Giving Compass' Take:
- Sophie Partidge-Hicks writes about the devastating underrepresentation of women leaders globally, who are critical in generating peaceful progress around the world.
- What can we do to end inequities surrounding women leaders globally? How can we make women the focal point in discussions about peace and equality?
- Read more about how women leaders are essential in making progress towards the SDGs.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Last month, United Nations leaders said that women continue to be underrepresented in key decision-making opportunities on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 on women and peace and security.
This landmark resolution in 2000 confirmed the importance of women participating in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and in post-conflict reconstruction, the UN noted.
But UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says that there is a need for the global community to recommit itself to including women in peacebuilding processes today.
Between 1992 and 2019, only 13% of negotiators, 6% of mediators, and 6% of peace agreement signatories around the world were women. However, research from UN Women shows that the chances of peace agreements lasting more than two years increase by 20% when women participate in the process.
Studies show that women are most affected by COVID-19 and often bear the brunt of economic disasters and conflicts around the world.t
"Women are still systematically excluded, confined to informal processes, or relegated to the role of spectators, while men sit in the rooms that will define their lives and decide their future," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Around the world, women have been serving as the frontline responders on the local level in their communities. Their work as doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers, and in other important industries, has been vital in keeping communities, economies, and societies running amid the pandemic.
"We have seen the remarkable success that many women leaders have had in containing the pandemic while supporting people’s livelihoods," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a speech last month. "This confirms an obvious truth: institutions, organizations, companies, and yes, governments work better when they include half of society, rather than ignoring it."
Read the full article about the importance of women leaders globally by Sophie Partridge-Hicks at Global Citizen.