Presented by The Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention in partnership with the American Cancer Society.

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995). It is therefore timely to take stock of the overarching picture of the state of women’s participation and empowerment in public life. Part I summarizes and captures relevant normative and legal policy frameworks and compares the conceptual and empirical interconnections among the three focus areas of the priority theme: women’s participation in civic society, their empowerment in political decision-making, and the elimination of violence against women in public life. The results of the analysis suggest that when women’s participation and empowerment are understood as multidimensional, evidence suggests that progress across all pillars has not advanced at the same pace worldwide. Progress in women’s participation and empowerment is limited by the continued prevalence of socially conservative cultural attitudes and by persistent gender gaps in women’s civic engagement, their representation in legislative and executive office, and their impact in transforming the public policy agenda. In many places, advancement towards gender equality in public life has commonly faltered and stagnated in recent years – or else even deteriorated – thereby falling well short of the world’s commitments to advancing fundamental principles of women’s empowerment and participation. In short, warning signs suggest that the world has been entering a chillier climate for advancing gender equality women’ rights during the 21st century. Pippa Norris, the Paul F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at HKS, and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Government, has taught at Harvard for more than a quarter century. A comparative political scientist, her work focuses on democracy, public opinion and elections, political communications, and gender politics aroound the world. Google Scholar ranks her 5th worldwide in political science citations, with an H index of 104, the SSRN ranks her in the top 5% of scholars across all disciplines, and Ioannidis et al (2019) rank her as the most cited political scientist in the world.