New a-gender

Waad al-Kateab fled AleppoA large city in Syria, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements in the world. It has been devastated by the Syrian civil war, and many of its people have fled the country. at the height of the Syrian Civil War with hundreds of hours of video footage. Some clips showed her everyday life, others showed bombs crashing through hospital roofs. In 2019 she turned them into For Sama, a crushing documentary about the horrors of the war, dedicated to her infant daughter.

At just 20, Ilwad Elman set up a centre to support victims of war in SomaliaA country in east Africa. Since 1991 it has been torn apart by civil war, and until 2012 it lacked even a central government.. Twenty-three-year-old Vanessa Nakate, from Uganda, has raised awareness about the effects of climate change on Africa. Indigenous activist Nemonte Nenquimo has fought to protect the rainforest in Ecuador.

What do these women have in common? They are all featured on the BBC's "100 women" list for 2020. And alongside them, the BBC has honoured the "unsung hero": a tribute to the millions of unnamed women who have worked tirelessly and made untold sacrifices to guide the world through the worst pandemic in a century.

Looking at this, many might think that women are finally being offered the same opportunities and rewards as men.

But a new report by the United NationsAn international organisation focused on keeping peace. Its refugee agency, the UNHCR, aims to assist refugees around the world. says otherwise. The move towards gender equality, which once seemed like an unstoppable tide, has stalled.

Today, just 20 countries out of 195 are led by a woman, and only 14 have an equal number of male and female cabinet ministersIn most countries, the leader of the government will appoint ministers to advise her or him, or to run particular departments of the state. These are often known as cabinet ministers.. Of all the world's national representatives, 25% are women. The report estimates that at our current rate, it will take 95 years to achieve gender parity in political representation.

More worrying still, women across much of the world are still excluded from work. Only 47% of adult women work for a living, compared with 74% of men - a picture that has barely changed since 1995. Unless there is a dramatic shift, gender equality in the global labour market will take 257 years to achieve.

Equal pay remains a distant prospect in every country on the planet: it is estimated that if current patterns continue, women in Britain will not earn the same as men until 2052.

Women have also suffered disproportionately from the effects of Covid-19. On Saturday, research released by the Fawcett Society revealed that one-third of working mothers in the UK have lost work or working hours because they could not access childcare during the pandemic. Among women of colour, this figure rose to 44%.

This suggests that our failure to deal with the virus equitably might have turned back the tide on gender equality.

The news is not all bad: the last 25 years have seen remarkable progress in women's education. In more than two-thirds of countries, girls now have equal access to primary schooling. It should take just 12 years to close this gap entirely.

However, women worldwide are still much less likely to go to university than men, which locks them out of better-paid jobs and deprives them of the opportunities for learning and self-realisationAn important philosophical and psychological concept. It means deciding how to live our own life, and fulfilling our potential in our own way. that their male counterparts enjoy.

So, is gender equality ever going to happen?

Yes, say some. They point out that women all over the world are organising, protesting, demanding an end to discrimination. Some countries have taken great strides towards gender equality in a relatively small amount of time. In certain areas, like education, we have made strong progress all over the world. We should never underestimate people's power to achieve radical change.

No, say others. They suggest that we should not feel confident that gender inequality will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Many other things that we expected to die out with the passage of time, like religion and extreme political positions, have proved very resilient; the same might be true of gender inequality. And further crises like Covid-19 might actually push us backwards.