GWL Voices 2025: Our Year, Wrapped

If 2025 had a tone, it would be purpose. Guided by two strategic anchors, women’s leadership and representation and strengthening multilateralism, GWL Voices leaned into what its members do best in a year marked by geopolitical shifts, pressure on multilateralism, and renewed debates on representation. Every dialogue, publication, and partnership in 2025 connected back to these core commitments.

This is 2025’s GWL Voices wrapped.

Top Moments That Defined Our Year

• GWL Voices’ Madam Secretary-General Campaign continued to reshape global conversations on leadership, underscoring the fact that in 80 years, the United Nations has never been led by a woman, and that this must change. Drawing on the unique experience of its co-founders, who were candidates for UN Secretary-General in 2016, GWL Voices has leveraged this institutional knowledge to actively support the election of a woman Secretary-General in 2026.

• At CSW69, held 30 years after the Beijing Declaration, Member States reaffirmed that gender equality remains unfinished business. Beyond reaffirming commitments, the CSW Political Declaration made a critical political shift: calling on countries to nominate women for the UN’s highest leadership positions, including Secretary-General. In a system where representation still lags, this acknowledgment underscored a growing consensus—without women’s leadership, global commitments cannot deliver lasting change. For GWL Voices, CSW69 reinforced the urgency of transforming promises into leadership and structural reform.

• Through WIM25, GWL Voices shone a spotlight on the persistent underrepresentation of women in the multilateral system, presenting for the first time the gender gap in Permanent Representatives, turning numbers into evidence-based advocacy.

• At the 78th World Health Assembly, GWL Voices placed a much-needed Spotlight publication on the persistent absence of women in global health leadership. While women make up nearly 70% of the global health workforce, they hold only 17% of top leadership positions across key institutions. Through the launch of Spotlight: Women in Global Health Leadership, GWL Voices brought data, evidence, and urgency to the heart of global health governance, underscoring that effective responses to pandemics, financing crises, and health system reform are not possible without women at the decision-making table. At a moment of budget cuts, leadership transitions, and critical negotiations on the future of WHO, this intervention reinforced a clear message: global health cannot be governed equitably or effectively without women’s leadership and representation.

• At FfD4 in Sevilla, global leaders confronted a hard truth: reforming the international financial system is essential to restoring trust in multilateralism. The Compromiso de Sevilla marked progress by recognizing women’s leadership across areas such as poverty reduction, care economies, technology, and governance—but also exposed persistent gaps, notably on debt, ODA, and climate finance, where gender equality remains largely absent. For GWL Voices, FfD4 underscored both the limits and the possibilities of diplomacy: while the outcome fell short of transformative reform, the launch of the Sevilla Platform for Action opened new pathways to turn commitments into practice. By endorsing gender-focused initiatives within the Platform, GWL Voices reaffirmed its commitment to advancing women’s leadership in shaping a more inclusive, accountable, and sustainable global financial architecture. In addition, Paragraph 11 of the Compromiso de Sevilla reaffirms the commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by guaranteeing their full human rights, mainstreaming gender-responsive approaches across financing for development, addressing the feminization of poverty, and increasing investment in the care economy to equitably redistribute unpaid care and domestic work, a major improvement.

• At the High-Level Political Forum, GWL Voices brought evidence and urgency to the center of global development debates with the launch of its publication The Cost of Inaction. As progress toward the SDGs continues to stall, the report made clear that declining ODA, gender-blind climate finance, and women’s persistent exclusion from economic decision-making carry a tangible cost—not only for women and girls, but for the effectiveness and legitimacy of multilateral systems themselves. By grounding advocacy in data, the publication reinforced a central message at HLPF: leaving women’s leadership out of development financing and governance is not neutral—it actively undermines sustainable development and global progress.

• At UNGA80, GWL Voices hosted and participated in several events to reflect on the United Nations at 80 and the kind of multilateralism the world truly needs. Amid discussions dominated by geopolitics, conflict, and a fractured international order, the urgent question of leadership: who guides the UN and what that leadership represents, remained marginal. References to women, gender equality, and the call for a Madam Secretary-General were few, highlighting that representation and inclusion are still far from central to global decision-making. Yet these gaps also signal opportunity: the growing coalition of states and civil society advocating for women’s leadership demonstrates that meaningful reform depends not only on mandates and budgets but on legitimacy, inclusivity, and renewed vision. For GWL Voices, UNGA80 reminded that rethinking multilateralism is inseparable from rethinking representation, leadership, and equality at every level.

• At COP30, GWL Voices emphasized the need to place women’s leadership and gender-responsive action at the heart of climate governance. The adoption of the Belém Gender Action Plan marked a historic step, expanding recognition of women, girls, and environmental defenders as key climate actors and promoting equal participation across UNFCCC processes. Despite progress on climate finance, adaptation, and gender inclusion, gaps remain in NDC ambition, fossil fuel phase-out commitments, and high-level representation. GWL Voices calls for accountability, Indigenous inclusion, and measurable gender-responsive policies to ensure a just, sustainable, and equitable climate future.

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Knowledge, Dialogues, and What We Built Together

• Her Turn expanded intergenerational exchange through new activities during CSW, UNGA and several Model UN from universities across the world, plus a new edition of the course Building a Feminist International System Through Multilateralism in partnership with Sciences Po.

• Women in Politics laid the groundwork for upcoming electoral moments in Latin America such as the elections in Uruguay and Chile, plus two key partnerships with UN Women LAC and UCLG bridging local leadership and global influence.

• New Multilateralism contributed analysis and recommendations in the lead-up to FfD4, COP30, CSW reform and actively engaged in discussions on the implementation of the UN Pact of the Future and the UN80 Initiative on UN reform, linking global governance transformations with women’s leadership and a financial architecture from women’s perspective.

Across all forums, GWL Voices reinforced that representation is not symbolic, it shapes outcomes.

What We are Setting Up for 2026

Next year’s focus is sharpening across:

• Reform of the International System

• Peace, Security, and Conflict

• Climate Action

• Technology

• Global Health

• Gender-Based Violence

Furthermore, in January 2026, the GWL Voices will bring world leaders, institutions, and the next generation together, setting the tone for the year ahead for GWL Voices Dialogue 2026 “Women Leading the UN of the 21st Century”.

2025 showed what is possible when women’s leadership is centered in global governance. 2026 is about scaling that impact. Same mission. Louder voices. Bigger stage.