Economic, social and political gains that had been banked for women shrank dramatically during the pandemic; millions of girls in the developing world left school never to return; and the burden of care at home for females of all ages increased exponentially – seemingly regardless of background and circumstance. In addition, gender-based violence, and domestic violence in particular, spiked globally to such an alarming degree that UN Women called it “the shadow pandemic.”
In the past twelve months, gender parity has been pushed back by another entire generation, according to the findings of the World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Gender Gap Report and will now take an estimated 135.6 years to achieve.
But if the crisis of COVID-19 disproportionately affected women and girls, it also provided a tipping point. Many governments and international institutions are in agreement that ‘building back better’ must put gender equity front and centre of any recovery.
The Generation Equality Forum concluded in Paris in July 2021 with a pledge to achieve “irreversible progress towards gender equality” by 2026. Convened by UN Women, and hosted jointly by the governments of Mexico and France, the Forum gathered financial pledges of almost 40 billion USD from governments, public and private sector institutions, international and regional organisations, and philanthropists, to underwrite this 5 year ‘Global Acceleration Plan’.
