Gender equality is either stalling or sliding in nearly 40% of the world’s countries, a new report has found — and almost 860 million women and girls are living in places ranked as “very poor” when it comes to women’s economic well-being, education, health, and beyond.
Those are the results of the SDG Gender Index, which was published by the coalition group Equal Measures 2030 earlier this week. By tracking 139 countries along 56 indicators — including rates of maternal mortality, child marriage, and girls’ enrollment in school — the index found that not a single country is on track to achieving gender equality by the Sustainable Development Goals’ 2030 deadline.
“People might on the surface think, oh yes, I assumed the situation was getting worse,” said Alison Holder, the executive director of Equal Measures 2030. “But when you’re dealing with an index like this, which includes 56 issues that are weighted equally and go into the index score — for a country to actually be going in the wrong direction, that means they’re going in the wrong direction across a huge number of issues.”