X-ray image of gender inequality in international organizations: only 13% of managers were women

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was officially founded on October 16, 1945 with the mission to lead international efforts to end hunger. Its first CEO was Scottish nutritionist John Boyd Orr; Currently (since 2019) the Chinese agronomist Qu Dongyu is at the helm. In its 78 years of existence, no woman has ever led this organization. She is one of 21 from a list of 54 analyzed by Global Women Leaders Voices (GWL) that had never elected a woman to the highest level of leadership as of October 2023. In the multilateral units from 1945 to October 2023, only 13% would have a female face .

“From 1945 to today, organizations have been led by women in only 12% of cases.” These are the data from the report “Women in Multilateralism 2024”, presented this Monday during the meeting of GWL Voices in Madrid, which its executive director María Fernanda Espinosa was the most outraged. According to the former President of the UN Assembly (2018-2019), this photo of inequality, revealed by the study of the “main” entities on the international stage, is due to “the inertia of patriarchal structures”.

The one who was the first Latin American to hold the presidency of the UN Assembly criticizes that humanity is still in the dynamic of “a woman's first time”, although at the same time she welcomes such announcements, for example from the European Union Investment Bank, since the Spanish Nadia Calviño has taken over the presidency of this organization. “The first woman in 66 years; “That’s good news,” he says.

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Of the 23 organizations that have elected a leader in the past two years, eight have elected a woman, according to the study. Seven of them were appointed in 2023, including Calviño. Four of them were the first female leaders, as in the case of the International Telecommunications Union, which was led only by men for 157 years. Until now. Or the International Organization for Migration, which took seven decades to appoint a woman, Amy Pope, as its director general.

Despite the progress, it is a difficult task to stop the male trend that international organizations are steering, says Espinosa. “Recent data shows improvement, but it is slow,” he laments. In fact, the average percentage of elected female leaders over the last five decades of the last century was 4%, the study says. Between 2000 and 2010, this proportion increased from 17% to 31%. There has been an acceleration since 2010.

It is a question of demographic justice. Women have shown that we can make a difference

The GWL calls for the progress made towards gender equality in recent years to be maintained in the long term. “Equality should be part of the normal practice of international organizations,” reasons Espinosa. “It is a question of demographic justice. Women have shown that we can do it and make a difference.” “Many studies say that,” emphasizes the President: They are at the forefront of peace processes or in the fight against climate change.

According to the authors of the report, the greatest progress in terms of equality can be observed in the management teams of the organizations examined: “Almost half of the organizations have achieved equality or are close to it.” The average proportion of women in these groups is 42%, whereby in most cases the proportion is between 25 and 50%. In ten of the organizations they make up more than half of the leadership.

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Data that not so long ago was “pure fantasy,” write the editors of the study. “It wasn’t a coincidence,” they say, underlining the need to address parity strategies. Well, they denounce the fact that the multilateral system and in particular many countries proclaim a promotion of equality that they then do not apply to themselves. “Governments systematically prefer men when appointing representatives to the governing bodies of international institutions,” criticizes GWL Voices.

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A suggestion

Only four women have ever held the presidency of the United Nations Assembly, a position that changes annually. One of them was María Fernanda Espinosa herself. “We all came from the global south and the number is not enough,” she laments. Therefore, at the meeting that GWL Voices is holding this Monday in the Spanish capital, its more than 70 members will launch a campaign to demand a gender change and maintain regional rotation. This means that every male president should be succeeded by a woman.

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“The idea of ​​starting with this request regarding the General Assembly is symbolic,” explains Espinosa. They hope that if a commitment to change is achieved in this body, others will follow their example, including the UN Secretary General, currently held by António Guterres. “The next one has to be a woman. “For legitimacy and historical relevance,” he trails off.

The three founders of GWL Voices know full well that the UN's glass ceiling is very thick. Unbreakable. Formal candidates for the post of Secretary General were New Zealand's Helen Clark, Bulgaria's Irina Bokova and Argentina's Susana Malcorra. If one of them had been chosen, the chosen one would have been the first woman to assume this responsibility, and her face would have been the first woman among the paintings honoring the secretaries-general in the lobby of the United Nations headquarters in New York. This picture will have to wait. “They lost and banded together to form Global Women Leaders,” Espinosa recalls.

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