace, development, and human rights.

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