In June 2025, New York (United States of America) based United Nation (UN) Women, also known as the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, released a new factsheet titled “Women in Politics: 2025”, highlighting that women are vanishing from political leadership globally.
- India’s Union Cabinet includes only 9.7% women ministers, representing the second-lowest proportion since 2011.
Key Highlights:
The “Women in Politics: 2025” map, developed by Geneva(Switzerland) based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and UN Women, provides updated data on women’s representation in executive positions and national parliaments as of January 1, 2025.
- Women’s equal participation and leadership in political and public life are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030.
- However, data reveals that women remain underrepresented across all levels of decision-making globally, and achieving gender parity in political leadership remains a distant goal.
- UN Women calculation based on information provided by Permanent Missions to the United Nations. Countries with monarchy-based systems are excluded from the count of Heads of State.
Global Scenario:
i.As per the data compiled by UN, women represent only 22.9% of Cabinet members heading Ministries, down from 23.3% in 2024.
- There are only nine countries in which women hold 50 % or more of the positions of Cabinet Ministers.
- Central and Southern Asia recorded the lowest proportion of women in cabinet positions, standing at just 9.5%.
ii.Also, only 27.2 % of parliamentarians in single or lower houses are women, up from 11% in 1995.
- And only following six countries have 50% or more women in parliament in single or lower houses:
Rwanda (64%), Cuba (56 %), Nicaragua (55%), Andorra (50%), Mexico (50%), and the United Arab Emirates (50 %)
iii.According to the publication, around 103 countries have never had a woman head of government and overall, only 27 countries were led by women, an improvement from 21 five years ago.
Note: India ranked 174th out of 181 countries, placing it in the second-lowest category, with only 2–9.9% of women in political leadership roles.
About UN Women:
UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Executive Director (ED): Sima Bahous
Headquarters – New York, the United States of America(USA)
Established – 2010
