This report, prepared by UN Women and UNDP, highlights the global challenges faced by women and provides a roadmap for targeted interventions and policy reforms. The report introduces two new indices:

• The Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) measures women’s power and freedoms to make choices.
• The Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI) assesses gender disparities in key dimensions of human development.

Combined, these indices offer a comprehensive assessment of countries’ progress in achieving gender equality.

Today low women’s empowerment and large gender gaps are commonplace. Less than 1 per cent of women and girls live in a country with high women’s empowerment and a small gender gap. Globally, women are empowered to achieve, on average, only 60 per cent of their full potential, as measured by the WEI, and women achieve, on average, 28 per cent less than men across key human development dimensions, as measured by the GGPI.

These disparities are harmful not just to women’s well-being and advancement but also to human progress.

In the lead-up to the global SDG Summit in September, whose goal is to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the twin indices provide vital evidence needed for achieving the SDGs, including SDG 5 (“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”).