If you take a look at what’s been happening globally over the past couple of years, gender inequality hasn’t just stayed the same, despite long-term progress, it's gotten worse in many fields. On the surface, you’ll still see headlines celebrating progress: more women in office, more girls in school, more conversations about equality, and you sit there satisfied because you haven’t seen what is below the water. But when you dive even a little deeper, it becomes pretty clear that a lot of that progress is uneven, fragile, and in
most cases, slipping backwards.
Let’s start this journey with our favourite thanksgiving topic, politics. Women still make up just over a quarter of parliamentary representation worldwide, and while that is a large step that we as a society have taken, this growth has slowed significantly. What’s more concerning is where women actually hold said “power”. Even now, the most influential positions, notably finance, defense, and foreign policy are still overwhelmingly controlled by men with around 84% of these positions being filled by them, with UN Women saying “Women are most frequently appointed to positions related to gender equality (87%) and family and children affairs (71%).” This imbalance matters because it shapes what governments prioritize, choosing to appoint “more important” figures to positions of higher power as shown in recent elections across parts of Europe and Africa, there have been noticeable stalls or even declines in women gaining seats, which shows that representation isn’t guaranteed and can just as easily regress.
Then you can begin to layer in current global conflicts, like the Russia-Ukraine War, and the inequality becomes even more visible. Women in these situations are disproportionately affected, facing higher risks of displacement, loss of income, and become victims of gender-based violence. At the same time, they are still largely excluded from peace negotiations and decision-making processes. It’s a pattern that we are allowing to keep repeating: women are, if not more, heavily impacted by crises, but rarely included in shaping the solutions that are supposed to save them. And that’s not just unfair, it’s stupidly inefficient, because we are ignoring studies put out by the United Nations that consistently show that peace agreements are more stable and longer-lasting when women are involved, stating: “a peace agreement, which includes women, is 35 per cent more likely to last at least 15 years”.
Economically, things aren’t much better. The global gender pay gap still sits at around 20%, with women earning around 0.83$ for every dollar a man makes in 2025, with wider gaps in nations such as South Korea and Pakistan. But what’s really telling is what’s happened since COVID-19. According to data from the International Labour Organization, women’s employment levels have recovered more slowly than men’s, with less than half of working age women being employed in 2021. A big reason for that is unpaid care work. When the schools shut down and healthcare systems began to strain, women took on more responsibilities at home, and a lot of them never fully returned to the workforce afterward. So while economies are “recovering” on paper, that recovery hasn’t been equal.
Even in education and research, where you’d expect merit and hard work to level the playing field, the same pattern shows up. Women now make up a large share of university graduates globally, but their representation drops off the higher you go. Fewer women hold senior academic positions, lead major research projects, or publish in top-tier journals, especially in STEM fields. But what nobody realizes is that it’s not about capability; it’s about access, retention, and opportunity. The system lets women in, but it was never built for staying or advancing. All of this, economics, policies, and conflict, feeds into a bigger issue: when women aren’t equally represented, the outcomes don’t and never will reflect the full population. Governments with more gender-balanced leadership tend to invest more in healthcare, education, and social welfare, with a prominent example being Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheimbaum and their leftist party, MORENA. Without that balance, those areas can get sidelined. So gender inequality isn’t just a fairness issue, but actually it directly affects how societies develop and what priorities get attention.
At the end of the day, the idea that gender equality is “basically solved” just doesn’t hold up. Yes, there’s been progress, and that matters. But the reality in 2026 is that the progress that has been made is inconsistent and easily reversible. Without stronger structural changes, like enforced representation policies such as what is stated in article 27 of Kenya’s Constitution, which states that “no more than two-thirds of members in elective or appointive bodies should be of the same gender”, workplace reforms, and inclusion in peace processes, the gap isn’t going to close on its own.
Bibliography
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Inter-Parlimentary Union. “Women’s Representation in Parliament Sees Sluggish Gains.”
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